| In order to effectively connect with other social individuals,People need to observe the current behavior of others and predict their possible future state through the information contained in their current behaviors.People usually understand and predict the behavior of an individual base on the individual-level information(i.e.,gaze cues,expressions and personal characteristics).However,people are not only isolated social individuals,but also social creatures in different social groups,and their behavior often occurs in more complex social group situations.Recent studies have found that people can form the concept of social group based on previous experience and then predict the consistency of the goal-directed behavior and social interaction behavior of the group members.However,in life,people do not have previous knowledge of a group,but they still form the concept of group through perceptual cues(i.e.,proximity and common destiny in gestalt grouping cues).Although some studies have shown that people can predict the consistency of group members’ goal-directed behaviors based on the group information which is from the perceptual cues,few studies have explored whether observers can predict the consistency of group members’ social interaction behaviors based on the group information which is from the perceptual cues.Given that people engage in both positive social interactions with others(typically helping)and negative social interactions(typically hindering),this study aims to explore the influence of group information on individuals’ prediction of social interaction behavior from two types of interactive behaviors,namely helping behavior and hindering behavior,in order to explore whether the group information formed based on perceptual cues predicts the consistency of helping and hindering behavior among group members.This study simulated group interaction situations through animated depictions,and used perceptual cues(spatial proximity and synchronous movements)to manipulate social group information,and explored above problems in 4 experiments by indirect measurement.Experiment 1 explored whether the observers predicted that the group members’ helping behavior remained consistent in the presence of group cues(that is,group information exists)Experiment 2 explored whether the effect in experiment 1 was caused by the group information by removing the group cue(that is,there was no group cue).Experiment 3further manipulated the strength of group norms which is a group characteristic to explore whether the expectation of the consistency of group members’ helping behaviors was affected by the strength of group norms.Experiment 4 aims to investigate the influence of group information on the prediction of hindering behavior,that is,whether the group information formed based on perceptual cues predicts the consistency of hindering behavior of group members.The study revealed that,based on the group information formed by perceptual cues,people spontaneously formed the prediction of group members’ helping behavior to be consistent,and with the enhancement of group norms,the tendency to predict group members’ helping behavior to be consistent increased,and all of the above effects disappeared when the group cue did not exist.But for hindering behavior,people cannot predict the consistency among group members.Therefore,based on the group information formed by perceptual cues,people have different expectations for the interaction behavior of different types among group members,and only the prediction is consistent in helping behavior.This study is of great theoretical significance for understanding the interaction behavior of group members in different types of groups.At the same time,the consistency expectation of group members of help behavior suggests that the role of some members of the group can be demonstrated to shape the social atmosphere of helping others,and has a guiding effect on how to create a good moral atmosphere. |
PDF Full Text Request