Abstract
Understanding the Psychology of Guilt
Guilt is a common negative emotion, experienced frequently in everyday life. It is likely that most adults have experienced this emotion at one time or another. The present research aims to advance our understanding of the nature of guilt by comparing it with regret in different contexts, examining the relation between guilt and being self-interest, and exploring motivations of sharing guilt with others. I ground my research in behavioral experiments with diverse populations (participants from the Netherlands, the United States, and China). Together, my research integrates theoretical frameworks from different literatures (self-identity theory, communication of emotion, and decision-making theory) and rigorous methods to better understand the emotion of guilt.
There are several important findings in my research. First, I found that people feel guilt and regret differently when different self-discrepancies are experienced. More specifically, it suggests that guilt is more likely to be felt when people experience “ought” self-discrepancies related failure when compared with regret. Second, I found that guilt is relationship oriented. It can motivate people to forgo self-interest even when choosing it is a morally right option. Finally, I explored the phenomenon of sharing of guilt with third parties and found that the strongest motivations for sharing guilt are venting, clarification and meaning, and advice and solution. It enriches the literature of social sharing of emotions by adding guilt.
This research is an important step toward better understanding of nature of guilt. Moreover, it has important practical implications for different fields, such as consumer research, education equality, and counselling support. For example, a considerable body of literature in marketing has studied effects of (anticipated) regret or (anticipated) guilt on consumer decisions and has found that people sometimes engage in behaviors (such as buying environmentally friendly product to reduce guilt; switching service to reduce regret) to reduce those emotions. However, the result of these research is inconsistent. Some find that guilt manipulations can increase charitable behavior, while other findings suggests that guilt does not relate to changes in pro-environmental behavior. Our research can help to explain this inconsistency. It could be that some guilt manipulation also induces regret in people, and this makes people to focus on improving self instead of caring about the environment or other people.
Guilt is a common negative emotion, experienced frequently in everyday life. It is likely that most adults have experienced this emotion at one time or another. The present research aims to advance our understanding of the nature of guilt by comparing it with regret in different contexts, examining the relation between guilt and being self-interest, and exploring motivations of sharing guilt with others. I ground my research in behavioral experiments with diverse populations (participants from the Netherlands, the United States, and China). Together, my research integrates theoretical frameworks from different literatures (self-identity theory, communication of emotion, and decision-making theory) and rigorous methods to better understand the emotion of guilt.
There are several important findings in my research. First, I found that people feel guilt and regret differently when different self-discrepancies are experienced. More specifically, it suggests that guilt is more likely to be felt when people experience “ought” self-discrepancies related failure when compared with regret. Second, I found that guilt is relationship oriented. It can motivate people to forgo self-interest even when choosing it is a morally right option. Finally, I explored the phenomenon of sharing of guilt with third parties and found that the strongest motivations for sharing guilt are venting, clarification and meaning, and advice and solution. It enriches the literature of social sharing of emotions by adding guilt.
This research is an important step toward better understanding of nature of guilt. Moreover, it has important practical implications for different fields, such as consumer research, education equality, and counselling support. For example, a considerable body of literature in marketing has studied effects of (anticipated) regret or (anticipated) guilt on consumer decisions and has found that people sometimes engage in behaviors (such as buying environmentally friendly product to reduce guilt; switching service to reduce regret) to reduce those emotions. However, the result of these research is inconsistent. Some find that guilt manipulations can increase charitable behavior, while other findings suggests that guilt does not relate to changes in pro-environmental behavior. Our research can help to explain this inconsistency. It could be that some guilt manipulation also induces regret in people, and this makes people to focus on improving self instead of caring about the environment or other people.
| Original language | English |
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| Award date | 8 Apr 2022 |
| Place of Publication | s.l. |
| Publisher | |
| Publication status | Published - 8 Apr 2022 |