The Effect Of Guilt On Self-improvement Product Preference In Senior High School Students

The cognition and management of emotion is one of the important contents of mental health education for senior high school students.Guilt,as a negative emotion stemming from failure to meet the standard of self-behavior,is the most common emotional experience of students in study and daily life.Correct understanding and management of guilt emotion is beneficial to the development of individual mental health.Although guilt is a negative emotion,it can trigger positive emotional repair behavior,and the individual under guilt will have a general desire to expect the self to meet its own standards.The purpose of this study is to test the idea that high school students are more inclined to choose products with self-improvement properties to achieve self-improvement when they feel guilt,a negative emotion stemming from failing to meet self-behavior standards.The experimental materials included emotional priming materials,product preference rating materials,self-improvement motivation measurement materials,and emotional definition reading materials.Three experiments were conducted to examine the relationship between guilt and self-improvement tendencies in high school students with 348 participants.Experiment 1 used a single-factor intergroup design(guilt group VS neutral group).By activating guilt emotion,setting consumption situation,the subjects completed the product preference rating task(product category:Self promotion products VS non self promotion products),guilt and discussed the relationship between the self improvement tendency,the results show that the starting condition of a high school student in guilt higher self promotion product preferences,from the point of self improvement product dimensions,can be divided into physical quality promotion products(such as fitness products)and psychological ability to promote products(such as column)to learn English,the result shows that the participants were more inclined to choose guilt psychological ability to promote products,pay more attention to the internal promotion of self.Experiment 1 preliminarily verified that guilt had an effect on self-improvement tendency,and individuals with guilt had a higher preference for self-improvement products.Experiment 2 used a single-factor intergroup design(guilt group vs.shame group vs.neutral group)to compare guilt and shame,and examine individuals’ preference for self-improvement products(product category: self-improvement products vs.non-self-improvement products)to verify individuals’ self-improvement tendency.The results showed that the subjects under guilt priming were more inclined to choose self-improvement products,and the individuals under shame had no influence on the preference of self-improvement products.The comparison between guilt and shame verified that guilt had its unique effect on self-improvement tendency.In Experiment 3,the effect of self-improvement motivation on guilt and product preference was examined in a unifactor intergroup design(guilt vs.neutral).The results show that self-improvement motivation plays a partial mediating role between guilt and self-improvement product preference,and guilt triggers individual self-improvement motivation to carry out self-improvement behavior.This study shows that guilt affects individuals’ self-improvement tendency,and individuals with guilt are more inclined to choose self-improvement products to achieve self-improvement.Self-improvement motivation plays a mediating role in this.Compared with shame,guilt has a unique influence on self-improvement.