The Effect Of Shame And Social Value Orientation On Moral Behavior

Objective: In view of more and more unethical behavior happens frequently,scholars have deeply studied the situational factors and individual factors that affect the human's moral behavior.Among them,human's sense of shame and social value orientation has attracted extensive attention of scholars.Studies have shown that,as a moral emotion,shame has a certain predictive effect on people's moral behavior,people's social value orientation also play an important role in it.On the basis of previous studies,social dilemma will be used in this study,to explore whether the individual's social value orientation will restrain their unethical behavior and promote the emergence of moral behavior after experiencing shame.Methods: A total of 223 subjects were randomly selected to participate in two experiments.Experiment 1 focused on the individual's unethical behavior(hypocrisy behavior),we used a 2*2 between-subject design,and used the Positive Task Allocation Paradigm to examine whether the individual's shame and social value orientation inhibit its immoral behavior;Experiment 2 focused on the individual's ethical behavior(cooperative behavior),Similarly,we examined the performance of subjects in social dilemmas through a 3*2 between-subject design,to explore whether social value orientation and shame can effectively promote individual's ethical behavior.Results:(1)When the subjects were under the condition of without shame emotion,there was a significant difference between proselfs and prosocials on their hypocrisy behavior,proselfs' hypocrisy was significantly more than prosocials.(2)After triggering subjects' sense of shame,the hypocrisy behavior of the proselfs has been significantly inhibited,and the hypocrisy behavior of the prosocials has not changed significantly.(3)There was a significant main effect of emotion priming.Under the condition of shame,the level of cooperation was significantly higher than that under the initiation of neutral emotions.(4)The main effect of social value orientation is not significant,and there is no obvious difference in the cooperative behavior of different value orientation individuals.(5)There was a significant two-way interactions betweenshame and social value orientation.Proselfs in the endogenous shame condition has a higher level of cooperation than proselfs in the exogenous shame condition and proselfs in the control condition.On the other hand,prosocials has a lower level of cooperation in the control condition than prosocials in the shame condition,and there was no significant difference between the endogenous shame condition and exogenous shame condition.Conclusion: Triggering people's shame will partly inhibit the unethical behavior of the individual(hypocrisy behavior),and promote individual ethical behavior(cooperative behavior).Through two experimental studies,this study validates the positive interpersonal functions such as the normative function and the good-orientated function of shame.