The Influence Of Adjustment Orientation And Cognitive Processing Methods On Helping Behaviors In Different Risk Situations

Helping behavior is a typical prosocial behavior,which is mainly affected by three factors:the helper,the recipient and the helpful situation.This study is based on a new motivation theory,Regulatory Focus Theory,comprehensive situational and individual factors,to explore the differences in helping behaviors when individuals with different regulatory focus adopt different cognitive processing methods in different risk situations.The first study explored the differences of helping behavior among individuals with different regulatory focus in different risk situations,including two sub-experiments.Experiment la explored the interaction between chronically regulatory focus and risk on helping behaviors,and experiment 1b explored the interaction between situational regulatory focus and risk on helping behaviors.Both experiments were conducted by using 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus,prevention focus)× 2(risk:high risk,low risk)mixed design,and the dependent variable was the subjects'helping behaviors in the specific helping context.The results show that the promotion-focused individuals' helping behaviors are more than the prevention-focused individuals' in high-risk situations,and there is no significant difference in helping behaviors between the promotion-focused individuals and the prevention-focused individuals in low-risk situations.The second study explored the effects of regulatory focus and cognitive processing methods on helping behaviors in the high-risk situations,including two sub-experiments:Experiment 2a explored the helping behaviors among different regulatory focus and cognitive processing methods in specific helping situations.Experiment 2b explored the effects of regulatory focus and cognitive processing methods on helping behaviors in a resource allocation game.Both experiments were conducted by using 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus,prevention focus)× 2(cognitive processing method:intuitive processing,reflective processing)between-subjects design.Experiments 2a and 2b both proved the interaction of regulatory focus and cognitive processing methods on helping behavior.Experiment 2a reached a conclusion that the help willingness of prevention-focused individuals is higher than that of promotion-focused individuals when the subjects adopt the intuitive processing in the specific helping situation.The results of experiment 2b showed that there was no significant difference in the helping behaviors between the subjects with different regulatory focus when the subjects adopted the intuitive processing.However,when the subjects adopted the reflective processing,the helping behavior of the subjects with promotion focus was higher than that of the subjects with prevention focus.This study mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)The risk from the recipient will affect the individuals' helping behavior.The higher the risk is,the lower the level of help is.(2)The promotion-focused individuals' helping willingness are more than the prevention-focused individuals' in high-risk situations,but there is no difference in helping willingness between the promotion-focused individuals and the prevention-focused individuals in low-risk situations.(3)In the specific helping situation,the help level of prevention-focused individuals is higher than that of promotion-focused individuals when the subjects adopt the intuitive processing.(4)In the resource allocation game,there is no difference in helping behaviors between the subjects with different regulatory focus when the subjects adopt the intuitive processing.However,when the subjects adopt the reflective processing,the helping behavior of the subjects with promotion focus is higher than that of the subjects with prevention focus.