The Clean And Dirty Metaphor Of Moral Concepts And Its Impact On Consumption Decision-Making On Cleaning Related Products

Conceptual metaphor theory emphasizes that metaphor is individual’s understanding of abstract,unfamiliar concepts with the help of familiar,concrete concepts(Lakoff&Johnson,1999).Embodiment theories emphasize that body is the basis of individual’s cognition,the individuals acquire perception experience through body,and the interaction between body and environment will influence individual’s judgment and decision-making(Barsalou,2008).Based on the above theory,the metaphor of moral concepts emphasizes that individuals could use metaphor to understand abstract concepts such as moral(Lakoff&Johnson,1980).Scholars have carried on the multi-angle empirical researchs around the metaphor of moral concepts,researchers focus on clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts.The empirical studies have found that moral is clean,immoral is dirty,which is to use the specific clean and dirty experiences to describe abstract moral and immoral concepts,that is the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts(Schnall,Benton,&Harvey,2008;Zhong&Liljenquist,2006).Scholars have found that the clues from different senses could affect the consumption decision-making of individuals(Krishna,2012).Then,if the metaphorical connection of moral and cleanliness,dirtiness and immoral will also affect the individual’s consumption decision-making?In view of this,this study explores the psychological reality of the clean and dirty metaphor of moral oncepts and its influence on cleaning related products consumption decision.The study includes three experiments,experiment 1 uses the Graph-Sentence Association Paradigm to explore whether the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts has psychological reality.Experiments 2 and 3 explore the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts and its impact on consumption decision-making on cleaning related products.Among them,experiment 2 includes experiments 2a and 2b,which is to examine whether there are differences in individual consumption decisions on cleaning-related products under the self priming of story recall and story imagination.Basis on experiment 2,experiment 3 added punishment variables to explore whether there is punishment and no punishment will affect the results of experiment 2,further explore the purification of punishment.This study explores the psychological reality of the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts through three experiments.It aims to provide some empirical support for the research of related fields of the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts.The conclusions are as follows:(1)The clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts have psychological reality.Moral relate to cleanliness,immoral to dirtyness.Metaphorical inconsistency conditions could induce larger P300,N400,and LPC physiological components than metaphorical consistency conditions.(2)Whether under the condition of self priming of story recall and story imagination,the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts has coincident impact on the consumption decision-making of clean products.Compared with the clean metaphor of moral concept,the subjects were more eager to cleaning related products under the dirty metaphor of moral concept,and had a stronger desire to buy it.(3)Under the condition of self priming of story imagination,the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts has an impact on the consumption decision-making of clean related products.Compared with the type of immoral story of no punishment,the subjects’desire and purchase willingness to clean related items decreased under the condition that contains punishment of immoral story type condition.To sum up,the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts have psychological reality and has the effect on the consumption decision of cleaning related products.School should take into account the negative effects caused by dirty clues and thus correct the incorrect moral cognition that shudents may produce,and can guide people to make moral behavior through appropriate clues(such as clean environment).In addition,showing public service advertisements,law programme or advertisements with moral clues in shopping malls could enhance consumers’ attention and purchase desire to clean products,which can maximize the benefits of goods,also provides some psychological advice for the consumer field.