Dispositional Moral Sensitivity On Moral Decision-making :The Mediating Effcet Of Afective Forecasting

Moral decision-making refers to the final decision-making process by giving moral values to different approaches of behavior according to social norms and under the guidance of the individual moral value structure when individuals are faced with various possible behavior choices in moral dilemmas.Usually,it involves a dilemma between "maintaining self-interest" and "complying with social norms".According to previous studies,the level of individual moral sensitivity will affect individual moral decision-making.As a static component of the moral sensitivity,the dispositional moral sensitivity is a reactive tendency to sensitively perceive and explain moral issues based on value priority,which will also affect the individual moral decision-making.On the basis of summarizing previous studies,this study sets up the helpful context and the violation context to examine the influence of the dispositional moral sensitivities on moral decision-making in two different types of moral dilemmas,and explores the mediating role of the affective prediction in different moral dilemmas.In this study,the positive affective(pride)prediction and the negative affective(guilt)prediction are applied as mediating variables to examine the mediating role of the affective prediction between the dispositional moral sensitivity and the moral decision-making.This study consists of two parts,including a total of four experiments.Experiments 1a and 1b examined the influence of dispositional moral sensitivity on moral decision-making in two different moral situations;Experiments 2a and 2b examined the mediating role of affective prediction between dispositional moral sensitivity and moral decision-making.Experiment 1a examined the influence of the dispositional sensitivity on moral decision-making in the helpful context.The independent variable was the dispositional moral sensitivity level,and the dependent variable was the tendency of the moral decision-making in the helpful context.The results revealed that in the helpful context,the subjects with high dispositional moral sensitivity were more inclined to make decision-making;Experiment 1b examined the influence of the dispositional moral sensitivity on moral decision-making in the violation context.The independent variable was the dispositional moral sensitivity level,and the dependent variable was the moral decision-making tendency in the violation context.The results showed that in the violation context,subjects with high dispositional moral sensitivity level were more inclined to abide by moral norms.On the basis of experiment 1a and experiment 1b,experiment 2a and experiment 2b examined the mediating effect of the affective prediction in different moral contexts,respectively.Experiment 2a examined the mediating effect of the affective prediction between the dispositional moral sensitivity and the moral decision-making in the helpful context.The results revealed as follows: the mediating effect on the affective prediction was significant;the mediating effect on the positive affection(pride)prediction was significant,and the mediating effect on the negative affection(guilt)prediction was also significant.Moreover,the mediating effect on the negative affection(guilt)prediction was significantly higher than that of the positive affection(pride)prediction;Experiment 2b examined the mediating effect of the affective prediction between the dispositional moral sensitivity and the moral decision-making in the violation context.The results displayed as follows: the mediating effect of the affective prediction was significant;the mediating effect on the positive affective(pride)prediction was not significant,and the mediating effect on the negative affective(guilt)prediction was significant.This study draws the following conclusions: dispositional moral sensitivity can influence moral decision making;dispositional moral sensitivity affect moral decisions through the affective forecasting.