| The research on moral behavior has been a hot topic of philosophers and psychologists,and the in-depth study of moral behavior plays an important role in preventing and reducing immoral behavior.Many scholars have made in-depth research on the occurrence conditions,influencing factors and mechanism of moral behavior.Moral rationalization is considered to be an important way to explain the generation of immoral behavior.Moral rationalization is considered as a cognitive process,which is used by individuals to persuade themselves that their behaviors do not violate personal moral standards.From the time dimension,the rationalization of morality can be divided into prior and post moral rationalization.The moral rationalization before the behavior is more affected by the expected results and the expected moral self-threat,while the moral rationalization after the behavior is more due to the self-threat brought by moral condemnation and guilt.Generally speaking,the moral self is threatened before and after behavior.Before the behavior,the ego will expect the moral disorder and threat;after the behavior,the ego will directly experience the moral disorder and threat.The function of prior moral rationalization is to convince oneself that the behavior that will happen is reasonable or even moral;the function of post moral rationalization is to comfort oneself by making up after the event,so as to weaken or even eliminate the moral threat.Up to now,there is litter research on moral rationalization,and the existing research mainly focus on post moral rationalization.There is no empirical research on prior moral rationalization.In addition,the moral self is dynamic,and individual moral decision-making is regulated by moral self.The mechanism of moral self-regulation will produce different feedback to the subsequent behavior according to the individual’s previous behavior.Therefore,the study of moral behavior is necessary to explore the individual’s continuous behavior response after the occurrence of behavior,not just stay in the discussion of single moral behavior.At the same time,economic status is also one of the factors that affect moral decision-making.In this regard,this study plans to explore the impact of moral rationalization on individual’s moral behavior.Based on the verification of the influence of prior moral rationalization on the individual’s moral behavior,this paper further discusses the influence of moral rationalization and the economic situation of the target object on the individual’s moral behavior.In Study 1(Experiment 1 and Experiment 2),the sequential task paradigm was used to explore the effect of prior moral rationalization(with rationalization excuse in task 1 / without rationalization excuse in task 1 / baseline)on individual’s moral behavior.Experiment 1 found that in task 1,compared with no rationalization excuse,the appearance of rationalization excuse increased the individual’s current immoral behavior.And compared with the subjects who had no reasonable excuse to make immoral behavior,the subjects who had reasonable excuse to make immoral behavior experienced few negative emotions.In task2,compared with the baseline condition and the subjects in task 1 who had no reasonable excuse and had immoral behavior,the subjects in task 1 who had reasonable excuse and had immoral behavior were more moral,that is,they showed moral cleaning effect.Experiment 2 changed the situation of task 2 on the basis of Experiment 1,and the results were similar to experiment 1.Study2(Experiment 3)investigated the effects of prior moral rationalization(with rationalization excuse in task 1 / without rationalization excuse in task 1 / baseline)and the economic status of the target subjects in task 1(poor / rich)on individual’s moral behavior through the sequential task paradigm.The results show that in task 1,whether the target is rich or poor,the occurrence of prior moral rationalization makes the subjects do more immoral behavior,and compared with the target is poor,when the target is rich,the subjects are more immoral.In task 2,compared with the baseline group,the subjects with rationalization in task 1 tend to do less immoral behavior in task 2 after they have done immoral behavior to the rich,and there is no significant difference between the subjects with rationalization in task 1 and those without rationalization in task 1 in task 2,which reflects moral cleaning effect.The results of this study show that the emergence of prior moral rationalization will increase the individual’s current immoral behavior.After acting immoral behavior,the individual shows more morality in the subsequent task,which reflects moral cleaning effect.This study enriches the research on the influence of moral rationalization on moral behavior and has important value and Enlightenment for exploring the prevention and reduction of immoral behavior. |
