| The research about the effect of moral emotion on prosocial behavior had received a lot of attention and guilt was considered to be a kind of moral emotion,which was adaptable to some extent because it could promote prosocial behavior.Prosocial behavior was inevitably affected by individual’s emotion too.On the other hand,guilt was also considered as a negative emotional experience,and sometimes made individuals to punish themselves.How these different behavioral tendencies of guilt manifested in college students? What were the elements of guilt’s mental structure? What the relationship and mechanism between guilt and prosocial behavior was? These were the main issues discussed in this paper.Study1 adopted the interview method and participants were 15 college students,first we discussed the psychological structure of college students’ guilt.Results showed that it included four components: emotional fluctuation,interpersonal concerns,self-recognition and attempts about mitigating the impact,and the attempted behavior mainly were compensatory behavior,talking out or ignore it.Which means guilt could be alleviated in many ways,but all participants mentioned prosocial behavior were their first choice to cope the guilt,which manifested that prosocial behavior was the most important method,thus it was worth to further discuss the relationship between guilt and prosocial behavior.Second,we summarized the main factors affecting the intensity of college students’ guilt emotion.The results showed that most of the factors were emotion regulation mode,empathy,personal characteristics,attribution of responsibility and evaluation of others.Emotional regulation was often mentioned,and personal traits were also considered to be a very important factor.Personal traits in this paper mostly refered to the difference between personal moral standards and cognition.Moral identity was one aspect of personal traits.Based on previous studies on moral identity,study 2 was designed to further explore the relationship of guilt and prosocial behavior as well the role of moral identity and emotional regulation.In study 2,527 college students were surveyed by using the moral identity scale,college students’ guilt scale,prosocial tendencies measure and emotion regulation scale.The results showed that the cognitive reappraisal,guilt and moral identity were significantly correlated with prosocial behavior(p<0.05),moral identity played a partially mediating role in the relationship between guilt and prosocial behavior(P<0.001,Boot SE=0.03),and the mediating effect accounted for 30.89%;The cognitive reappraisal dimension of emotion regulation moderated the latter part of the mediation path of moral identity(β=0.16,95%CI[0.11,0.21])and the direct path of guilt to prosocial behavior(β=-0.09,95%CI[-0.15,-0.04]).Specifically,cognitive reappraisal enhanced the relationship between moral identity and prosocial behavior,and it weakened the positive predictive effect of guilt on prosocial behavior. |
