Cultivation mechanism of college students’ ethical judgment in the post-truth era: a dual-dimensional model based on critical thinking and emotional education

In the post-truth era, the widespread use of social media and algorithmic recommendation technology has gradually made the influence of emotions and beliefs surpass objective facts. College students are particularly vulnerable to emotional and one-sided information, posing severe challenges to their ethical judgment. To address this issue, this study proposes and validates a dual-dimensional model based on critical thinking and emotional education. The aim is to systematically enhance college students' ethical judgment through collaborative intervention in cognitive and emotional dimensions. The study adopts a randomized controlled experiment design, selecting 600 college students to be divided into a dual-dimensional intervention group, a single-dimensional intervention group, and a control group. The effects are evaluated through pre-tests, post-intervention tests, and follow-up tests. The results show that the ethical judgment of the dual-dimensional intervention group significantly improves compared to the single-dimensional intervention group, and emotional education uniquely contributes to the emotional dimension of ethical judgment. Furthermore, post-truth sensitivity negatively moderates the intervention effect, indicating that individuals with a higher reliance on emotional information benefit relatively limitedly. This study not only fills the gap in ethical education research in the post-truth environment but also provides a modular and quantifiable intervention program for university curriculum design, possessing significant theoretical value and practical implications.