Relativity In The Vertical Spatial Metaphor Of Moral Concepts

According to the theory of conceptual metaphor,Metaphor essentially means that people use the familiar and concrete experience to represent strange and abstract concepts.The moral space metaphor means People use specific spatial information to represent moral concepts,Research on the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts shows that people tend to associate the upper spatial perception with the moral concept and the lower spatial perception with the immoral concept.So is there relativity in the mapping of moral concept vertical spatial metaphor? If so,how does it reflect changes in brain indicators? This study intends to discuss the above issues.Experiment 1 and experiment 2 investigated the metaphorical connection between moral concept and vertical space from visual spatial dimension and conceptual semantic dimension respectively.Experiment 1 examined the metaphorical connection between moral concept and vertical space from the visual spatial dimension.Subjects made semantic related judgment on words under the consistent condition(moral concept in upper space,immoral concept in lower space)and inconsistent condition(moral concept in lower space,immoral concept in lower space).The results showed that the consistency effect is significant,the reaction time of the subjects under the consistent condition was significantly shortened.Experiment2 examined the metaphorical connection between the same valence moral concept and the vertical space from the conceptual semantic dimension.Subjects judged the location of target words under consistent conditions(morality is relatively high concepts are in the upper space,while morality is relatively low concepts are in the lower space)and inconsistent conditions(contrary to the position of word pairs under the condition of consistency).The results showed that the consistency effect was significant,The reaction time of the subjects under the consistent condition was shorter.Experiment 3 using event related potential technology to investigate the subjects’ brain activity when they make their judge of the target word.The results showed that P300、N2 peak and average amplitude were larger under inconsistent conditions(morality is relatively high concepts are in the lower space,while moralityis relatively low concepts are in the upper space),and the P300 peak was larger under inconsistent conditions.Based on the above results,we draw the research conclusions: The mapping relation of moral concept vertical space metaphor has relativity,The relatively high moral concept has a metaphorical connection with the high visual space,However,the relatively low moral concept has a metaphorical connection with the low visual space.This metaphorical mapping is reflected in the real time process of the semantic processing of moral concepts and will affect the relevant cognitive judgment.