How Can Morality-Irrelevant Inspiration Lead to Morality Behavior?

摘要

Researchers have been concerned about how to increase the social welfare and the well-being of the whole society from two important aspects: (1) decreasing immoral behaviors, and (2) increasing prosocial behaviors. Traditionally, these two aspects have been studied separately (e.g., Bhattachar-jee, Berman, and Reed n, 2013; Liang, Chen and Lei, 2016). Recently, researchers integrate both immoral behavior and prosocial behavior under the same umbrella concept of "morality." In particular, morality has two faces: prescriptive morality and proscriptive morality (Janoff-Bulman et al., 2009). Prescriptive morality emphasizes what we should do and is related to activation and positive outcomes, including prosocial behaviors such as charitable giving and participation in relief efforts. Proscriptive morality, on the contrary, emphasizes what we should not do and is related to inhibition and negative outcomes, including immoral behaviors such as illegal file sharing/piracy and counterfeit product consumption (Loureiro, et al., 2016). As Loureiro et al. (2016) pointed out, the routes of moral judgment leading to these two faces of morality are different. Proscriptive (immoral) behavior is a result of pressure/incentive, opportunity, and rationalization. Prescriptive behavior results from immediate and short-term impact (e.g., benefits), as well as delayed and long-term impact (values, norms and habits).