The Influence Of Emotional Priming On Responsibility Attribution Of Social Accident

In order to explore the effect of positive(happy)emotion and negative(sad)emotion on people's attribution cognition,this study investigated the priming effect of happy,sad and neutral faces on social accident responsibility attribution in college students.There are three types of social accident liability,namely,the objective environment shares accident liability with the protagonist,the social organization shares accident liability with the protagonist,and individual shares accident liability with the protagonist.This study includes three experiments.Experiment 1 investigated the effect of happiness/sadness priming on the attribution of responsibility for the above three types of social accidents when the protagonist was "you"(that is,the protagonist was the subject).Experiment 2 investigated the effect of happiness/sadness priming on the attribution of responsibility for the above three types of social accidents when the protagonist was "A"(that is,the protagonist was another person who is unrelated to the subject).Experiment 3 investigated the influence of happiness/sadness priming on the attribution of social accident liability for the above three types of social accidents when the protagonist "A" belongs to "high social class" or "low social class".The research results show that "happiness make people rash,sadness makes people cautious" tendency appeared in all process of attribution of responsibility for the accident,no matter the protagonist is "you" or "A".That is,compare to neutral mood priming,subjects in the happy mood made more personal responsibility attribution and in sad mood made less personal responsibility attribution.In addition,the degree of attribution of responsibility for the protagonist decreases significantly with the objective environment,social organization and other individuals.In the process of attributing the responsibility for the social accidents in which the protagonists belong to "high social class" or "low social class",the protagonists of "high social class" tend to be less responsible than those of "low social class" in accidents and conflicts.Based on the above results,we believe that emotional arousal can affect the thinking depth of individuals and thus affect the attribution of responsibility.Happy mood will reduce the thinking depth of the subjects and make them rely on the already existing knowledge structure in judgment and pay less attention to the details of the accident.The negative emotions will improve the thinking depth of the subjects,making them less dependent on the existing knowledge structure and pay more attention to the details of the accident.In addition,The social class of an individual is an important background factor for the attribution of responsibility.