An Information-processing Perspective of Guilt and Shame: Situation Factors and Behavioral Tendencies
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Yang, Li-Tzu
Abstract
Both guilt and shame are complicated moral emotion. Past researches mainly focused on the disposition that an individual holds when they discussed the differences between the two emotions. The current research would like to put emphasis on the situation factors (target of focus and evaluation source) and behavioral tendencies of guilt and shame from the information-processing perspective. In Study one, we suggested that when an individual made a mistake, the target of focus and the perceived source of evaluation will influence the following emotion of guilt and shame. If an individual focuses on the well-being of others and perceive self-blaming, he or she will more likely having guilt feelings. On the other hands, if an individual focuses on the loss of him/herself, and perceiving negative evaluation from others, the shame feelings will be induced. The result showed that guilt feeling can be induced by other focus and self-blaming. However, self-focus and blamed-by-others didn’t induce more shame feelings. The hypotheses are partly supported. Study two added the characterlogical self-blame as the individual dispositions to discuss the interaction effects of situation factors and individual disposition on inducing guilt and shame. We suggested that the situation factors (target of focus and evaluation source) will interact with characterlogical self-blame to induce guilt and shame feeling. Also, we suggest that the two emotions will lead to different behavioral tendencies. Two positive and two negative behaviors are tested, including compensation, self-enhancement, escape, and denial. We suggested that both guilt and shame can lead to positive and negative behaviors. Guilt is thought to be induced by focusing others, and lead to other-oriented positive behaviors, such as compensation, while shame is induced by self-focusing, and lead to self-oriented positive behavior, such as self-enhancement. The result showed that guilt feeling can force individuals to compensate others and reduce the tendency of denial; while shame feeling can lead to both self-enhancing behavior and situation-escaping tendency.
Subjects
Guilt
Shame
Self-blame
behavioral tendencies
compensation
self-enhancement
escape
deny
Type
thesis
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