Abstract:Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) holds that the formation of abstract concepts needs to be based on embodied movement or perceptual experience. The CMT points to the mapping between the source domain and the target domain. Source domains are usually concrete cognitive domains, whereas target domains are usually abstract cognitive domains. Those mappings are mostly based on direct human experiences or indirect experiences passed down by our ancestors. Thus, metaphors are in nature our past concrete experience domains that we are familiar with, used to understand the new abstract experience domains that we are unfamiliar with. Metaphor is cultural and thus, need to be understood with specific cultural backgrounds. In other word, people’s embodied experience of the metaphor concepts is largely influenced by cultural experiences. In different cultures, metaphors may carry different meanings. Integrity, as one of the most representative characteristics of the morality domain, and its connection with CMT has not enjoyed much investigation and need to be further discussed. Metaphor has its cultural aspect, and the colors, black and white, also endures high complexity during their interpretation under both the Western and the Eastern cultural backgrounds. There is commonness as well as differences. The color black endures negative meanings, such as mystery, darkness, sullenness and sorrow, in both the Eastern and the Western cultures; White, instead, has positive meanings such as purity, cleanliness, death and uselessness. In Chinese culture, “白” which is the character for “white” has other meanings; “白丁” refers to uneducated people or the commoners; “白食” refers to free food. Furthermore, in Peking Opera, colors of the facial makeup are used mainly to represent personality and morality. For example, black mask represents integrity, plain-speaking and recklessness and the most iconic characters for which are Bao Zheng, Li Kui, and Zhang Fei. Whereas white represents deceitfulness and paranoia, and is also the color for the crafty and sycophant courtier and snobs, with Cao Cao and Yan Song as the most representative characters. To sum up, the black-and-white color metaphor has commonness and also differences under different linguistic backgrounds The abstract concept of integrity(moral) has close connection with black and white in different cultures, which means the perception of black and white are the boundary of integrity. In order to detect the character of embodied metaphor between black/white and integrity among Chinese group, three experiments were designed to test the implicit association between black/white and integrity, as well as the metaphorical priming effects of explicit and real experienced lightness (vs. darkness). In the results, black/white not only exclusively associated with integrity, but also significantly affected participants’ selection preference, showing more choices with integrity in white background, while more choices with dishonesty in black background. However, our participants only showed "darkness-dishonesty" metaphorical connection in real lightness and darkness situations, meaning that the brightness of the environment did not affect the integrity behavior, whereas the dark environment would increase the dishonesty behavior. Overall, our experiments showed that, for Chinese group, integrity is "white" and dishonesty is "black" in cognitive conditions, while in real environment, only "darkness-dishonesty" metaphor was significant. The influence of culture on the development of embodied metaphors was discussed.