A Study Of The Validity Of Guilt Activation And Its Antecedent And Outcome Variables

Guilt is formed during the socialization of a person and is a negative emotion that we often experience in our lives.Generally,it is felt when people believe that what they are doing is wrong or affects the interests of others.In recent years,research on guilt emotions has been increasing.Previous empirical studies have mainly focused on the pro-social behavior of guilt,little is known about the psychophysiology of experiencing guilt,and there is a lack of systematically sorting out the relationship between antecedent and outcome variables of guilt emotions.In this paper,we investigate the activation effects of two antecedent variables,namely relational closeness and attributional style,on guilt emotions,and three outcome variables,namely attentional bias,emotion recognition,and behavioral compensation,after the activation of guilt emotions,and propose the limitations of existing studies and future research directions.Study 1:The effectiveness of guilt activation.An adapted De hooge paradigm was used to test the validity of guilt activation in this experiment.A dummy subject was paired with a real subject,and they cooperated to complete a knowledge encyclopedia contest,and in the second round they were prompted to get each other the prize and the opportunity to conduct the experiment next.The real subject is forced to abort the experiment due to the low correctness rate of the real subject,so as to stimulate the guilt of the real subject.When the second feedback page appeared,the subject came to the fake subject to tell him/her that he/she was forced to abort the experiment,and the biofeedback data of the real subject was recorded at this time.The validity of the subject’s guilt activation was examined in three ways.（1）the type of subject’s emotional activation was determined by the indicators collected by the biofeedback instrument;（2）the Positive Negative Affect Scale,which was determined to be activated by the subject through the analysis of the difference between the pre and post test combined with the definition of guilt;and（3）the Emotional Word Choice Questionnaire.The results showed that the SC,BVP frequency,and EMG indexes were significantly increased,and Temp and BVP amplitude were significantly decreased in the guilt state.The post-test score of guilt emotion was significantly higher than the pre-test in the Positive Negative Affect Scale,and the subjects self-reported significant guilt emotion.Study 2:Study of antecedent variables of guilt activation.Based on guilt activation,two experiments were conducted by combining the questionnaire with the Eprime experimental procedure to investigate the effects of two antecedent variables,relational closeness and attributional style,on guilt activation,respectively.Experiment 1 used a between-subjects experimental design,in which two groups of subjects,the friend group and the stranger group,were arranged to perform a guilt-evoking task to examine the differences in guilt activation between the two groups.Experiment 2 used a between-subjects experimental design to explore the differences in guilt activation between individuals with two attribution styles,optimistic and pessimistic.The biofeedback instrument’s index difference analysis found that individuals with pessimistic attributional style had deeper guilt activation than optimistic ones.Study 3:An outcome variable study of guilt activation.Based on the activation of guilt emotion,Eprime and eye-tracking instruments were used to write experimental procedures to study the effects of guilt emotion on the psychological and behavioral aspects of individuals,and to explore the attentional bias,emotion recognition,and compensatory behavior of individuals in the guilt state,respectively.Experiment 3 used a spatial cue paradigm to explore the attentional bias of individuals in the guilt and control groups to interpersonal evaluation words,and found that（1）the control group responded significantly faster to both positive and negative evaluation words than to neutral words,and there was attentional vigilance;（2）the guilt group responded faster to invalid neutral interpersonal evaluation words than to invalid negative interpersonal evaluation words,and there was difficulty in attentional dissociation.Experiment 4 used an eye-tracking device to investigate the effect of guilt on the tendency to recognize facial expressions.The results showed that subjects were more inclined to recognize neutral expressions before guilt and negative expressions after guilt;they were more inclined to recognize smiling expressions as positive before guilt and negative after guilt.The friend group tended to recognize the smile expression as positive compared to the stranger group.Experiment 5 was based on the two groups of subjects in Experiment 1.After completing the guilt-inducing procedure,an experiment was set up in which the partner could be compensated by answering questions,and when 10 questions were answered correctly,the fake subjects could return to the laboratory,and at that time the real subjects had already compensated,and the degree of their compensatory behavior was verified by the number of answers that the subjects chose to continue answering.The results showed that the compensatory behavior of the friend group was significantly higher than that of the stranger group.Study 4 constructed a structural model of the antecedent and outcome variables of personality traits and guilt according to the results of Study 2 and Study 3,combined with the relationship between personality traits and guilt emotions.The results found that（1）agreeableness negatively predicted guilt emotion,neuroticism positively predicted guilt emotion,and both agreeableness/neuroticism could influence attention dissociation difficulties through guilt emotion;guilt emotion significantly predicted attention dissociation difficulties,smile expression emotion recognition,and compensatory behavior;and（2）attributional style played a negative moderating role in the effect of agreeableness on guilt emotion.