The Effect Of Internet Addiction On Individual Moral Judgment

Internet addiction is a kind of common behavior addiction,which can have a lot of negative effects on the individual’s social functions such as study and life.Previous studies have found that Internet addiction can make people become insensitive to injury and pain,and they will show more immoral behaviors such as injury,and the assessment of injury has an important impact on moral judgment.However,few studies have focused on the moral judgment of Internet addiction individuals,and the characteristics of moral judgment of Internet addiction individuals on harmful behaviors are still unclear.Therefore,this study will explore the moral judgment of Internet addiction individuals under different moral situations by using event-related potentials(ERP),which is a technique to read under different moral scenarios,through two experiments,from two aspects of behavioral science and ERP.There were two experiments in this study,using moral scenarios involving different forms of harm:In Experiment 1,we used the dynamic visual experiment materials of Decety et al.,to examine the moral judgments of Internet addicts in the context of social harm.The results showed that :(1)the pain rating of the subjects(no grouping)could positively predict the unethical rating(p<.01)and the correct rate of unethical judgment(p <.001),and negatively predict the reaction time of unethical judgment(p <.01);(2)Compared with the control group,the Internet addiction group made more rapid moral judgments about harmful behaviors(p =.07).Experiment 2 used the moral dilemmas of Sarlo and Lotto et al.,and asked the Internet addiction group and the control group to choose between harming the minority and the majority in the moral dilemmas.Moreover,the ERP technology was used to further explore the processing and coding mechanism of Internet addiction individuals’ moral judgments.The main behavioral results showed that:(1)there was no significant difference between utilitarianism and deontology in the Internet addiction group in the incidental dilemma(p >.05),while the control group made more utilitarianism choices in the incidental dilemma(p <.001);(2)The response time of the two groups in the accidental dilemma was significantly longer than that in the instrumental dilemma(p <.05).The main ERP results showed that:(1)The N1 amplitude of frontal pole(FPZ)and midline prefrontal electrode(FZ,FCZ)in the Internet addiction group was not significantly different from that in the instrument dilemma(p <.05),while the N1 amplitude of the control group was significantly greater than that in the instrument dilemma(p<.05).(2)On the P2 component of the frontal pole(FPZ)and midline prefrontal electrode(FZ,FCZ),the latency of the individuals with Internet addiction in the accidental dilemma was significantly longer than that in the instrumental dilemma(p <.01),but there was no significant difference in the latency of the control group in the two kinds of dilemmas(p >.05).(3)As for the slow wave(SW)components of frontal pole(FPZ)and midline prefrontal electrode(FZ,FCZ),for 370-470 ms SW,the amplitude of the control group in the accidental dilemma was significantly greater than that in the instrument dilemma(ps <.05),while the amplitude of the Internet addiction group was not different in the two kinds of dilemmas(ps >.05).According to the experimental results,the following conclusions can be drawn:(a)In the injurious scenario,the pain evaluation of the injurious behavior can predict the moral judgment of the individual,and the pain evaluation ability of the Internet addict on the socially injurious behavior is normal.Internet addiction is more rapid in judging immoral behaviors of social harm,which may be related to the fact that individuals with Internet addiction themselves are more likely to produce harmful behaviors.(b)In moral dilemmas,the behavioral choices of Internet addicts are the same as those of normal people.However,there are differences in the ERP of N1,which represents moral intuition,and SW,which represents cognitive processing ability,which may be related to the impaired intuitive judgment of pain and decision-making function.