Ku Xyle, Lee Jonghwan, Lee Hyunyup
Department of Psychology, Korea Military Academy, Seoul, South Korea.
Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 21;11:283. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00283. eCollection 2020.
"Prick of conscience" is a phrase to express feelings of guilt in both English and Korean. Particularly in South Korea, guilt is metaphorically associated with a sense of touch by pricking. Koreans commonly express feelings of guilt by using the metaphor, "It pricks my conscience." Across three studies, we examined whether prick of conscience (i.e., feelings of guilt) is grounded in bodily experiences of physical prick (e.g., a needle prick), using a sample of Koreans. Participants who recalled past unethical acts were less likely to choose a needle prick rather than medication as a treatment for indigestion, whereas those who recalled ethical acts presented no significant difference in their willingness to receive either treatment (Study 1). Participants who decided to lie sensed the finger prick deeper and felt more pain as compared to those in the truth group or the control group (Study 2). Lastly, participants who had the finger prick rendered harsher moral judgments than participants in the control condition (Study 3). In line with an embodied cognition framework, these findings suggest that prick of conscience is not just a linguistic metaphor but can be embodied as physical sensations in forms of pricking.
“良心刺痛”在英语和韩语中都是表达内疚感的短语。特别是在韩国，内疚感通过刺痛在隐喻上与触觉相关联。韩国人通常用隐喻“它刺痛我的良心”来表达内疚感。在三项研究中，我们以韩国人为样本，研究了良心刺痛（即内疚感）是否基于身体刺痛（如针刺）的身体体验。回忆起过去不道德行为的参与者比选择药物治疗消化不良的参与者更不可能选择针刺治疗，而回忆起道德行为的参与者在接受两种治疗的意愿上没有显著差异（研究1）。与说实话组或对照组相比，决定说谎的参与者感觉手指刺痛更深且疼痛更强烈（研究2）。最后，接受手指刺痛的参与者比对照组的参与者做出了更严厉的道德判断（研究3）。根据具身认知框架，这些发现表明，良心刺痛不仅仅是一种语言隐喻，还可以体现为刺痛形式的身体感觉。
