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.
JMASM18: An Algorithm For Generating Unconditional Exact Permutation Distribution For A Two-Sample Experiment
