Moral Warmth:Physical Warmth And Adolescent’s Moral Decision-making

The study of "hot" and "cold" moral decision-making has a long history and fruitful achievements. The dual process model maintains that both emotion and cognition influence moral decision-making. Utilitarian moral decision-making ("cold" moral decision-making) depends on the controlled cognitive process, while non-utilitarian moral decision-making ("hot" moral decision-making) depends on the automatic emotional process. The "temperature" of moral situation influences the "temperature" of moral decision-making. The present study investigates two experiments to illustrate the presence and mechanism of the phenomenon of "moral warmth". Moral warmth is a kind of embodied morality, which represents the interaction between individual’s physical warmth or coldness and his/her "cold" moral decision-making.Experiment1aimed to examine whether adolescent’s different degree of "cold" moral decision-making influences the physical temperature. Participants were105middle school students from Ningbo (M=13.81, SD=1.04,45females), and each one went through three tasks in the same order (moral decision-making task, hot/cold food preference task and the moral identity questionnaire). Results supported the presence of the phenomenon of "moral warmth" by showing that "cold" moral decision-making (included moral judgment and moral behavior tendency) influenced adolescence’s physical temperature, and exhibited a preference for cold foods. Besides, moral identity (symbolization) and moral identity (total score) had significant positive correlations with adolescence’s preference for hot foods, even controlled gender, suggesting that moral identity might be a potential influential factor of "moral warmth".Experiment2was a primary exploration for the development and mechanism of moral warmth, included perspectives of bidirectional relationship, developmental generality and specificity, in addition to moral identity. A3(age:early adolescence, late adolescence, early adulthood)×3(prime condition:hot, cold, control) between-subject design was utilized. Participants were184junior school students (Age:M=13.61, SD=0.59;105females) and174senior school students (Age: M=16.67,SD=2.32;93females) from Ningbo, and125college students (Age: M=19.08, SD=2.05;90females) from Shanghai, and each one went through three tasks in the same order (physical temperature priming, moral decision-making task, and the moral identity questionnaire). Results confirmed the existence of "moral warmth" by showing that different prime of physical temperature influenced the following moral decision-making. Besides,"moral warmth" contained both generality across age groups as well as developmental specificity, by showing that priming physical coldness increased adolescent’s (both junior and senior school students)"cold" moral decision-making while decreased adults’"cold" moral decision-making significantly. Moreover, experiment2further suggested that moral identity might be an influential factor.In summary, two experiments supported the existence of "moral warmth", and further elucidated its bidirectional nature. That is to say, physical temperature influences adolescent’s "cold" moral decision-making, and vise versa. Besides, the phenomenon of "moral warmth" contains both generality and developmental specificity. Moreover, the potential influence of moral identity on "moral warmth" was discussed. Further studies were welcomed to clarify issues such as moral warmth’s precondition, boundary, and mechanism.