Abstract Conceptual metaphor theory emphasizes that individuals connect the concrete concepts from physical experience with the abstract and complex concepts automatically. Embodied cognition theory also argues that the cognition of individuals originated from the body. Both of them highlight the role of embodied experience in cognitive formation. In recent years, the research in the field of moral concept also pays attention to solving the problem of moral concept metaphor based on the embodied perspective. In particular, the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts has attracted the wide attention of researchers. First, there is psychological reality about the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts. That is, individuals tend to associate clean embodied experience with moral words and dirty with immoral words. Moreover, the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts affect moral judgment, which we called consistent and compensatory effect. The above reveals the characteristics of the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts. Secondly, the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts is affected by mediating and moderating factors: the mediating effects include disgust emotion and moral self-image. The initiation of physical cleanliness accompanied with the start of disgust emotion. Moral self-image which means an individual’s perception and evaluation of their moral level. The enhanced moral self-image makes an effect on individual's moral judgment. And the moderating effects include moral sensitivity and physical sensitivity. Moral sensitivity signifies the ability of whom to judge and obtain the moral meaning through embodied experiences. Individuals with higher moral sensitivity are more likely to distinguish between clean and dirty information and have a stronger connection effect of the metaphor. Physical sensitivity is called the physical sensitivity of individuals to the experience of being dirty or clean. Those who with higher physical sensitivity license a severer judgment on immoral stories. Finally, it is necessary to look into the future directions of clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts from the following aspects. Firstly, we should pay attention to the neural mechanism to provide the physiological basis of empirical research of the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts; the second one is to reveal its contextual and investigate the effect of embodied experience in different situations on the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts; the third one is directionality, and whether pointing to oneself or pointing to the surrounding environment has different influences on moral concept; the fourth is to conduct the intervention research on the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts; and the last one is to explore the cultural difference and reveal the moderating role of culture in the metaphorical relationship between embodied cleanliness and moral concepts. In a word, this paper summarizes characteristics, effect factors and future directions of clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts, to provide theoretical research and practical reference for the research of the clean and dirty metaphor of moral concepts, which may be enriched and improved in future research.