The Influence Of Embarrassment Response Strategies On The Pro-social Behavior Of College Students

As a kind of emotion that everyone experiences in life,embarrassment always seem unpleasant,it may put people in social predicament,make people fell lose face.Embarrassment is a kind of negative emotion experience caused by the individual breaching the social rules generally recognized and followed by the public in a certain situation,violating the pre-set self-perception,and perceiving that others’ assessment of their own is threatened.Previous studies have found that when an individual encounters embarrassment,their prosocial behavior increases,and when the bystander observes that a embarrassing individual reveals embarrassment,compared to an individual who has not revealed,the bystander’s prosocial behavior will increase.The degree of love and willingness to cooperate will increase.For remainning the face and getting rid of the social predicament,embarrassment response strategies were developed during the long social process.Researchers summarized and classified response strategies from various angles.For example,it is divided into verbal response strategies and non-verbal responses strategies from a verbal perspective;Cupach et al.concluded that the most commonly used was apology,the second was explanation,and the third was escape.Humor was a special kind of escape.Forms of expression;Itoi classifies response strategies into mitigating response strategies(including apology and excuse)and assertive response strategies(including justification and denial)on the basis of predecessors.Some researchers study from the perspective of cultural orientation,and the results show that individuals under individualistic cultural orientation tend to use mitigating response strategies.Individuals under collectivistic culture tend to use assertive response strategies.In this study,a paper and pencil test method was used,we select Itoi’s response strategies to examine the influence of response strategies on the prosocial behaviour of college students,and to assess the prosocial behavior of the protagonists in the stories by allowing them to read the embarrassing situations.In this study,questionnaire method was used for the study,let the college students to assess the prosocial behavior of the hero by reading embarrassing stories.The test materials used in the research institute follow the research of Noreen et al.Before the formal study,by collecting 230 students from the first year to the fourth year,they were screened by 198 students.After repeated analysis of variance analysis,six typical situations were selected to compose contextual story test materials.Afterwards,apology,excuse,justification,and denial are attached.In study 1,275 undergraduates were selected.After reading 6 stories,one response strategy was selected for each story.Based on this,the characteristics of college students’ response strategies were analyzed.In the two types of response strategies,college students give priority to excuse,followed by apology,justification,and denial.However,when social errors are particularly serious,college students will give priority to apology response strategies.In study 2,we used prosocial behavior scales consisting of prosocial words,antisocial words,embarrassment degree,willingness to cooperate,and degree of love.After reading each embarrassing situation story,the subjects responded to the protagonist’s respons strategies.,and to score five dimensions.The effects of mitigating response strategies and assertive response strategies on the pro-social behavior of college students were compared.The results show that mitigating response strategies can lead to more pro-social behaviors of college students compared with assertive response strategies.In the two types of response strategies,the pro-social behaviors initiated are apology,excuse,justification,and denial in descending order.