Eliciting Guilty Feelings: A Preliminary Study Differentiating Deontological and Altruistic Guilt

Abstract

Guilt has been identified as both an intrapsychic and an interpersonal emotion. The current study presents evidence of the existence of two senses of guilt, deontological and altruistic guilt, induced through different experimental paradigms. Deontological guilt evolves from having slighted moral authority or norms, while altruistic guilt arises from selfish behavior and the distress of others. We hypothesize that specific stimuli would evoke, separately, deontological guilt and altruistic/interpersonal guilt feelings. Two different procedures were used to test our hypothesis, adding two emotions as control conditions (i.e. anger and sadness). Results clearly indicate that two different guilt emotions can be evoked separately, by appropriate stimulation. Findings and possible clinical implications are discussed.

Do not play God: contrasting effects of deontological guilt and pride on decision-making

“…Additionally, the AG group presented a significantly higher decrease in happiness scores as compared to the other two groups. Similar emotional “halo effects” were also found in previous studies (see Basile and Mancini, 2011 relative to compassion and sadness, and D’Olimpio and Mancini, 2014 relative to anger). These effects were consistent with the goal of AG, which is to promote pro-social and reparative behaviors toward the victim and feeling sorry for her/him ( Mancini, 2008 ; Basile and Mancini, 2011 ).…”

“…It might be that the scenarios described in some of the stories used for the DG induction also elicited in some participants altruistic and empathic feelings (as accounted for by post-induction compassion scores, which were strongly enhanced in the original DG group). It is worth noting that previous experiments combined the use of internal dialog sentences with the exposure to emotional facial expressions ( Basile and Mancini, 2011 ). This latter method might be more effective to separately induce the two types of guilt.…”

“…The paper and pencil procedure has been used in previous studies differentiating self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt ( Smith et al, 2002 ), and embarrassment ( Tangney et al, 1996 ). Moreover group administration has been proven to be effective in the induction of guilt in general ( Smith et al, 2002 ) and in the independent induction of AG and DG ( Basile and Mancini, 2011 ). The experimenter instructed participants to remain silent for the entire duration of the experiment and to avoid any interaction.…”

“…Participants were instructed to begin reading at the same time and the induction took place simultaneously for all of them. The group procedure was also successfully adopted in a previous study, in which DG and AG were independently induced ( Basile and Mancini, 2011 ). The order of the stories was randomized across participants.…”

“…Recent empirical studies have tested the predictive power of this model, showing that it is possible to separately induce AG and DG by using facial expressions combined with the internal dialog typically connected with each guilt feeling ( Basile and Mancini, 2011 ). Moreover, neuroscientific results revealed that different neuronal networks are involved in each kind of guilt, with the insula selectively responding to DG stimuli ( Basile et al, 2010 ).…”