Negative Self-conscious Emotions Under Intergroup Threat

Self-conscious emotions like shame, guilt, pride, are emotions which require self-awareness and self-evaluation(Tracy & Robins, 2004a).According to the processing model of self-conscious emotions, shame and guilt belong to negative self-conscious emotions(Tracy & Robins, 2004a).Loss of face is a distinct negative self-conscious emotion existed in eastern culture(Bedford,2004).Negative self-conscious emotions emerge among individuals when their self-image or social identity is negatively valued(Dickerson, Gruenewald, & Kemeny, 2004; Tracy & Robins,2004a). The differences between shame and guilt is that shame is more related to the negative appraisals towards global self, while guilt is more related to the negative appraisals towards the specific behaviors which conducted by oneself(Lewis, 2000; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Loss of face is the extended form of shame in Chinese culture, which is more related to public attention of one’s negative impression(Bedford, 2004).Previous studies showed that negative emotions mainly elicited in two situations, moral situations and non-moral situations(Tangney, 1992). Previous research paid lots of attention to moral situations, but negative self-conscious emotions also relate to competition situations, which categorized as non-moral situations, especially relate to one’s social status. The study of negative self-conscious emotions under non-moral situations on one hand focused on one’s low-status situations, on the other hand focused on downward changes of one’s status, such as academic failures, competition inferiority etc.(Tracy & Robins, 2006).Research of intergroup relations also found individuals’ would experience negative self-conscious emotions during intergroup contact, such as ingroup members tend to feel guilt and shame when their ingroup conduct immoral behaviors towards outgroup. These kind of emotions are categorized as vicarious shame and guilt(vicarious shame and guilt)(B. Lickel, Schmader,Curtis, Scarnier, & Ames, 2005). Researchers put forward shared identity and interpersonal interdependency as the mechanism of this phenomena. Because of the similarity perceptions of shared identity and the psychological bonds forged by interpersonal interdependency, ingroup members tend to regard others’ negative evaluation of their ingroup as negative evaluation of themselves, thus their negative self-conscious emotions emerge. However, current research of vicarious shame and guilt centers on moral situations, no empirical study of negative self-conscious emotions under non-moral situations has been found(Allpress, Brown,Giner-Sorolla, Deonna, & Teroni, 2014b; Gausel, Leach, Vignoles, & Brown, 2012).Intergroup threat happens when ingroup members feel their ingroup’s safety and benefits were harmed or will be harmed by out group. Intergroup threat would mostly be experienced by low status groups or groups in which members feel that their group is in an inferior status under intergroup competitions(Riek, Mania, & Gaertner, 2006). In addition, intergroup threat causes negative influences on ingroup members’ cognitive responses, emotional responses, and behavior responses(Walter G. Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison, 2009). Intergroup threat include two categories, realistic group threat and symbolic group threat. Realistic group threat refers to threat towards ingroup’s power, status, resources and public benefits etc., while symbolic group threat refers to threat towards ingroup’s religious beliefs, value, faith, ideology and moral codes etc.(Walter G. Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison, 2009). Research of negative emotional responses of threatened ingroup members fixed their eyes on basic emotions, such as anger, fear, no empirical study of negative self-conscious emotions of threatened ingroup members has been found.Previous studies indicate that individuals tend to experience negative self-conscious emotions in competition failure situations, that is to say, negative self-conscious emotions hold strong ties to inferior status under competition situations. In the meantime, intergroup threats are highly related to inferior status. Therefore, via the effect of shared identity and interpersonal interdependence,we hypothesized that ingroup members who are under intergroup threat would also experience negative self-conscious emotions, that is, they would feel shame or guilt about their ingroup’s inferior status.We conducted three experiments to testify our hypothesis. Study 1: we explored in natural group competition condition, ingroup members(Chinese students) would read materials about the threat of Japan, then rate their emotional responses by self-report. Study 2: we used minimal group paradigm to induce intergroup theat, threatened ingroup members would rate their emotional responses by self-report after arbiturialy categorization. Study 3: we manipulated the status of outgroup to explore the influences of intergroup threat in natural group competition condition,ingroup members(Chinese students) would read materials about the threat of America(High status) or India(Low status), then rate their emotional responses by self-report.Our results showed that:(1) Threatened ingroup members would experience negative self-conscious emotions no matter under realistic group threat or symbolic group threat.(2) Threat related to culture would significantly and consistently trigger threatened ingroup members’ negative self-conscous emotions.(3) Threat from low-status outgroup would elicit more negative self-conscious emotions than threat from high-status outgroup.Our study collects new evidence of the emotional responses of threatened ingroup members under intergroup threat, extends the area of negative self-conscious emotions in intergroup relations, adds a new proof about the elicitation of vicarious shame and guilt and provide more value to negative self-conscious emotions research under Chinese culture.