The Influence Of Body Posture On Others’ Moral Character’s Perception And Trust

The essense of metaphor is that people use familiar and concrete experience to understand unfamiliar and abstract concepts,reflecting the fundamantal way people think.Morality has always been a hot topic in psychology and philosophy,which can also be understood by metaphor.A lot of studies show that morality can be understood through a variety of concrete experiences,such as up and down,clean and dirty,light and dark,upright and oblique and so on.Among them,little research has focused on the upright/oblique metaphor for morality which is widely used in daily life.Therefore,this study focuses on the upright/oblique metaphor for morality,and examines the influence of individuals’ body posture on moral character’s perception and trust.Specifically,this study focuses on whether the upright/oblique of individuals’ body posture will affect others’ perception of individual’s moral characters,and in turn affect others’ trust in them.The present study provides convergent evidence for the upright/oblique metaphor for morality and provides some inspiration for people how to give a good moral impression in social interaction based on the upright/oblique metaphor for morality.Two experiments were included in the present study.In Experiment 1,we investigated whether the upright/oblique of the target’s body posture would affect others’ perception of moral character of the target.In Experiment 1a,we used a single factor between-subject design to examine whether the upright/oblique of the target’s standing posture would affect others’ perception of moral character of the target.In Experiment 1b,we used a single factor between-subject design to examine whether the upright/oblique of the target’s sitting posture would affect others’ perception of moral character of the target.In Experiment 2,we investigated whether the upright/oblique of the target’s body posture would affect others’ perception of moral character of the target,and in turn affect others’ trust in them.In experiment 2a,we used a single factor between-subject design to examine whether the upright/oblique of the target’s standing posture would affect others’ trust in the target and what the mediating role of perception of moral character in it is.In experiment 2b,we used a single factor between-subject design to examine whether the upright/oblique of the target’s sitting posture would affect others’ trust in the target and what the mediating role of perception of moral character in it is.The results were as follows:The results of Experiment 1 showed that the moral character score of the target who stood in an upright position was significantly higher than that of the target who stood in an oblique position,while the non-moral character score of the target who stood in an upright or oblique position were not significantly different(Experiment1a),the moral character score of the target who sat in an upright position was significantly higher than that of the target who sat in an oblique position,while the non-moral character score of the target who sat in an upright or oblique position were not significantly different(Experiment 1b),indicating that the upright/oblique of the target’s body posture affected others’ perception of moral character of the target,but not affect others’ perception of non-moral character of the target.The results of Experiment 2 showed that the investment amount and forecast return amount of the target who stood in an upright position were significantly higher than those of the target who stood in an oblique position,and perception of the target’s moral character played a full mediation role in it(Experiment 2a),the investment amount and forecast return amount of the target who sat in an upright position were significantly higher than those of the target who sat in an oblique position,and perception of the target’s moral character played a full mediation role in it(Experiment 2b).The results of experiment 2 showed that the upright/oblique of the target’s body posture affected others’ perception of moral character of the target,and then affected others’ trust in the target.The conclusions were as follows:(1)The upright/oblique of individual’s body posture affects others’ perception of individual’s moral character,but not affect the perception of non-moral character.(2)The upright/oblique of individual’s body posture affects the trust of others to the individual,and the perception of moral character plays a mediation role in it.