IJERPH, Vol. 19, Pages 16360: Emotional Regulation Self-Efficacy Influences Moral Decision Making: A Non-Cooperative Game Study of the New Generation of Employees (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)

Scholars generally believe that personality characteristics and psychological factors influence individual moral decision-making. However, few have ever discussed specific psychological factors and characteristics having such influences. Based on the self-efficacy theory and the social identity theory, this paper has proposed, from the perspective of social cognition, that emotional regulation self-efficacy influences the moral decision-making of the new generation of employees and that the mediating effect of interpersonal trust and the regulating effect of communication also play a role in the decision-making process. This study has designed a “red-blue experiment” based on the complete static information model in the non-cooperative game theory so as to conduct an experimental and qualitative analysis for the new generation of employees and to explore the characteristics of psychological process, self-efficacy, and moral decision-making of the experimental population. Through analysis of the 138 data sources collected from the experiment, the results showed that emotional self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on moral decision-making (p < 0.01), emotional self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on interpersonal trust (r = 0.560, p < 0.01), and interpersonal trust had a significant positive effect on moral decision-making (r = 0.290, p < 0.01). The mediating effect was 0.163. The interaction terms of emotional regulation self-efficacy and communication effect had a significant negative effect on interpersonal trust (r = −0.221, p < 0.01). All the hypotheses proposed in this study are supported by experimental data and reveal the psychological mechanism of moral decision-making in the new generation of employees. The study has further shown that the moral education of the new generation of employees needs to focus on improving emotional regulation self-efficacy and enhancing interpersonal trust, which provides theoretical support for the moral education methods and paths of the new generation of employees.