Publications

Publication details [#15465]

Li, Heng and Yu Cao. 2020. Losing your footing, losing your morality: The embodied effect of physical slant on moral judgment. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 17 (2) : 497–510.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English

Abstract

What influences how people render their moral judgment? Focusing specifically on the conceptual metaphors “moral is upright” and “immoral is tilted”, we sought to investigate whether physical slant can influence people’s harsh moral judgment. Experiment 1 induced physical slant by having participants complete the questionnaire at a tilt table. We observed a significant effect with participants who experienced physical slant rendering a less severe moral judgment than did those who wrote their responses at a level table. Using a new manipulation of physical slant and a larger, more diverse sample, Experiment 2 asked participants to complete the questionnaires with rotated text or normal text. We observed a difference between the two groups: compared to participants who read the normal text, those with a visual experience of slant lessened the severity of their moral judgments. Taken together, the results showed that the consequence of tilted experience exerts downstream effects on moral reasoning, which suggests that incidental bodily experience affects how people render their decisions.