Purpose: Guilt and sad are all negative emotions.Guilt is a self-conscious emotion, and sad is a basic emotion, they are different in many aspects. Jessica et al (2004) suggested that self-conscious emotions serve primarily socialized needs, but the basic emotion clearly serve survival and social fuctions. Negative-state relief model (Cialdini & Fultz, 1990; Cialdini et al., 1987) thought that the individuals’ prosocial behaviors would reduce their negative state. But calson et al(1987) argued that if people were in negative state, they wouldn’t increase their prosocial behaviors when their attention was payed attention to themselves, but when they payed attention to others, they would increase their prosocial behaviors. Jessica et al(2004) suggested if people payed attention to themselves, basic emotions would emerge, for example sad. If people payed attention to others, self-conscious emotions would emerge, for example guilt. So we supposed that guilt emotion could increase individuals’ prosocial behaviors. This study tended to examine the effect of guilt emotion on children’s prosocial behaviors.Study 1, Process and method,This study selected the fifth grade pupils as participants, all the participants were divided into two groups, one is expriment group, the another one is control group. First, the participants were required to accomplish a chinese examination paper, then told them that they were devided into many groups, every group had three participants, but the three participants were not known each other, the score of group would be rated in the class. Second, everyone get his/her score and other members’ scores in their group one by one. The participants were told that his/her score is 30, but the other two members’ scores were 95 ,96. Because of his/ her so bad score, their group’s score is the last one in the class in the emotion group; Then the experiments asked them what were his/her feeling? Why he/she had this feeling? What he/she would plan to do? The experiments wrote down all their answers. Third, all the participants were asked whether they were willing to accomplish a questionnaire in order to collect the materials of other study? And the questionnaire had three parts, the experimenters writed down how many parts the participants promised to do and actually did in the questionnaire. Study 2, process and method were similar to study 1 except the second step, in study 2, the participants were required to write the score of their anticipated score on the examination paper. When the score were feed back to the participants, the participants were told that his/her score is 15 less than their anticipated score in the emotion group, but the other two members’ scores were 95 ,96. Because of his/ her bad score, their group’s score is the last one in the class. Results:(1) the fifth grade students’ prosocial behavior would be increased if the participants feel guilt, when the participants feel sad, their prosocial behaviors wouldn’t be increased. (2) if the fifth grade students pay attention to bad effect of their own behaviors on the group, they would feel guilt, but if they pay attention to their own bad result, they would feel sad. Conclusion: Whether would the negative emotion increase the individuals’ prosocial behaviors, it depends on which the children pay attention to, the self or the others. The innovations: This study select the children as participants, and explore that the different effect of sad and guilt emotion on the prosocial behaviors in the actual situation. The result of this study supported the theoretical model (Jessica et al..,2004).
Key words
guilt /
sad /
prosocial behaviors /
children