BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of moral rationalization as a moderator of the the association between psychological distance and moral judgment in the competitive sports.According to construal level theory,psychologically distant information is perceived as more abstract,general than psychologically proximal information,which is represented in more concrete,detailed terms.It was assumed if there were some rational excuses for immorally behaviours,people could tend to make moral judgment more leniently in psychologically proximal sport events which could occur in the near future or areas than in the distant future or areas in the study.METHODS 303 undergraduates were presented with a number of scenarios of sport events in which temporal (experiment 1) and spatial distance (experiment 2) was manipulated in a between-subjects design.It was examined that the effect of rational excuses on moral judgment in undergraduates.Moral judgment (extent undergrates perceived the moral problem in a sport event to be about justice) with and without the rational excuse is compared for two psychological distances (near future and distant future in experiment1; domestic areas and oversea areas in experiment 2).Thus,the design is a 2 X 2 factorial design.RESULTS As predicted,the results showed when people rationalized immoral behaviours,they were likely to make moral judgment more harshly in psychologically distant events than in psychological proximal events.CONCLUSION It may indicate that when people think more contextual details of a moral problem in a certain sport event,they may be less justice- oriented.