Predictability Affects Moral Judgment

Morality is a special code of conduct put forward to people by a certain society and class to deal with the relationship between people and society.It is of great significance in promoting social harmony and development.Moral judgment refers to the behavior that individuals give moral value to events and the behavior of another individual(or group)according to moral principles or value criteria.It is closely related to people’s daily behavior and has been widely concerned by researchers for a long time.In social life,the ability to predict the behavior of others is very important because people generally tend to choose more definite and predictable actors as partners.Predictability,as a psychological feature related to mental perception,can be used to guide moral judgment.Previous studies have shown that the perception of predictability can affect people’s moral judgment.however,how predictability affects moral judgment,its internal mechanism is worth further exploring.It is very difficult to assess unpredictable actors and their actions,and it is often unpleasant and frightening.When we are unable to predict a person and his behavior,there is a sense of uncertainty,which endangers trust among people.Past studies have shown that people’s aversion to ambiguity exists widely in the whole social field.At present,the research on predictability and moral judgment only examines the influence of predictability of immoral behavior on moral judgment,but does not explore the reasons why predictability affects moral judgment,and the external validity of the study is not high.Therefore,from the two aspects of moral behavior and immoral behavior,this paper examines the influence of predictability and predictability of behavior on moral judgment,and further examines the mechanism of predictability affecting moral judgment.This paper uses three experiments to continuously improve the research scope of predictability,to investigate the impact of predictability on moral judgment,and to further examine the role of uncertainty aversion in it.Experiment 1 examined the influence of actor’s predictability on moral judgment by investigating subjects’ moral judgment of two different kinds of predictable behavior in the context of immoral behavior and moral behavior.Experiment 2 investigated the influence of predictability of actor’s behavior on moral judgment by investigating subjects’ moral judgment of two different kinds of predictable behavior in the context of immoral behavior and moral behavior.On the basis of experiment 2,experiment 3 further investigated the mechanism of predictability affecting moral judgment,that is,whether the influence of predictability on moral judgment is related to people’s ambiguity aversion.The results of the study are as follows:(1)the predictability of the actor will polarize the moral judgment.The predictable actor’s moral behavior is considered to be more moral,and immoral behavior is considered to be more immoral.(2)predictability of behavior affects moral judgment.The immoral behavior with lower predictability is more immoral,and the moral behavior with lower predictability is more moral.(3)the influence of predictability of actor and behavior on moral judgment is inconsistent,and the scope of predictability affecting moral judgment is limited to behavior,but not applicable to the actor.(4)predictability affects moral judgment because of the general ambiguity aversion,which plays an mediating effect in the influence of predictability on moral judgment.