The Influence Of Relationships And Impaired Person Feedback On Guilt And Its Prosocial Function

Guilt refers to a kind of negative emotion when an individual thinks that his or her behavior has caused harm or loss to others and realizes that he or she should be responsible for the result of the behavior.Based on interpersonal guilt theory,this study explores the interpersonal factors that influence the generation and development of guilt through three experiments.In Experiment 1,taking college students as participants,adopting the interpersonal interactive game paradigm,taking language as the feedback mode,and dividing the identity of peers into strangers and friends,we investigated the influence of the relationship between relatives and kinds of language feedback on guilt.The results show that:(1)under the condition of positive feedback,individuals experience stronger guilt and show more prosocial behaviors;(2)when the impaired person is a good friend,the individual experiences stronger guilt and shows more prosocial behaviors.In Experiment 2,college students were taken as participants,and “emoji” were used as feedback mode to explore whether verbal feedback and non-verbal feedback had the same effect on guilt.The results show that:(1)the effects of nonverbal feedback and verbal feedback on guilt and prosocial are similar;(2)relationship and non-verbal feedback have interactive effects on the generation of guilt.Without feedback,participant experience stronger guilt and more compensation behaviors when their peers are friends.Under positive feedback,there is no significant difference in guilt when their peers are friends and strangers,but more compensation behaviors for good friends,while under negative feedback,there is no significant difference between them.In Experiment 3,individuals in early,middle and late adolescence were used as subjects to explore the effects of relationship and impaired person feedback on the development of guilt.The results show that:(1)the individual’s guilt level has no significant difference in adolescence stages;(2)The interaction between relationships and feedback is not significant,and there is no significant difference in each stage of adolescence;(3)There is no significant difference in the effect of the nature of feedback on the experience of guilt at different stages of adolescence,but there is significant difference in the effect of feedback on the prosocial function of guilt.In late adolescence,positive feedback could significantly promote the occurrence of compensatory behavior;(4)There is no significant difference in the effects of relationships at different stages of puberty.According to the above results,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)Situational guilt has been developed in adolescence and tends to be mature and stable.(2)In language feedback,the influence of feedback and relationships on guilt and its prosocial function is independent between each other,and it shows certain stability in every stage of adolescence.(3)In real interpersonal interaction,the influence of nonverbal feedback and verbal feedback on the development of guilt is consistent,but the wrongdoer is more sensitive to the impaired person’s nonverbal feedback.