权力如何影响道德判断行为:情境卷入的效应

How Power Influences Moral Judgement: The Effect of Situational Involvement

情境卷入使不同权力者与道德两难事件发生联系,并做出对他们有利的道德判断。为了验证这种假设,本研究首先采用无序句子任务分别启动高低权力,结果发现人称指向和权力差异对被试的道德判断行为没有影响,权力感主效应不显著,人称指向主效应不显著,两变量交互作用也不显著,这其中的原因可能是被试对卷入道德事件的体验不够深刻。为此,在实验二中,我们一方面变化道德事件与自身体验的相关性,另一方面提高启动任务的情境性,结果发现不管道德事件中主人公是否和自己相关,当被试均有高情境卷入时,高低权力造成的道德判断行为差异消失了。实验三和实验四则进一步证实,在自然权力状态下,道德事件本身也会引起被试的情境卷入感,高情境卷入不但可以消解高低权力者道德判断行为的差异,还可以分化同是高权力者在道德判断行为上的一致性。以上研究证明,在面对道德两难事件时,不同权力者都会做出对他们有利的判断,但这取决于判断者卷入该事件情境的程度。情境卷入程度低时,被试倾向基于规则的道德判断,情境卷入程度高时,被试倾向基于结果的道德判断。这说明道德判断是适应环境的一种手段。

Previous studies found that when subjects were given a moral dilemma to resolve, high-power participants prefer Rule-based Judgment, while low-power participants prefer Outcome-based Judgement. Lammers and Stapel （2009）attributed this to the benefits attained or retained from the type of judgment, but they did not conduct further research to explain why power-holders felt their benefits were threatened. According to the Evolution of Moral Mechanisms （Krebs 2005）, situational involvement connects the power-holders with the moral dilemma story, and compels them to choose the moral judgment that would be advantageous for themselves. Four studies were conducted to explore the relationship between a power-holders＇ moral dilemma judgment and situational involvement. Experiment 1 used a disorder sentence task to prime power feelings, and the results showed that the factor of protagonist was not significant as a main effect （F（1,107）=0.38, p=0.54）, nor did it interact significantly with the factor of power （F（1,107）=2.27, p=0.14）, and no main effect of power （F（1,107）=0.07, p=0.79）. In light of moral evolutionary perspectives, we speculate that participants may need more situational priming to elicit their feeling of power, so this paper strengthened the relationship between the moral event and self-experience, and made the priming task more situationalized in experiment 2. Therefore, the differences of moral judgment styles between high and low-power participants disappeared （t（58）=0.56, p=0.58）. Furthermore, in experiment 3 and 4, the different situation exposure to moral events can bring different moral judgments among high power participants （t（60）=-4.30, p〈0.001）, even in natural power conditions without artificial power priming task before presenting moral events. In brief, situational involvement considerably influences the power holders＇ moral judgments. When the power holders were presented with a moral dilemma event in which they had personally experienced it, they would shift their moral judgment style from rule-based to outcome-based, which demonstrates that moral judgment is a biological adaptive strategy to a person＇s environment.