Zhai Dongxue, Guo Yaling, Lu Zhongyi
College of Education, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, China.
School of Nursing, Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, China.
Front Psychol. 2018 Aug 28;9:1554. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01554. eCollection 2018.
A moral concept involves two main factors: moral cognition (indicated by morality) and emotion (indicated by emotionality). The cognitive mechanism underlying moral metaphors on the vertical dimension (e.g., moral-up, immoral-down) was investigated in three experiments using implicit association tests. The results of Experiment 1 show a stronger association of "moral-up, immoral-down" between words high in morality and vertical space than between words low in morality and vertical space, which indicates that cognitive factors of morality facilitate the processing of vertical spatial metaphors of moral concepts. Experiment 2, employing moral words different in emotionality, reveals a stronger association of "moral-up, immoral-down" between words high in emotionality and vertical space than between words low in emotionality and vertical space, which shows that emotional factors of morality facilitate the processing of vertical spatial metaphors of moral concepts. A comparison between the two experiments suggests a faster response to emotion than to moral cognition and similar association strengths of the two factors with verticality. Using words high in morality and emotionality, Experiment 3 shows that a combination of the two conditions (i.e., high morality and high emotionality) leads to a stronger tie with verticality than either condition. The above three experiments indicate that both moral cognition and emotion facilitate the processing of vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts, and the forces of the two, which jointly affect the metaphorical connection between morality and verticality, are basically equal, although the processing of emotionality is faster than that of morality.
道德认知（由道德性表示）和情感（由情感性表示）。在三项实验中，使用内隐联想测验研究了垂直维度上道德隐喻（如道德-向上，不道德-向下）背后的认知机制。实验1的结果表明，道德性高的词语与垂直空间之间的“道德-向上，不道德-向下”关联比道德性低的词语与垂直空间之间更强，这表明道德的认知因素促进了道德概念垂直空间隐喻的加工。实验2使用情感性不同的道德词语，结果显示情感性高的词语与垂直空间之间的“道德-向上，不道德-向下”关联比情感性低的词语与垂直空间之间更强，这表明道德的情感因素促进了道德概念垂直空间隐喻的加工。两项实验的比较表明，对情感的反应比对道德认知的反应更快，并且这两个因素与垂直性的关联强度相似。实验3使用道德性和情感性都高的词语，结果表明两种条件（即高道德性和高情感性）的组合与垂直性的联系比任何一种条件都更强。上述三项实验表明，道德认知和情感都促进了道德概念垂直空间隐喻的加工，并且尽管情感性的加工比道德性的加工更快，但二者共同影响道德与垂直性之间隐喻联系的力量基本相等。
