The Study Of Color's Effect On Moral Judgment And Its Neural Mechanism

Moral judgment is a phenomenon existing in everyday life,the research of the morality is one of the most popular topics.With the development of embodied cognition theory,researchers begin emphasizing on the role of physical experience and the interaction between body and environment in the formation of abstract cognition.In the previous studies,black and white have been shown to be representations of moral concepts.However,other colours may also influence moral processes,although their effect remains unknown.And the neural correlates of these effects are poorly understood.The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of colour on morality and to explore the way in which these effects occur.This study was composed of three experiments.The first experiments employed Stroop Task to identify the effect of colors in the judgment of moral-related words.In the second experiment,we used more complex moral dilemma stories to investigate the effect of colors in moral judgment.The third experiment used the event-related potential(ERP)technique to identify the temporal dynamics of the impact of colours on moral judgement.The experimental results showed that:(1)The behavioural results showed that it took longer for people to judge immoral words than moral words when the words were coloured green rather than when they were red or blue,green was associated with moral concept.Because the effect of colors took place in the earlier process,there was no influence of colors in the complex moral dilemmas.(2)The ERP results revealed the time course of these effects.Three stages were identified in the significant effects of P200,N300 and LPC(Late positive component,LPC).This study investigated the impact of colours on morality,and the findings were good complements to research on the association between morality and colors' metaphors,which has expanded our understanding of how perception influences moral processing.And the findings can also give the practical instruction in the decoration in some special places.