A Cross-cultural Study Of Embodied Emotional And Moral Judgments

Previous research suggests that emotions amplify individual's moral judgment.Disgust amplifies judgment in purity domain while discomfort amplifies judgment in harm domain.As China and Malaysia agreed to raise their ties to a'global comprehensive strategic partnership',89 Malaysian and 96 Chinese subjects were recruited to investigate their embodied moral evaluation.Therefore,two experiments were designed.Subjects from both groups were randomized to a disgust(hand submersion in rotten eggs),discomfort(hand submersion in ice water)and neutral(hand submersion in lukewarm water).Subjects were required to answer all questions in purity virtue,purity violation,harm virtue and harm violation.Results showed that in study 13 there were significant differences between disgust and discomfort group in purity virtue and purity violation.Other group showed no significant differences.Besides that,in study 2,there were also no significant differences.However,Malaysian Subject and Chinese subjects showed significant differences in purity virtue,violation,offenses virtue and violation.There were cultural differences between Malaysian and Chinese subjects.It can be concluded that the effect of different embodied emotion on moral judgments differs in different cultural contexts;Religion is playing a vital role in moral judgment;In purity domain,we found gender differences in moral judgment but not in harm domain.Future research is needed to fill the gaps by using other research method in order to have a better understanding on moral judgment and cultural differences.