The social guilt hypothesis
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Kent
Department Name: Sch of Psychology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
Publications
Jared Piazza (Author)
(2011)
The state self-conscious emotions scale (SSCES) : towards a reliable measure of guilt, regret & shame
Roger Giner-Sorolla (Author)
(2011)
Moral emotions on hierarchical and equal terms
Roger Giner-Sorolla (Author)
(2012)
The social morality of guilt
Roger Giner-Sorolla (Author)
(2011)
Guilt in self-control dilemmas : make it social or make it cognitive
| Description | What is guilt good for? Do guilty feelings help us control our behaviour at all times, or do they work best to help us make up for bad things we have done to other people? Our research started by developing a questionnaire that could distinguish guilt from closely related feelings such as regret and shame. We then set up a laboratory procedure in which people thought they had harmed either themselves or another person by taking too much in an economic resource game. This was effective in creating guilt, but only when another person was involved. Finally, we looked at the outcomes of guilty feelings. Although guilt did not help people to control their resource-taking behaviour, it did predict how much participants helped the person they had harmed in a subsequent, different game. We also did two experiments to see whether these results generalised across social group boundaries, using methods of studying groups in the lab that have previously been shown to create own-group favouritism. However, the harmed person's group membership did not modify the effects shown in the other studies, which again were found in these new studies. These results lead us to conclude that a) guilt is a fundamentally social emotion; it does not help to regulate one's own behaviour so much as to regulate one's behaviour toward others; b) this characteristic of guilt seems to apply regardless of membership in social groups, whether pre-existing or created in the lab. |
| Exploitation Route | These understandings will resolve existing doubts about the roles of guilt and shame in applied and health settings, providing a clearer basis for research going forward. For example, many existing perspectives on clinical issues, self-control behaviours, and goal-setting subscribe to a model in which guilt is a positive force, measured in terms of the personality trait of general "guilt-proneness." Here we have shown that when people feel guilty in real situations of moral harm and self-control, this motivates them to help other people they have harmed, but not necessarily to restrain their individual behaviour. This suggests that guilt will be more effective in situations of interpersonal harm (such as offender rehabilitation) than individual self-control (such as dieting) Also, our findings can help people understand when their own feelings help versus harm personal goals and well-being. Our findings should have a strong impact on how academics and others think about regret, shame and guilt in the context of self-control. These emotions are often confused with each other, with scholars distinguishing them in a myriad of sometimes contradictory ways. We have experimentally demonstrated, going beyond previous vignette-based studies, that guilt's behavioural outcome can be better characterised as other-helping than self-restraint. This confirms our suspicions that guilt, as experienced, is not helpful in situations of individual self-control such as dieting or medical compliance, but does help in situations of social harm. Our scale development has yielded a much-needed new measure of situational shame and guilt feelings. We have found that guilt and shame are so easily confused because their elicitors (other harm and hierarchical concerns) co-occur in moral fault. In these situations it may be relevant to discuss guilt and shame as a single construct, elicited by different emphases in thought. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Energy,Environment,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
| Description | Guilty thoughts, not guilty feelings, help self-control |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Conflicting findings about the usefulness of guilt in self-control may be reconciled by distinguishing between aversive feelings of guilt and the anticipated concept of guilt (Giner-Sorolla, 2001; see also Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007). We propose that it is not the distress of guilt, per se, that aids self-control. Rather, it is the cognitive thought of that distress that activates negative valence in attitude linked with inherently pleasurable choices. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated (a) the affective and cognitive aspects of guilt (via recall of a personal guilt experience), (b) the cognitive aspects of guilt (via recall of an acquaintance's guilt experience), or (c) neither (control), with female dieters as participants. Then we tested their self-restraint on an unexpected temptation-a choice between a healthy or unhealthy snack. Only when the recalled experience was personal were there increased guilt feelings, compared to the other two conditions. However, more healthy choices compared to the control were made even in the condition recalling the friend's guilt, as well as the personal guilt recall condition. These results support a view of guilt's anticipatory and cognitive, rather than reactive and affective, role in self-regulation (cf. related study on prosocial behaviour, presentation by Piazza, EASP general meeting). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |