School of Psychology, University of Plymouth.
Psychol Sci. 2017 Jul;28(7):862-871. doi: 10.1177/0956797617696312. Epub 2017 May 18.
When aiming to improve another person's long-term well-being, people may choose to induce a negative emotion in that person in the short term. We labeled this form of agent-target interpersonal emotion regulation altruistic affect worsening and hypothesized that it may happen when three conditions are met: (a) The agent experiences empathic concern for the target of the affect-worsening process, (b) the negative emotion to be induced helps the target achieve a goal (e.g., anger for confrontation or fear for avoidance), and (c) there is no benefit for the agent. This hypothesis was tested by manipulating perspective-taking instructions and the goal to be achieved while participants ( N = 140) played a computer-based video game. Participants following other-oriented perspective-taking instructions, compared with those following objective perspective-taking instructions, decided to induce more anger in a supposed fellow participant who was working to achieve a confrontation goal and to induce more fear in a supposed fellow participant who was working to achieve an avoidance goal.
当旨在提高他人的长期幸福感时，人们可能会选择在短期内引起该人的负面情绪。我们将这种形式的主体-目标人际情绪调节称为利他性情感恶化，并假设当满足以下三个条件时，就会发生这种情况：（a）主体对情感恶化过程的目标对象产生共情关怀；（b）要引起的负面情绪有助于目标实现目标（例如，愤怒以对抗或恐惧以避免）；（c）主体没有受益。通过操纵换位思考指令和要实现的目标，参与者（N=140）玩基于计算机的视频游戏来检验此假设。与采取客观视角的参与者相比，遵循他人导向的换位思考指令的参与者决定在努力实现对抗目标的假定同伴参与者身上引起更多的愤怒，并在努力实现回避目标的假定同伴参与者身上引起更多的恐惧。
