| The traditional rational model of moral judgment assumes that human beings are rational actors and moral judgment is the result of individual deliberation.However,as research progresses,the role of intuition in the process of moral judgment begins to receive widespread attention.In the online environment,people tend to be biased and make irrational moral judgments due to over-reliance on intuition.Relying on the rapid development of network technology,online news has become one of the important channels for people to obtain information.With the advent of the post-truth era,fake news spreads faster than real news in online media,which causes a serious impact on social morality.When a piece of news floods the Internet,people may encounter it repeatedly.And the recurrence of fake news as a heuristic cue can have a significant impact on individuals’ moral judgment.Previous studies have confirmed that repeatedly encountering a fake news headline can affect individuals’ moral judgments about the behavior of spreading it,but the mechanism of this effect is still unclear.In addition,existing studies are based on foreign social contexts,and there is a lake of localized research exploring the effect of repeated exposure on moral judgment.Therefore,based on the Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment,this study intends to verify this effect and further investigate the possible mechanisms of it with using Chinese college students as the subject group.Experiment 1 used a one-way within-subjects design to explore the effect of the number of prior contacts with a fake news headline(three levels: 0,1,and 5 times)on individuals moral judgments.The results showed that there was no significant difference in the level of moral condemnation for the spread of those fake news headlines that were repeated 1 time compared to those that were repeated 0 times,while the level of moral condemnation for spread of those fake news headlines that were repeated 5 times was lower.That is,the repetition of a fake news headline reduced individuals’ moral condemnation of spreading it,but just 1 repetition was not enough.Experiment 2 further explored the mechanism of the difference in the level of moral condemnation that emerged between 0 and 5 prior repetitions of the fake news headlines and the behavioral consequences that may result from this difference.The results showed that(1)emotional habituation is an important mechanism by which repeatedly encountering fake news headlines affects moral judgment.Seeing the same fake news headlines again triggered lower levels of galvanic skin response and anger in subjects,thus reducing moral condemnation of spreading it;(2)the mediating effect of perceived descriptive norms in the process of repeatedly encountering fake news headlines influences moral judgments was not significant;(3)prior repetition 5 times reduced individuals’ willingness to act to stop the spread of the corresponding fake news compared to prior repetition 0 times(the difference between 0 repetition and 1repetition conditions was not significant),and the reduction in the level of moral condemnation mediated this process.In summary,repeatedly encountering a fake news headline influences individuals’ moral judgments about the behavior of spreading it,and emotional mechanisms play an important role in this process.The above results validate the applicability of the Social Intuitionist Model in the field of fake news spread and also provide new ideas for fake news governance in real-life situations.Finally,this study discusses the limitations and shortcomings of the two experiments,and future research should construct more realistic experimental situations and combine multiple methods and techniques to further explore other possible mechanisms. |
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