| Guilt is a kind of negative emotion that occurs when individuals believe that they have violated the socially recognized or personally recognized moral code so that they cause certain harm to others,thus thinking that they should be responsible for it.Guilt often leads to associated behavioral outcomes,such as positive and constructive prosocial behavior.This kind of prosocial behavior which occurs after guilt not only helps to relieve individual emotional distress,but also helps to repair the damaged interpersonal relationship and promote the harmonious development of society.However,some studies have found that guilt does not necessarily lead to prosocial behavior,and negative behaviors such as self-punishment and escapism may also occur.Therefore,there must be some influencing factors between guilt and prosocial behavior which can influence whether individuals choose to engage in prosocial behavior after guilt.This study suggests that social self-efficacy is a factor influencing the relationship between guilt and prosocial behavior,and the level of social self-efficacy restricts the choice of prosocial behavior after guilt.At the same time,many studies have found that individuals with long-term or excessive guilt are prone to neurosis,anxiety,depression,obsessive-compulsive disorder,eating disorders and other problems,and even the risk of suicide.Therefore,based on "social self-efficacy is a factor influencing the relationship between guilt and prosocial behavior",this study developed a guilt intervention program based on social self-efficacy to help individuals with high guilt tendency to reduce the negative impact of guilt,improve social self-efficacy and increase prosocial behavior.Therefore,this paper contains three studies,as follows:The first study aims to explore the nature,contents,influencing factors,coping styles and consequences of guilt.Literature analysis and interview method were mainly used in this part.In the first,previous literature was analyzed to establish the research Angle and interview outline.Then,semi-structured interview was used to conduct in-depth interviews with 48 adults to explore the guilt of adults.The results of study 1 show that the essence of guilt is that when individuals think that they have violated their own moral standards and caused losses to others directly or indirectly,they will wake up negative emotion accompanied by introspection consciousness and often follow prosocial behaviors.The types of guilt include self-directed guilt,other-directed guilt and group-directed guilt.The influencing factors of guilt can be divided into three aspects:individual factor,relational factor and environmental factor.Coping with guilt can be divided into positive coping and negative coping.The consequences of guilt can be divided into external manifestations and internal experiences.The second study aims to develop the Adult Guilt Tendency Scale and use it to explore the current situation of guilt,social self-efficacy and prosocial behavior and the relationship among them by combining the Interpersonal Self-efficacy Questionnaire and Prosocial Tendency Measurement Scale.In study 2,the Adult Guilt Tendency Scale was compiled based on the interview results of Study 1,and its reliability and validity were tested.The results show that the adult guilt Tendency Scale is composed of 35 questions and 4 dimensions,which are owed guilt,acquired guilt,cultural guilt and temperamental guilt.The reliability and validity indexes are in line with psychometric standards and can be used as an effective tool to evaluate adult guilt tendency.Then,the three scales were distributed together to explore the relationship among guilt,social self-efficacy and prosocial behavior by questionnaire method.The results show that adult guilt,social efficacy and prosocial behavior are all at the middle and upper levels.Adult guilt varies significantly in demographic variables and their interactions.Specifically,the degree of guilt gradually deepens from early adulthood to late adulthood;People with less education are more likely to feel guilty than those with more education;People who are unemployed or at home are most likely to feel guilty.The degree of guilt of women with low education is higher than that of men;The gender difference of guilt is reflected in the social division of labor;The students’ guilt reflects the urban-rural difference.There are significant differences in demographic variables of adult social self-efficacy.Specifically,social self-efficacy decreases from early to late adulthood.Higher education groups have higher social self-efficacy;Students and office workers have higher social self-efficacy.There are significant differences in the demographic variables of adult prosocial behavior.Specifically,male prosocial behavior is significantly higher than female;Prosocial behavior gradually decreased from early adulthood to late adulthood.Individuals who acquired college degree have the most prosocial behavior;The prosocial behavior of students and office workers is significantly higher than that of retired people.In addition,guilt,social self-efficacy and prosocial behavior are correlated.Guilt is negatively correlated with social self-efficacy,social self-efficacy is positively correlated with prosocial behavior,and guilt is positively correlated with prosocial behavior.Guilt and social self-efficacy positively predicted prosocial behavior,while guilt negatively predicted social self-efficacy.Social self-efficacy plays a masking role in the influence of guilt on prosocial behavior.This means that social self-efficacy can weaken the link between guilt and prosocial behavior.In other words,intervening in social self-efficacy can ensure that researchers can reduce guilt without affecting or even promoting prosocial behavior.On the one hand,researchers can directly help participants alleviate the emotional distress caused by guilt,and on the other hand,researchers can also indirectly weaken the negative impact of guilt and promote social harmonious development by improving the effectiveness of social self-efficacy and prosocial behavior.This supported the design of the intervention programme for Study 3.The purpose of study 3 is to develop a Satir group intervention program of emotion and social self-efficacy to reduce guilt,improve social self-efficacy and prosocial behavior for individuals with high guilt tendency.The researcher used a quasi-experimental approach to the intervention,that is,a 2(pre-test/post-test)×2(intervention group/control group)quasi-experimental design.First,Satir group intervention program of emotion and self-efficacy were designed on the basis of the results of study 1 and study 2,and then 24 high guilt tendency subjects were invited to participate the intervention from the study 2.These subjects were randomly divided into two group,and each group contained 12 subjects,one group as the intervention group received 8 times Satir group intervention of emotion and social self-efficacy,another group did nothing to intervene.To investigate whether the self-designed Satir group intervention program on emotion and social self-efficacy can reduce guilt,improve social efficacy and increase prosocial behavior in adults with high guilt tendency.The results show that the participants’ guilt level decrease,social self-efficacy improve,and prosocial behavior increase after the Satir group intervention of emotion and social self-efficacy.In conclusion,this study obtained the essence,contents,influencing factors,coping styles and consequences of adult guilt through interviews.The adult Guilt Tendency Scale developed based on the interview results has good reliability and validity and can be used as an effective measurement tool.It found that social self-efficacy has a masking effect between guilt and prosocial behavior.The self-designed Satir group intervention program of emotion and social self-efficacy can effectively reduce adult guilt,improve social self-efficacy and prosocial behavior. |
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