The Research On The Influence Of The Guilt Emotion On College Students’ Prosocial Behavior

Moral emotion has always been an important research topic in psychology.The guilt,as an important part of moral emotions,is also a research hotspot in the field of psychology.Prosocial behavior is a kind of voluntary behavior that individuals make and can bring the benefits to the other people.Prosocial behavior which has important evolutionary and practical significance can not only improves the social adaptability of individuals,but also maintains the existence and development of the whole society.It is found in previous studies that the guilt emotion has a prosocial function that is about,after experiencing the guilt emotion,the individuals tend to do some prosocial behaviors to compensate the victims or help the other people to improve the results of things and reduce the intensity of guilt.But the mechanism of guilt on prosocial behavior is still controversial.Therefore,based on Lazarus’ s theory of cognitive evaluation theory of emotion,this study explores the influence of guilt on college students’ prosocial behavior from the primary appraisal,secondary appraisal and reappraisal of emotional activities.The study included four experiments.In the first one,it adopted a single factor experimental design which was used to induce the guilt of the subjects by referring to the previous negligence to have a paradigm,so as to explore the influence of the guilt emotion on the prosocial behavior of college students;in the second one,it adopted experimental designs of two factors which mean 2(guilt level: guilt,no guilt)× 2(value type: competitive value,instrumental value).This experiment is to study when the primary appraisal was explored,the influence of guilt on college students’ prosocial behavior on the different types of values;in third one,it adopted experiment designs with two factors which include: 2(guilt level: high guilt,low guilt)× 3(attention distribution: pay attention to their own income,pay attention to the injured party’s injury,and no attention distribution).This experiment is to study the influence of guilt on college students’ prosocial behaviors under the different attention distribution;in the fourth one,it adopted experimental designs of two factors which mean(guilt level: high guilt,low guilt)× 2(victim’s response: forgiveness,blame).This experiment is to study the influence of guilt on college students’ prosocial behavior under different situation responses.This study found the following results:(1)In terms of compensation for victims,the main effect of guilt is significant.And the willingness of college students with the guilt emotion to compensate victims is significantly higher than that of college students without the guilt emotion.In terms of helping others,the chi square test of the guilt emotion and the willingness to help others was marginal significant.The college students who have the guilt emotion are more willing to help the other people.(2)In the process of the primary appraisal,the main effect of values and the interaction effect of values and the guilt emotion are significant in compensating victims.No matter what the type of values that the people have,the willingness of the people who have the guilt emotion to help others is significantly higher than that of guilt free people,but the significance of the difference is different.In terms of helping others,whatever the type of values that the people have,there is a significant difference in different levels of guilt that the willingness to help others.The willingness of the people who have the guilt emotion to help others is higher than that of guilt free people,but the significance of the difference is different.(3)In the process of the secondary appraisal,the main effect of attention distribution is significant in compensation for victims.And the willingness of the people who pay attention to their own benefits and who pay attention to victims’ injuries to compensate victims is significantly higher than those who do not have the attention distribution;In terms of helping others,only when the people do not have the attention distribution,there is a significantly different in different levels of guilt on the willingness to help others.It shows that among the guilt group with high level,the number of people who is willing to help others is significantly higher than that of the low guilt group.While there is no significant difference in the willingness to help others when the people pay attention to their own benefits or victims’ injuries.(4)In the process of reappraisal,the main effect of victim response is significant in compensation for victims.No matter the level of guilt that the people have,the willingness of people who are blamed by victims to compensate is significantly higher than those who are forgiven;In terms of helping others,only when the people are forgiven,there is a significantly different in different levels of guilt on the willingness to help others.It shows in detail that the number of people who are willing to help others in the high guilt group is significantly higher than that in the low guilt group.However,there was no significant difference in the willingness to help others in different guilt levels,when the people are blamed.Conclusion: The experimental design can effectively induce the guilt emotion.The guilt of college students is prosocial,and the prosocial of guilt is migratory.It has the influence of guilt on prosocial behavior that the types of values in the primary appraisal,the attention distribution in the secondary appraisal and the victims’ responses in the reappraisal.