The Relationship Between Awe And Aggressive Behavior In College Students

Aggression is a violent behavior that causes physical and mental injury to others,which brings great harm to the society.Awe is a universal emotional experience in human society,which including positive and negative valence.Previous studies have found that awe has a significant effect on cooperative behavior,moral behavior and prosocial behavior.However,most of studies discussed awe as a pure positive emotion,and psychological studies of awe shows a trend of de-fear-trend.Few studies explored the relationship between different valence awe and social behavior.Based on the prototype model of awe,this study attempts to answer the following two questions:(1)Does trait awe have a significant effect on aggressive behavior?(2)If so,what effect does different valence awe have on aggressive behavior? What are the differences in the activation of related brain regions?We conducted three studies to explore the above questions.Study 1 was measured using Dispositional Positive Emotion Scale(DPES)and Aggression Questionnaire(AQ)to explore the relation between trait awe on aggressive behavior tendency.Survey participants were 493 college students.The results showed the levels of trait awe were negatively corrected with aggressive behavior.In study 2,the top 25% and bottom 25%of the participants from Fuzhou in study 1 were respectively selected as the low and high level of trait awe,which 60 students joined.Study 2 was adopt the CRT and IAT paradigm to investigate explicit and implicit aggressive behavior,which aimed to verify the casual relation between trait awe and aggressive behavior.Study 2 was a betweensubject design(the level of trait awe: low or high).The result showed that trait awe has significant effect on explicit aggression behavior,people with high levels of trait awe were less likely to exhibit aggressive behavior.But there was no difference on implicit aggressive behavior.Study 3 manipulated participants’ awe to explore the effect of different valence awe on explicit aggressive behavior and the activation of related brain regions through a near-infrared spectroscopy imaging study.45 participants were randomly assigned to the positive-awe-manipulating group、negative-awemanipulating group or the control group.This study used a between-subject design(group: positive-awe,negative-awe and neutral emotion),which trigger target emotions by videos.The result shows that videos successfully induced expected emotion.Participants in positive-awe-manipulating group and negative-awe-manipulating group expressed less aggressive behavior than their counter partners in the control group.fNIRS research result shows that the experience of different valence awe was related to frontal pole and bilateral superior temporal gyrus,and the effect on explicit aggressive behavior was related to dorsolateral prefrontal lobe.Through three studies,the following four conclusions are drawn:(1)Trait awe was negatively correlated with aggressive behavior;(2)Trait awe has a significant effect on explicit aggression behavior,people with high levels of trait awe were less likely to exhibit aggressive behavior,but there was no difference on implicit aggressive behavior;(3)Both positive-awe and negative-state awe have a significant effect on explicit aggressive behavior,participants in positive-awe-manipulating group and negativeawe-manipulating group expressed less aggressive behavior than their counter partners in the control group;(4)The experience of different valence awe was related to frontal pole and bilateral superior temporal gyrus,and the effect on explicit aggressive behavior was related to dorsolateral prefrontal lobe.