The Influence Of Interpersonal Conflict Type On Disappointment

Disappointment arises when progress towards a goal is below expectations or when a desired outcome is not achieved. The experience of disappointment is associated with feelings of weakness more so than the experience of other emotions. The effect of disappointment have two parts: one is the intrapersonal effect of disappointment that disappointed individuals tend to increase competitive behaviors; the other is the interpersonal effect of disappointment that individuals will reduce their competitive behaviors when they face disappointed others. These two aspects have an effect on behaviors via making individuals have threated assessments. Threated assessments are negative assessments that one surrounded by situations which they can not cope with. The conflict types that contain interest conflicts and value conflicts have an effect on the disappointment effect. Our researches want to verify this “disappointment —threat — behavior” routines by four experiments. Experiment1 probes whether disappointed individuals will lower their own threat assessment, reduce competitive behavior. Experiment2 probes whether individual will lower their own threat assessment and reduce their competitive behavior when they face disappointed others. Experiment3 probes the effect of conflict types on the intrapersonal effect of disappointment. Experiment4 probes the modulative roles of conflict types on the interpersonal effect of disappointment. The results showed that both the intrapersonal effect and interpersonal effect of disappointment worked out by influencing the individual threat assessment and behavior. Conflict types did not have an effect on the intrapersonal effect of disappointment. However, they have an effect on the interpersonal effect of disappointment.