Abstract

There were many psychological theories in the Four-Seven Debates of the Neo-confucianism in the Chosun dynasty. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the psychological theories of moral judgments from the debates and to examine the derived hypotheses empirically through two experiments. The first study dealt with the differences in the situational characteristics between the Four-Beginnings and the Seven-Emotions. The results of this study revealed that the main situational contexts for the Four-Beginnings could be explained by the social good-bad goals or standards. whereas those of the Seven-Emotions could be explained by the personal good-bad goals or standards. The second study dealt with the moral judgments of the Four-Beginnings and the Seven-Emotions directly through an experiment in the interpersonal relationship contexts. The result of this study showed that the moral judgments of the Four-Beginnings and the Seven-Emotions were varied by the moral connotations of the behavioral events, the types of interpersonal relationships, and the types of the moral judgments. Especially the moral judgments of the Seven-Emotions were more based upon the above three independent variables than the Four-Beginnings. The results of these studies were discussed with the previous studies performed by the author(1996, 1997, 1998, 2000) and the suggestions for the future study are added.