| Moral psychological license is a new research direction in the field of social psychology in the past ten years.It refers to individuals who have performed socially normal or moral behaviors in the past,will allow themselves to reduce moral behaviors or perform unethical behaviors in the future.Most of the current researches explored the factors that influence moral psychological license from the perspective of moral self-regulation mechanism,and the construct level.There are also individual studies focusing on the impact of behavior costs and consequences on moral psychological license.Studies showed that moral sensitivity is an influencing factor of moral behavior,and social exclusion also affects the prosocial behaviors and moral behaviors of individuals.And related researches on moral psychological license showed that social distance also affects moral psychological license.This study combined the individual factor of moral sensitivity and the two contextual factors of social exclusion and social distance to explore their impact on moral psychological license.Experiment 1 adopted a 2(moral sensitivity: low,high)* 2(the morality of recalled behavior: moral,neutral)inter-subject experiment design to explore the influence of moral sensitivity and the morality of recalled behavior on moral psychological license.The results showed that the main effect of moral sensitivity on moral psychological license was significant.The moral psychological license level of subjects with high moral sensitivity was significantly lower than that of subjects with low moral sensitivity;the main effect of the morality of recalled behavior on moral psychological license was significant,and the moral psychological license level of subjects recalling moral behavior was significantly higher than that of recalling neutral behavior.The interaction of moral sensitivity and morality of recalled behavior on moral psychological license was not significant.On the basis of Experiment 1,Experiment 2 added the consequence of moralbehavior,that is,whether the individual who performed moral behavior was excluded,and adopted a 2(moral sensitivity: low,high)* 2(social exclusion: exclusion group,control group)inter-subject experiment design to explore the effects of moral sensitivity and social exclusion on moral psychological license.The results showed that the main effect of moral sensitivity on moral psychological license is significant.The level of moral psychological license of subjects with high moral sensitivity was significantly lower than that of subjects with low moral sensitivity.The main effect of social exclusion on moral psychological license was significant.The level of moral psychological license was significantly higher than that of participants who recalled neutral behavior.The interaction of moral sensitivity and social exclusion on moral psychological license was significant.Within the subjects with high moral sensitivity,the level of moral psychological license of students who recalled moral behavior but were excluded was significantly higher than that of high moral sensitivity control group,but there was no significant difference between the low moral sensitivity exclusion group and low moral sensitivity control group.Based on Experiment 2,Experiment 3 added the variable of social distance,and adopted a 2(moral sensitivity: low,high)* 2(social exclusion: exclusion group,control group)* 2(social distance: close,remote)inter-subject experiment design to explore the impact of vicarious exclusion and moral sensitivity on moral psychological license at different social distances.The results verified again that the main effect of moral sensitivity and social exclusion on moral psychological license in experiment two and the interaction between moral sensitivity and social exclusion on moral psychological license were both significant,but the main effect of social distance and the interaction between the two factors or the interaction among three factors on moral psychological license were not found.This study shows the common influence of the individual factor(moral sensitivity)and the situational factor(social exclusion)on moral psychological license,which enriches the theoretical research of moral psychological license.This study may also suggest that we can reduce moral psychological license behaviors and improve moral self-confidence from the perspectives of improving moral sensitivity and reducing the exclusion that individuals who are moral or perform moral behaviors.However,there are still some shortcomings in this study,such as not allowing subjects to recall immoral behaviors,and not examining whether the effects of exclusion experienced directly by individuals and vicarious exclusion-observing the exclusion experienced by friends orstrangers on moral psychological license and their psychological mechanisms are significantly different. |
