Immorality backward, morality forward? Metaphorical morality in Chinese-English bilinguals

This study explored whether instructing participants to make forward or backward joystick movements in response to morality words is consistent with the conceptual metaphor MORAL IS MOVING FORWARD/IMMORAL IS MOVING BACKWARD in Chinese-English bilinguals' first and second languages. Chinese-English bilinguals were instructed to categorize words as moral or immoral while moving a joystick in a compatible block (moral-forward, immoral-backward) and an incompatible block (moral-backward, immoral-forward). The results revealed three main conclusions: First, participants showed faster categorization of immoral words when their responses involved backward joystick movements compared to forward joystick movements. Second, participants also demonstrated a slightly faster categorization of moral words when their responses involved backward joystick movements compared to forward joystick movements. Third, Chinese morality words were categorized faster overall than English morality words. However, despite a slightly larger effect size observed in L1, the action compatibility effects for morality words exhibited a similar pattern across both languages. In sum, bilinguals showed shared access to the IMMORAL IS MOVING BACKWARD conceptual metaphor across both L1 and L2, but they did not access the MORAL IS MOVING FORWARD conceptual metaphor in either L1 or L2. This study provides new evidence supporting the conceptual metaphor theory.