Effects Of Thumb Orientation And Emotion Regulation Strategies On Moral Judgment Of Senior High School Students

Moral judgment is always the focus of moral psychology research.Although the traditional moral judgment theory emphasizes that cognition plays a major role in moral judgment,moral psychologists pointed out that the influence of emotion on moral judgment is hard to ignore recently.The philosophy of life,values,and world of high school students are preliminarily into mature.Under the adverse influence of the external environment,their emotion is easy tofluctuate.It is necessary to explore the impact of the external environment on high school students’ moral judgment and the role of emotion regulation strategies.Therefore,this study is divided into two experiments.Experiment 1 discusses the impact of thumb orientation on high school students’ moral judgment in three fields of injury / care,reciprocity / fairness,and holiness /purity after inducing subjects’ happiness,anger,and disgust.The results show that:(1)thumb orientation induces subjects’ happiness,anger,and disgust,whereas thumb up induces subjects’ happiness,and thumb down induces subjects’ anger and disgust;(2)Thumb down lead to more strict moral judgment in the field of injury / care and reciprocity / fairness.No effect on the moral judgment in the field of holiness / purity were found.Based on the results of Experiment 1,experiment 2 explored the effects of different emotion regulation strategies on high school students’ moral judgment when their thumbs were down.The results showed that:(1)compared with no strategy,the participants in the group of positive expression strategy and expression inhibition strategy significantly reduced their anger and aversion,and there was no significant difference on emotion regulation between the two groups;(2)The participants in the positive expression strategy group had more relaxed moral judgment in the virtue behavior of harm / care,the virtue behavior of holiness / purity,and the virtue behavior of reciprocity / fairness,while the subjects in the expression inhibition strategy group had more strict moral judgment in the three fields.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)thumb down induces high school students’ level of anger and aversion to negative emotions,and their moral judgment is more strict.(2)Both positive expression and expression inhibition regulation strategies significantly reduce high school students’ level of anger and disgust,but positive expression strategy makes high school students’ moral judgment more relaxed,while expression inhibition strategy makes high school students’ moral judgment more strict.Based on this conclusion,this study provides suggestions for the physical posture performance that teachers and students can apply in class.