Moral Judgment In Interpersonal Relationship:The Influence Of Emotional Closeness

The closeness of interpersonal relationships affects every aspect of people’s lives.There’s a saying that goes:"It is accepted that father conceals the truth for his son,and son conceals the truth for his father",showing favoritism to relatives in the Chinese traditional society.As an important social feature of evolution,partiality is still closely related to our behavioral decisions today.With the expansion of social scale,social exchange prevails and friendship plays an essential role in relationship.So what kind of impact will relationship have on the moral judgment,and is there a boundary to this effect?In order to answer the above two questions,focusing on the perspective of evolutionary psychology,this paper reviews the relevant literature in recent years,and discusses how interpersonal relationships influence the moral judgment.As the definition of the closeness of relationship is unclear,and researchers focused on two extremes named relatives and strangers,ignoring friendship.We use the concept of "emotional closeness",quantitative the closeness of relationship,and using it as a factor behind the relationship.Using the paradigm of trolley problem and moral violations in daily life,this study explores the influence of emotional closeness on moral judgment through three experiments.Experiment 1 uses 3(Relationship:relatives,friends,strangers)× 2(Moral situation:trolley problem,footbridge problem)mixed experimental design,in which the relationship is an inter-group factor,moral situation is a within·subject factor,and the moral degree assessment is a dependent variable.The emotional eloseness of different relationship was investigated,and it was preliminarily determined that emotional closeness was an important factor affecting the moral judgment.Experiment 2 uses 2(Emotional closeness:high,low)× 2(Moral situation:trolley problem,footbridge problem)mixed experimental design.Among them,the relationship is an inter-group factor,moral situation is a within-subject factor,and the moral degree assessment is a dependent variable.The effect of emotional closeness and whether the characteristies of moral situation will regulate the relationship between emotional closeness and moral judgment were examined.Experiment 3 uses 2(Emotional closeness:high,low)× 2(Victim:other,self)mixed experimental design,in which the relationship is an inter-group factor,victim is a within-subject factor,and the moral degree assessment is a dependent variable.In moderate moral violations,the effect of emotional closeness and whether the loss of benefit will regulate the relationship between emotional closeness and moral judgment were examined.Combined with the above three experiments,we can draw the following conclusions:First,emotional closeness has an impact on moral judgment,tfhe closer,the more relaxed moral judgment,conversely,the more stringent,but this impact is only reflected in the moral violations where the victim is others.Second,the influence of emotional closeness on moral judgment is regulated by the identity of the victim and the orientation of social value.Specifically,compared to the victim is others,the impairment of self-interest leads to the disappearance of the effect of emotional closeness.In the situation where the victim is oneself,the pro-social person retains the partiality to the high emotional closeness,which is no longer the case in proself ones.Third,compared with the utilitarian behavior in the trolley problem,it is generally accepted that utilitarianism in the footbridge problem is more immoral.