Abstract
Previous research has shown that moral choice depends on language, a phenomenon known as the moral foreign language effect (mFLE). The current study examines the influence of social distance on the mFLE. In Experiment 1, 200 participants were randomly assigned to either close or distant social distance in English or Chinese. In Experiment 2, 188 participants were randomly assigned to either English or Chinese and were presented with eight moral dilemmas, each with five different levels of social distance. After reading the dilemma, participants made a choice on a binary scale (Yes/No) in both Experiments 1 and 2 or on a more sensitive 100-point scale in Experiment 2. The results showed that the mFLE was present in distant social distance but absent in close social distance. Finally, a meta-analysis of the results from both studies confirmed the effect of social distance on the mFLE. These findings demonstrate that social distance might play an important role in moderating the mFLE in moral judgment.
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Data Availability
The data supporting this study’s findings are available on request from the corresponding author, Liu, C. The data are not publicly available due to the privacy of research participants.
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This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China (20XNA028).
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C.X.: Conceptualization, Data analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing; R.W.: Conceptualization, Material preparation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing; L.Z.: Conceptualization, Data collection, Writing - original draft; Z.L.: Conceptualization, Data collection; Z.W.: Data collection, Data analysis; Y.W.: Material preparation, Data analysis; C.L.: Conceptualization, Writing - review and editing, Supervision.
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The study was reviewed and approved by The Research Ethics Committee of Renmin University of China, IRB document No. 21–025. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
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Xu, C., Wang, R., Zhu, L. et al. Influence of Social Distance on Foreign Language Effect in Moral Judgment. J Psycholinguist Res 53, 34 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-024-10072-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-024-10072-x