Perspective Differences of Moral Cognition in Close Others'Moral Transgressions
Western psychologists are examining how social relations shape personal moral cognition.Within this field,one significant question relates to one's moral cognition and reaction tendencies toward close others'moral transgressions.This question can be framed from the perspective of the Chinese cultural tradition surrounding"concealment between relatives,"which caused widespread controversy within the Chinese ethics circle at the beginning of this century.Confucius believed that it is morally right to protect and hide a family member if that person breaks the law.Many studies on this question have shown that people are not only more inclined to make moral decisions to protect close others when witnessing them committing a crime,but also more likely to recognize the moral legitimacy of protection.In fact,studies have shown this as a basic moral cognitive tendency with cross-cultural consistency among American,Japanese,and Chinese people.Unlike trolley dilemmas,concealment between relatives,buttressed by a rich social relationship,is embodied as a self-centered moral problem in which it is difficult to avoid the influence of egocentrism.In particular,when existing research generally adopts a first-person perspective based on authorities,the corresponding self-centered deviation becomes more prominent.However,in some cases,the perspective of the authorities is conducive to a deeper understanding of the complexity of human moral cognition.A typical example is the"Veil of Ignorance,"with which Rawls further introduced the basic principle of protecting the rights of the disadvantaged with the help of the first person on the basis of the principle of absolute fairness formed in the third person.Similarly,a more direct but neglected question is:Do people have different moral cognitions toward the issue of kin concealment from the two perspectives of authorities and bystanders when facing the moral transgressions of their close others?This study focused on these perspective differences to further reveal the complex attitudes toward kin concealment and to test the potential egocentric bias in existing studies.To begin,Study 1 directly tested these differences from the perspective of moral cognition.Further,Studies 2 and 3 verified the sensitivity of perspective differences to social relations and consistency across multiple moral fields.In the three studies,the first-person authority and third-person bystander perspectives were manipulated as a pair of intergroup variables.As for moral cognition,in addition to the"should"moral judgment and"would"moral decision-making,this study further included the separation of moral cognition(the difference between"should"and"would")as an important moral cognition indicator to examine the extent to which the participants will protect their close friends out of selfishness rather than moral considerations.The results showed that one's judgment on the moral legitimacy of"concealment between relatives"maintains a stable cross-perspective consistency.Meanwhile,participants from the first-person authority perspective reported a relatively lower degree of moral decision-making intention and moral cognition separation in favor of close people(Studies 1～3).The corresponding differences in perspectives were sensitive to severity(Study 1)and social relationships(Study 2).In addition,the differences were not significantly affected by self-construction(Study 3)or social desirability(Study 2)at the individual level,and existed in many moral fields(Study 3).These results further reveal people's contradictory attitudes toward kin concealment.That is,although this relationship preference is rooted in human moral cognition,the lower protective intention from the perspective of the authorities proves that punishing one's own relatives for the cause of justice is a superior motive from the perspective of modern Chinese people.In addition,these differences highlight the importance of examining related moral cognition issues from multiple perspectives,using multiple indicators.
mutual concealment between relativesmoral cognitionmoral judgementmoral decision-makingcognitive perspective
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