Effects Of Self-affirmation On Prosocial Behavior Responses To Social Exclusion

Social exclusion was a phenomenon that someone rejected and excluded by someone or social group.Some researchers found that social exclusion would thwart a person's belonging needs and relational needs.Social exclusion had a negative impact on individual,just like strong negative emotional,lowered self-esteem,lowered empathy.Those impact might hamper a person s prosocial behavior.So in this research,we will test the point and find a way to adjust the negative impact caused by social exclusion.In this research,firstly we tested the validity of the get acquainted paradigm.Secondly we tested the negative impact of social exclusion on prosocial behavior.Finally we explored whether self-affirmation could be a buffer to adjust the impact of exclusion.Experiment one was a single factor design.In this experiment,the purpose was to test the validity of the method and verify the negative impact of social exclusion.From experiment one,we found the subjects had a strong sense of exclusion and their prosocial behavior significantly reduced.In experiment two,we wanted to find that if self-affirmation can alleviate the negative impact of social exclusion.Finally we found that self-affirmation had a notable role in buffering the negative impact caused by social exclusion.From this research,we got the following results:(1)Get acquainted paradigm had good performance in arousing Chinese college students' feeling about exclusion.(2)Social exclusion significantly reduced a person's prosocial behavior.(3)Self-affirmation could be an effective way to adjust the negative impact caused by social exclusion.