The Effects Of Social Perception On Moral Judgement

Moral judgments are made quite frequently in everyday life.Moral judgment is a individual’s evaluation and judgment on the good and evil,right and wrong of a certain kind of behavior.People often interpret and evaluate a large number of behaviors and events in a moral way in everday live.The two basic tendencies of moral judgment accord with the normative ethical theories of deontology and consequentialism.Existing models of moral judgment can be organized around their two fundamental emotional goals(Guglielmo,2015).The first one is the Information Models,which aim to explain the particular information content that underlies people’s moral judgments:the aspects of a behavior,or the agent who performed it,that lead people to hold the agent responsible,blameworthy,and so on.The second type of model is the Processing Models,which identify the psychological processes that generate moral judgments,including,including to what extent these judgments are driven by intuitive or emotional processes on the one hand,or by thoughtful,rational thinking processes on the other.However,as a kind of social judgment,moral judgment should also be affected by social context and cognitive factors,but few studies have paid attention to the influence of such factors on moral judgment.Some studies have confirmed that moral judgment is related to the characteristics of specific dimensions of social perception.We’re more concerned about whether social perceptions affect people’s moral judgments.That is,when people perceive the corresponding target characteristics,they will express their moral judgments strategically in order to conform to external expectations,so as to obtain some expected results.Therefore,the following four studies are conducted around this goal.In study 1,the questionnaire is used to collect information about whether people’evaluation of the competence or warmth dimension characteristics towards those who hold a particular tend on moral judgment.The results show that this kind of social perception differentiation does occur among Chinese university students:people think that those who make consequentialist moral judgments are more consistent with the characteristics in warmth dimension,while those who make deontological moral judgments are more consistent with the characteristics in competence dimension.The second study,which used experimental methods to explore whether people would also draw inferences from the opposite direction to that of the first study,found that they did.Specifically,one would think that a person who fits into the warmth dimension would tend to make a deontological moral judgment,and one who fits into the competence dimension would tend to make a consequentialist moral judgment.On the basis of studyl and study2,study3 discussed the influence of social perception on moral judgment in experiment,with the help of guiding language initiation.Specifically,this study explores whether people shift their moral judgments when they perceive a target role(one characterized by warmth or competence).The results showed that social perception significantly influenced moral judgment.People had recognized the target role in the case of social perception intervention,and when they need to strive to become a social role in line with the characteristics of the warmth dimension,their moral judgments will tend to deontological;when people need to strive to be a social role that conform to the characteristics of the competence dimension,their moral judgments will tend to be consequentialist.Study4 repeated the process of study3 and added question that test the participants’perception of external expectations.Firstly,the results repeat the conclusion of study3 that an individual’s moral judgment is sensitive to his/her social perception.And it is found that the individual’s perception of external expectations completely mediates this effect.Finally,the results of this study were discussed in detail,the shortcomings of the present study were also reflected and some suggestions for future research were put forward.