Background

Literature Review

• Conceptualization Relief
• Social Emotion Perspective: the source of the positive experience stems from the appraisal of the outcome.
• Achievement Emotion Perspective: the positive experience of relief stems from the joint appraisal of the outcome (both expected and actual results) and the sense of control.
• Cultural Perspective: possesses Chinese cultural specificity while maintaining comparability with the Western conceptualization of relief, expressing an inwardly content and comforted state.

• Theorization Relief
• The Functional Theory of Counterfactual Thinking: Relief serves a reparative function, whereby individuals strategically engage in downward counterfactual thinking to generate feelings of relief and thereby improve their emotional state.
• Control-Value Theory: Relief is an emotion associated with academic, professional, or athletic achievement activities and their successful outcomes, contingent upon the interaction between object focus and perceived valence.
• Relief is a context-induced positive emotion that emerges under varying control conditions, with appraisal components constituting its core element.
• A Multicomponent Emotion Process Model posits that emotions are elicited through cognitive appraisal of events, triggering synchronous changes across multiple components. Each distinct emotion represents a multi-level appraisal process that generates differentiated emotion-related feelings and experiences.

• Operationalization Relief
• Based on the above emotional model, researchers developed the GRID questionnaire.
• Emotion text analysis can integrate research questions to investigate the structure of relief through qualitative analysis, lexical matching techniques, and theoretical frameworks.
• Emotion component experimental paradigm: The priming paradigm is employed to study emotion generation by assigning explicit or implicit cues to subsequent emotional tasks.

• The Influence of Relief Emotion on Risk Decision-Making
• The Appraisal Tendency Framework: Emotions influence risk decision-making through differential interpretations of appraisal components within the emotional structure, leading to varied perceptions of and responsibility for risk events, which ultimately shape risk-related choices.
• The counterfactual thinking process inherent in the emotion of relief enables individuals to adjust their risk decision-making behaviors, thereby avoiding undesirable outcomes in future choices.
• Relief arises from the evaluation that outcomes could have been worse had different choices been made, thereby reinforcing the maintenance of previous behavioral decisions. In contrast, regret typically motivates changes to prior decision-making patterns.

Current Study

• The internal structure of relief as an emotion requires further clarification.

Research aimed to construct the conceptual structure of relief within Chinese linguistic and cultural contexts.

• There is insufficient research on relief within Chinese cultural contexts.

Research amied to characterize the structural components of relief in Chinese contexts.

• Limited studies have examined how the appraisal components of relief influence risk decision-making.

Research aimed to investigate how relief's appraisal components influence risk decision-making.

Research Framework

Experiments and Results

• Study One is divided into two parts (Study 1 and Study 2), exploring the appraisal and experiential components in the relief structure. The purpose of Study 1 is to construct the structure of relief based on the Multicomponent Emotion Process Model.
• Study 1a uses proverbs as qualitative analysis material for emotional text, combining grounded theory to construct the structure of relief . The results show that the structure of relief includes appraisal components of outcome value and expectation contrast, value, control, and goal relevance, as well as subjective experience components.
• Study 1b recruits 190 participants to describe daily events that can evoke relief while collecting data on the valence, arousal, and intensity of relief emotion experienced in these events. The results indicate that the structure of relief includes appraisal components of unexpectedness, value, goal, and control, as well as counterfactual thinking processes and components affecting subsequent behavior. The valence of relief experience shows the greatest difference among different appraisal components.

• The purpose of Study 2 is to verify and supplement the structure of relief based on Study 1.
• Study 2a uses children's storybooks as text material for content analysis, coding and extracting based on Study 1 and previous research. By comparing the prevalence ratios of events evoking relief and other emotions, the results show that events that are expected, successful, conducive to the protagonist's goals, and controllable by the protagonist are more likely to evoke relief compared to non-relief emotions.
• Study 2b recruits 300 participants to complete a questionnaire validating the appraisal components of relief structure. The results show that the intensity of relief and positive emotional experience are positively correlated with the unexpected appraisal component of the event, the value component of success, high sense of control, and self-relevance.
• Study 2c recruits 150 participants to complete the GRID questionnaire for relief, regret, and satisfaction emotions. Through principal component factor analysis and variance analysis, it explores the differences in emotional components among relief, satisfaction, and regret. The results show that there is a significant difference between relief and satisfaction and regret in the sense of control factor.

The results of Study One show that the structure of relief includes four appraisal components: the unexpected component of the comparison between expected value and result value, the outcome value component, the goal-related component and the sense of control component. The structure of relief also includes warmth and positive emotional experience components. Meanwhile, relief can affect individual subsequent behaviors, including risky decisions and the changeability of risky decisions.

• Study TWO was divided into five studies (Study 3 to Study 7). Studies 3 to 6 were parallel experiments employing a Lucky Wheel Paradigm and manipulated/measured four appraisal components through pseudo-random experimental design to explore how appraisal components of relief induced by the previous trial influence risk decision-making and risk decision change in the next trial.
• Study 3 recruits 50 to explore the effect of the unexpected component.The results show that unexpected gains of more points lead to significantly higher positive relief emotion experience than other conditions and can significantly predict the choice of risky options in the next trial's decision. The unexpected component does not significantly predict changes in risk decision-making in the next trial.
• Study 4 recruits 48 participants to explore the effect of the outcome value component. The results show that gaining more points leads to significantly higher positive relief emotion experience than other conditions, and can significantly predict both the choice of risky options and changes in risk decision-making behavior in the next trial.
• Study 5a (Study 5 was divided into two studies. ) recruits 65 participants to explore the effect of the goal consistency componen. The results show no significant difference in positive relief emotion experience between self and other goal consistency conditions, both of which are significantly higher than other conditions. Self goal consistency significantly predicts the choice of safe options in the next trial's decision, while other goal consistency significantly predicts changes in risk decision-making behavior in the next trial.
• Study 5b recruits 70 participants to explore the effect of the motive consistency component. The results show that gaining more points for oneself leads to significantly higher positive relief emotion experience than gaining for others. Motive consistency does not significantly predict risk decision choices in the next trial, but self motive consistency can significantly predict changes in risk decision-making behavior in the next trial.
• Study 6 recruits 50 participants and collects data on participants' sense of control about whether they can obtain the most points and how many points they can obtain. Using gambling results, feedback type, and sense of control as predictors, hierarchical regression is used to explore the roles of prospective and retrospective sense of control. The results show that both prospective and retrospective sense of control have significant positive predictive effects on positive relief emotion experience, choice of risky options in the next decision, and changes in risk decision-making behavior.
• The purpose of Study 7 is to explore the impact of relief appraisal components on risk decision-making and the mediating role of experiential component. It uses a two-stage structural equation model in meta-analysis to test the mediating effects on the results of Studies 3-6. The results show significant direct effects from appraisal components to subsequent risk decision-making behavior and changes in risk decision-making behavior. The effects from experiential components of relief emotion to subsequent risk decision-making behavior and changes in risk decision-making behavior are significant, while the effects from appraisal components to experiential components are not significant.

Conclusion