The Influence Of Disappointment On The Inertia Of Low Force In The Condition Of Low Responsibility

Inaction inertia was proposed in by Orit E. Tykocinsk, Thane S. Pittman and Erin E. Tuttle in the year of 1995. It means that when the individual misses an attractive opportunity to do something, he or she would like to give up a less attractive opportunity in the same field. In the beginning of studies of inaction inertia, Tykocinsk et al got an conclusion that regret, a kind of negative emotion triggered by counter-factual thinking, had effect on it. Responsibility is an vital element to regret. In the low-responsibility situation, subjects still showed inaction inertia,which was not the consequence of regret. Some researchers proposed that disappointment is a kind of decision-making negative emotion just like regret. However, in former studies of inaction inertia, researchers did not lay any importance on disappointment. Therefore, this paper tries to explore the effect of disappointment on inaction inertia in the condition of low responsibility through 3 studies.The mission of study 1 is the introduction of the Regret and Disappointment Scale, which was compiled by Macartto and Ferrante in 2008,and then to test its validity. The function of this scale is to explore the level of negative emotions and make a distinction between disappointment and regret. Study 1 aims at translating the scale and testing its validity. The result shows that, after the translation, the scale is valid to distinguish the emotion of disappointment and regret.Study 2 explores the correlation of responsibility and regret, and the effect of the two factors on inaction inertia. In this study, we filter material of pre-experiment first in order to get the formal experiment material. The outcome of the analysis shows that: different levels of responsibility is positive correlated to different levels of regret; the main effect of responsibility is not significant, whereas the main effect of regret is significant; the interaction of responsibility and regret is also significant, and in the low-responsibility situation, regret has no significant influence on inaction inertia.In study 3, we explore the correlation of disappointment and regret, and the effect of the two factors on inaction inertia. In the procedure of pre-experiment compiling, the items were set based on the Regret and Disappointment Scale mentioned in study 1. And the experiment situation was created based on the opinion that responsibility is the criterion to distinguish disappointment from regret. After filtering pre-experiment material, the formal experiment material was shaped. The result of the experiment show that: different levels of disappointment is positive correlated to different levels of regret; the main effect of disappointment and regret is significant; the interaction of disappointment and regret is significant too,and in the low-regret situation, disappointment has significant effect on inaction inertia.It is the first time to introduce the Regret and Disappointment Scale into domestic study to explore the relationship between disappointment,regret and inaction inertia. The result is in agreement with previous researches that regret has significant effect on inaction inertia. Finally, the whole study comes to a conclusion:in the low-responsibility condition, regret is on lower lever, and at the same time, it is disappointment rather than regret that has significant effect on inaction inertia.