In 2017, Richard h. Thaler (1945 -), an American behavioral economics and finance scientist and decision psychologist, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his outstanding contribution to behavioral economics. While publicizing his award-winning news, the media will also introduce his concept of psychological account, so that people know this new word almost overnight.

Seller's mental accounting theory can explain many strange or wonderful behaviors in people's consumption decisions. These irrational behaviors cannot be explained by traditional economic theories. The so-called mental accounting refers to the set of cognitive operations used by individuals and families to organize, evaluate and track financial activities (Thaler, 2008).

Obviously, there are many other aspects of people's activities in life in addition to financial aspects. For example, morality is such an aspect, even more important - in a sense, morality distinguishes human beings from other animals. It can be inferred that when people deal with moral problems, they also have a corresponding set of cognitive operations, namely psychological accounts. In order to distinguish it from the psychological account involving financial activities, it is advisable to call the psychological account involving moral activities moral accounting. Although the ideas are different, the literature of moral account has appeared in Psychology (Johnson & Ahn, 2021).

People's moral performance is more wonderful, for example, Moral polarization phenomenon or inner group outer group effect of morality (ingroup outgroup effect), that is, for the same moral behavior, the inner group will be judged more morally when doing it; for the same immoral behavior, the outer group will be judged more immorally when doing it. Therefore, it is important to study the problem of human moral account, which may be no less important than the psychological account involving financial activities.

In fact, in daily life, people will hear or say, "wait, I'll settle with you!" Or: "I can't do this. I'm afraid he / she will settle with me." Obviously, the accounts here are usually not economic accounts, but gratitude and hatred accounts, right and wrong accounts and moral accounts. In other words, people do have moral accounts in their lives.

In the TV series "railway guerrillas", there is also a plot in which the Flying Tigers record red and black accounts for the traitor captain and the puppet leader: when they do good, they record a red dot, when they do bad, they record a black dot, and when they reach five black dots, they eliminate traitors; In order to give them a way out, the red dot can flush the black dot. Judging from the plot, this red and black book is very useful. In fact, everyone has a moral account similar to the red and black ledger.

As we all know, there are many demobilized generals in the romance of the Three Kingdoms, including Guan Yu and Zhang Liao. However, people don't care much, or don't think their surrender is a moral stain. However, some generals, such as Yu Jian and Mi Fang, have always been despised by people. In other words, it is generally believed that their surrender is a great moral stain. So, how can people adopt such a double standard for the moral judgment of demobilized generals? It is easy to think of the explanation that the specific background and circumstances of their surrender are different. In particular, their subsequent behavior and outcome are different. From this point of view, people's moral accounts are more complex, for example, not one account, but multiple accounts.

According to the moral foundations theory, morality involves five basic fields, namely, care / harm, fairness / deception, loyalty / betrayal, authority / subversion and sanctity / degeneration (Graham, Haidt, Koleva, motyl, Iyer, Wojcik, & ditto, 2013). Therefore, there is a theoretical basis for an individual's moral account to have multiple accounts rather than one.

Further, what is the spillover effect of moral account? In other words, what impact will the surplus and loss of individual moral account have on individual psychology and subsequent behavior? In particular, what is the relationship between moral account, moral licensing and moral compensation? It can be inferred that moral licensing and moral compensation may be the specific situation of moral account, and moral account is the internal mechanism of moral licensing and moral compensation.

Further, how do individuals earn money in their moral accounts? How do individuals withdraw from their moral accounts? How do individuals balance their moral accounts? If we study such problems clearly, we can solve many wonderful phenomena of morality. If you imagine, after fully studying the moral account, it is expected to put forward a unified moral judgment and even a new theory of moral psychology.