The Emotional Activation Of Guilt And Shame In Deceptive Behavior And Its Influence On Behavior Orientation

Previous studies have shown that guilt can promote moral internalization,help to form good moral concepts,enhance prosocial behavior among individuals,reduce the occurrence of unethical behavior,and have positive moral functions.However,it remains a question whether shame has the same positive moral function?There was no agreement in the results of previous studies.This study aims to explore the influence of individual guilt and shame in deception on the behavioral orientation.One hundred college students are used as subjects.We adopted within-subjects design,inducing emotions in interactive games,and choosing typical unethical behavior "deception" as the inducement and observation index of guilty and shame.To explore the influence of individual guilt and shame in deception on the behavioral orientation.The first study used the experimental paradigm of the improved coin-guess interactive game.The experimental task set the three parts of small monetary reward,large monetary reward and score game,and compared the influence of different incentives(positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement)on individual deception behavior.The second study used the money game experimental paradigm of the first study,selectively disclosing or not-disclosing the subjects who were deceived in the game.According to the choice of the emotional words after the test,the subjects were divided into the guilty group and the shame group,and the honest subjects were randomly selected as the control group.The students' physiological data were recorded by eight-channel biofeedback instrument,including myoelectric(EMG),pulse(P),(BVP)amplitude and frequency,and skin electricity(SC)and Temp,to test the effectiveness of emotional activation.In the third study,the E-prime experimental program was used to collect the behavioral data(the number of deceptions and honesty rounds)of the guilty group,the shame group and the honest group in the score game.The influence of these two emotions on the individual behavioral orientation was analyzed.(1)The results of the behavioral indicators of the first study showed that individuals in the"negative reinforcement" exhibit significantly more deceptive behavior than "positive reinforcement'' situations under the same deception opportunities.(2)The results of the physiological indicators of the second study showed that the pulse,skin electricity and blood volume frequency of guilty group during non-disclosure period(?)were significantly stronger than the baseline period and the undisclosed period(?)(P<.01).The frequency of pulse,skin electricity and blood volume in the undisclosed period(?)was significantly stronger than that in the baseline period(P<.05),and the physiological indicators showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing.In the emotional words selection after the test,they reported significant guilt.The myoelectric,skin electricity and blood volume of shame group during disclose period(?)were significantly stronger than the undisclosed period(?)and the baseline period(P<.01),and the physiological indicators showed an increasing trend and all subjects were reported shame.In addition to the significant decrease in skin electricity and skin temperature,the indicators of the honest group did not change significantly.The subjects were in an increasingly relaxed state with no obvious emotional changes.(3)The results of the behavioral indicators of the third study showed that the honest rounds of the guilty group were the highest among the three groups,significantly higher than the shame group,and there was no significant difference from the control group.The number of deceptions in the guilty group was less than the control group,but there was no significant difference.The number of deceptions in the shame group was the least among the three groups,significantly less than the control group,but the honest round was the least among the three groups,significantly less than the guilty group and the control group.The above research results indicate that:(1)Harming others to benefit oneself is generally recognized as immorality,behavior of benefiting oneself without harming others has higher acceptance and there is a tendency to "rationalize" it;(2)The guilty group showed the compensation orientation in the number of deceptions and the honesty of the round.The guilty emotions had a positive effect on the behavioral orientation of the subjects;(3)Shame group participants showed compensation orientation in the number of deceptions and avoidance orientation in the honest round.Shame was often accompanied by avoidance or compensation.