Symbolic threat affects negative self-conscious emotions

Yujie Chen,Yufang Zhao,Longwei Li,Oscar Ybarra

doi:10.1017/prp.2020.3

Abstract

Self-conscious emotions are a distinct category of emotional responses that are rooted in social contexts. Previous findings suggest that negative self-conscious emotions might be elicited by a specific social factor, that is, symbolic intergroup threat. The present study tested the hypothesis that this is true, with three experiments conducted in the Chinese-context. In particular, the Mandarin words for shame (羞愧), guilt (内疚) and loss of face (丢脸) were examined. Symbolic threats were manipulated in all three experiments, with participants randomly divided into a symbolic threat condition and a control condition in each experiment. As expected, participants in the symbolic threat condition always reported more negative self-conscious emotions compared to participants in the control condition. These results suggest that symbolic intergroup threat can lead to self-conscious emotions as well as basic emotions, as was demonstrated by previous research.

Highlights

Self-conscious emotions are fundamentally important to a wide range of psychological processes that evolved through natural selection and are common in our daily lives because they have served essential functional and adaptive roles in attaining, maintaining and communicating social status throughout our evolutionary history (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008; Tracy, Shariff, & Cheng, 2010)
We focused on three common negative self-conscious emotions, because previous research indicates these three negative selfconscious emotions might be elicited by threatening information (Stephan & Mealy, 2009)
Symbolic Threat Induction Manipulation Check An independent t test showed that participants in the symbolic threat condition (M = 4.40, SD = 1.35) reported a higher sense of symbolic threat than did participants in the control condition (M = 1.37, SD = 1.50), t(58) = 8.231, p < .001, d = 2.162, 95% CI [2.296, 3.371]

Summary

Introduction

Self-conscious emotions are fundamentally important to a wide range of psychological processes that evolved through natural selection and are common in our daily lives because they have served essential functional and adaptive roles in attaining, maintaining and communicating social status throughout our evolutionary history (Tracy & Matsumoto, 2008; Tracy, Shariff, & Cheng, 2010). Previous research suggests that self-conscious emotions may be sensitive to symbolic threats, as evidenced by research on intergroup threat that indicates symbolic threats can threaten one’s social self (Legault & Green-Demers, 2012) This may happen because symbolic threats arouse feelings of inferiority and a belief that the in-group is at a disadvantage – for example, in international competition for status (Riek, Mania, & Gaertner, 2006) – there is no direct evidence to verify this hypothesis. We focused on three common negative self-conscious emotions (i.e., shame, guilt, and loss of face), because previous research indicates these three negative selfconscious emotions might be elicited by threatening information (Stephan & Mealy, 2009). In light of the above research findings, the present study focused on the effect of symbolic threat on three negative self-conscious emotions —shame, guilt and loss of face — that may help people’s emotional and social wellbeing

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion