The Psychological Distance Effect And Its Mechanism Of Behavioral Judgement In Moral Dilemmas

In recent years, the problem about the relationship between psychological distance and moral judgment is getting more and more attention from researchers. At present, both at home and abroad, the study is mainly based on the construal level theory to investigate the psychological distance(in the temporal distance dimension) effect of moral judgment. However, in accordance with the view of dual-process model, moral judgment is ruled by a combination of cognitive and emotional processing, the construal level theory only illustrates the influence of psychological distance on moral judgment from the cognitive point of view, and does not involve the mechanism of emotional processing of psychological distance in the interpretation of moral judgment. In addition, previous research has not been involved in other dimensions of psychological distance(such as social distance) effect and its mechanism of moral judgment yet.This research adopts the moral dilemma story as experimental material, using 2 studies 6 experiments investigated the psychological distance effect of moral dilemma judgment and its dual process mechanism. Study 1 uses 3 experiments to investigate the temporal distance effect in the behavior judgement of moral dilemma and its mechanism; Study 2 uses 3 experiments to investigate the social distance effect in the behavior judgement of moral dilemma and its mechanism. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Temporal distance and social distance can affect the judgment of people’s behaviors in the moral dilemma. With the extension of psychological distance, people tend to make consequentialism judgement, which means that it is appropriate to sacrifice a few people to save the most people in the moral dilemma.(2) The psychological distance effect of moral dilemma is mainly caused by the weakening of the negative emotion of the parties’ behaviors in the moral dilemma.(3) In moral dilemma judgement, the moderate effect of cognitive representation level is different in temporal distance and social distance. The interference of the low level representation of the behavior by the parties who are socially close to each other, can enhance the tendency of consequentialism judgement. But the interference of the low level representation of the behavior by the parties who are temporally close, can’t change the tendency of deontology judgement.Based on the construal level theory and the dual-process model of moral judgment, this research investigates the psychological mechanism of the psychological distance effect in the moral dilemma judgement from cognitive and emotional processing point of view for the first time. This research complements and improves the study of psychological distance effect in the moral dilemma judgment, and thus it is innovative in theory. This research introduces the classic moral dilemma as an experimental material, and investigates the psychological distance effect and its psychological mechanism in the moral dilemma judgement, from the two dimensions of temporal distance and social distance. The present study has an important theoretical meaning of clarify the role of different dimensions of psychological distance information in moral judgement, and it deepens the understanding of the mechanism about the psychological distance effect in moral dilemma judgements, and expands the understanding of construal level theory and the dual-process model.