The Influence Of Moral Judgment In The Dilemma On Social Perception Of Bystanders

Many studies have explored the psychological processing mechanism and its influencing factors of moral judgment,but seldom examined the social impact of moral judgment.Recent studies have pointed out that bystanders can infer the personality traits of decision-makers based on moral judgments.They usually have a more positive impression on deontological decision-makers,and believe that deontological decision-makers are more trustworthy than utilitarian decision-makers.However,the current research has not systematically examined these inferences from the main dimensions of social perception,nor has it been clear how these inferences are based on.Relevant research indicates that people are very concerned about the personality traits that promote others to make moral judgments.more concerned about other people’s warmth traits,and cognitive needs will make people more concerned about other people’s competence traits.It is also point out that people usually associate warmth traits with intuitive emotional processing,and competence traits with rational cognitive processing.The dual-processing model of moral judgment believes that utilitarian judgment can reflect the higher level of cognitive reasoning of decision-makers,and deontological judgment can reflect the higher emotional response level of decision-makers.According to this study,the moral judgment in the dilemma has an impact on the social perception of the bystander,which may be based on the perception of the double processing level of the decision-maker.Therefore,this study will start from the warmth,competence and morality dimension of social perception,based on the dual-processing to examine the specific impact of moral judgment in the dilemma on the bystander’s social perception.The study included a total of three studies.Study 1 explores the impact of moral judgments in the dilemma on the main content dimensions of the bystander’s social perception,including two experiments.Experiment 1a adopts the classic high-conflict dilemma,adopts a mixed design of 2 moral judgment types(utilitarian judgment,deontological judgment)× 3 evaluation dimension(warmth,competence,morality)to examine the overall change of the bystander’s social perception under different moral judgment types.Experiment 1b uses both high-conflict and low-conflict dilemmas,adopting a combination of 2 situational conflict types(high conflicts,low conflicts)× 2 moral judgment types(utilitarian judgments,deontological judgment)× 3 evaluation dimensions(warmth,competence,morality)The design examines the differences in the overall change of the bystander’s social perception under the moral judgment in the dilemma of high and low conflicts,and the difference in the degree of awakening of different types of external emotional experiences(aversion,anger,sadness,sympathy,guilt,admiration).In order to further explore whether the formation of the bystander’s social perception is affected by the decision-maker’s dual processing level perception,Study 2 adopts a mixed design of 2 moral judgment types(utilitarian judgment,deontological judgment)× 3 evaluation dimension(warmth,competence,morality).The differences in the overall change of the perceived perception of the bystander and the perception of the decision-makers’ double processing level were examined,and the important mediating effect of the perception on the perceived social perception of the subjects has deeply verified.In order to extend the research results to more realistic social life and verify the social attributes of moral judgment,Study 3 adopts the mixed design of 2 moral judgments types(utilitarian judgment,deontological judgment)× 3 defenses(emotional response,cognitive reasoning,no reason)×3 evaluation dimension(warmth,competence,morality),respectively examines the influence of the defense based on the dual-processing on the perception of the subject,and the subjects choose different decision makers as different social roles(peer,manager,volunteer),in order to deeply explore the moral judgment of real life,while affecting the social perception of the subjects,it will also have an impact on the social behavior.The main results of the study include:(1)Bystanders tend to evaluate decision makers who make deontological judgments with high warmth and high morality but relatively low competence,and decision makers who make utilitarian judgments have high competence but relatively low warmth and low morality;(2)Bystanders can perceived that utilitarian decision-makers in the dilemma of low conflicts are less experienced in emotional response processing,and believe that such decision-makers may potentially have more negative traits,and therefore tend to make extremely low evaluation on them in the warmth,competence and morality dimensions of social perception.Low evaluation;(3)The utilitarian judgment in the dilemma of low conflict will awaken the more negative emotional experience of the bystanders;in the dilemma of high conflict,the utilitarian judgment will arouse the higher admiration of the onlookers,and the deontological judgment will awaken Bystanders have a higher negative emotional experience;(4)Bystanders believe that deontological decision-makers have higher levels of emotional response,and therefore tend to be highly warmth about deontological decision-makers;bystanders believe that utilitarian decision-makers have a higher level of cognitive reasoning,so tend to do high-competence evaluation of utilitarian decision-makers;bystanders tend to make high morality evaluations for high-warmth and high-competence decision-makers;(5)The use of emotional response to moral judgments or the use of cognitive reasoning for utilitarian judgments tends to allow bystanders to make high morality evaluations of decision-makers;(6)Bystanders tend to choose utilitarian decision-makers as general managers and deontological decision-makers as a game companion,and believe that those who make a reasonable interpretation of moral judgments are best suited to be volunteers responsible for material distribution.The study draws the following conclusions:(1)The moral judgment in the dilemma will affect the social perception of the bystander,which is influenced by the bystander’s perception of the double-processing level of the decision-maker;(2)The perception of the decision maker’s double processing level,it will affect the warmth and competence dimension of social perception.The moral dimension of social perception is based on the comprehensive evaluation of warmth and competence dimension.(3)Bystanders not only pay attention to the moral judgment results of decision-makers,but also the reasons why decision-makers do it.Judging a reasonable explanation can make decision makers more morality;(4)Moral judgments in dilemmas not only affect the social perception of bystanders,but also arouse the external emotional experience of the bystanders and ultimately affect the social behavior of the bystanders.