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Who is more utilitarian? Negative affect mediates the relation between control deprivation and moral judgment

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Abstract

This research tried to examine the effect of sense of control on moral judgments and the mediating roles of positive and negative affect. Sixty-one Chinese college students were randomly assigned to control-deprivation group and non-control deprivation group. After finishing an unsolvable “concept-formation task”, in which control deprivation was manipulated, participants rated sense of control, affective states, and made judgments in personal and impersonal moral dilemmas. Results showed that individuals in control deprivation condition were more likely to make utilitarian judgment in personal moral dilemmas rather than impersonal dilemmas. Furthermore, the negative affective states caused by control deprivation mediate the relationship between control deprivation and utilitarian moral judgment. Taken together, these results support dual-process model of moral judgment and control motivation theory.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Research Institute in Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education (19YJC190031), National Natural Science Foundation of China (81571337), Youth Teacher Initial Funding in Zhengzhou University (32220389) for funding this research.We thank the two anonymous reviewers who helped us improve the manuscript. No financial interest and conflict exist in present research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for School Curriculum and Textbook Development, Ministry of Education, Beijing, China

    Tianran Li

  2. School of Education, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

    Fengqing Zhao

  3. School of Education, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Guoliang Yu

  4. Institute of Psychology, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100872, China

    Guoliang Yu

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  1. Tianran Li
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  2. Fengqing Zhao
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Correspondence to Guoliang Yu.

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Tianran Li and Fengqing Zhao are co-first authors who contribute equally to this work.

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Li, T., Zhao, F. & Yu, G. Who is more utilitarian? Negative affect mediates the relation between control deprivation and moral judgment. Curr Psychol 40, 4024–4030 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00301-1

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