The Effect Of Relationship Closeness On Vicarious Guilt:Mediator Role Of Behavioral Control And Moderator Role Of Sense Of Power

People sometimes feel guilty for their behaviors when they hurt their family members or good friends or they did not help others when the latter needed help.Guilt emerges not only depending on individuals' own behaviors but also on others'.Such guilt based on other people's misdeeds is called vicarious guilt.Vicarious guilt is quite common in daily life,for example,parents will experience guilt and apologize when their children attack other children.But people do not necessarily feel guilty for others' immoral behaviors.In general,only when people are in close relationship with the transgressor,will they experience guilt.Up to now,this effect has not been demonstrated in eastern culture.However,the effects of relationship closeness on emotions and behaviors should be more salient in a society like China which greatly emphasizes interpersonal relationship.Therefore,the Study 1 of the present research aimed to testify the effect in Chinese society.It has been demonstrated that relationship closeness is positively related to behavioral control.That is,if someone feels close to another,he or she will has higher level of control on the latter's behavior.This phenomenon can be explained from the historical perspective in Chinese culture.In ancient China,when people committed a serious crime,the whole clan would be implicated.Thus group members had unique control over the behaviors of other members to prevent transgression that might destroy the whole group.Although,nowadays such cruel punishment does not exist,the awareness to control in-group members' behaviour is deep-rooted in individuals' mind.While there is little common interest between individuals and out-group others,which makes it meaningless to care about out-groups' behaviors.Therefore,we could assume that in Chinese culture,individuals have more control over close ones' behaviour than distant ones'.In addition,people feel guilty for their misdeeds partly because they think they could have prevented these behaviors,which means that they have control on their behavior but they did not do anything to change the results.Similarly,people experience vicarious guilt partly resulting from that they have behavioral control over others' behaviors but did nothing to prevent immoral behaviors.Based on above,we could speculate that people feel more guilt for close ones' immorality than distant ones' partly because they have more control on the behavior of the former.Hence Study 2 of the present research was designed to verify the mediation effect of behavioral control over the relationship between relationship closeness and vicarious guilt.Power is a core concept in social life.In general,psychological researchers take the sense of power instead of real power as research target.Individuals with more power have more control on themselves and others.Thus we speculated that people with more power would experience higher level of guilt for others regardless of the relationship closeness,which may lead to insignificant difference in vicarious guilt between close group and distant group.As for people with less power,they have less control on others,which decreases the mediation effect of behavioral control on vicarious guilt;while the direct effect of relationship closeness on vicarious guilt still exists,that is more close,more guilt.Therefore Study 3 aimed to demonstrate the moderating effect of power on the relationship between relationship closeness and vicarious guilt.Study 1 recruited 189 college students who were randomly assigned to three groups: Family group,Friends group and Non-familiars.Participants in every group recalled an immoral behavior of one of their parents or friends or someone they are not familiar with.After the recollection manipulation,all participants complete the emotion measurement.The results suggested that participants in Family group experienced more guilt than those in Friends and Non-familiars groups.This is consistent with research in Western culture.Two hundred and fifty two college students participated in Study 2.Similar to Study 1,participants were randomly assigned to three groups: Family group,Friends group and Non-familiars.Participants in every group imagined one of their parents or friends or someone they are not familiar with doing something immoral.Then they completed the behavioral control items and the emotion measurement.The results replicated the conclusion in Study 1 and also demonstrated that behavioral control could partially mediated the effect of relationship closeness on vicarious guilt.There were 200 participants in Study 3.They were randomly assigned to two groups: Friends group and Non-familiars.Firstly,participants completed the imagination task as that in Study 2.Then,they fished the emotion measurement and personal sense of power in the followed.The results further verified the relationship between relationship closeness and vicarious guilt.And it has also found that individuals who has more power feel more guilt about others' immorality.While the moderator effect of power has not been demonstrated.