Reappraising the Moral Nature of Emotions in Decision Making: The Case of Shame and Guilt

Abstract

Emotions play a crucial role in moral behavior. The present paper does not contest this point but argues that qualifications of certain feelings such as shame and guilt as moral emotions should not exclusively be based on a proximal analysis of their function. A proximal analysis details how moral emotions produce moral behavior. Emotions are qualified as moral when they are elicited by concerns for others rather than the self and produce prosocial action tendencies. Although researchers have acknowledged that moral emotions may also have an ultimate function that details why it is in the individual interest that these moral effects occur, they have neglected to translate such ideas into testable hypotheses. Using guilt and shame as an example, we show how an analysis of ultimate functions accommodates recent findings, which contest the view that guilt is more moral than shame and provides new insights as to when and why moral emotions will produce moral effects.

The social side of shame: approach versus withdrawal

“…Both in our theorising and in our experiments, we have focussed upon experiences of shame. Although people's general tendency to experience shame, also called shame-proneness (Tangney, 1991), is related to one's actual shame experience (state shame), it does not always have similar consequences (see De Hooge et al, 2008;Nelissen, Breugelmans, & Zeelenberg, 2013). Shame-proneness has been related to negative aspects such as depression, shyness, anxiety, and anger, and it therefore remains to be seen whether shame-prone people would also opt for social approach when provided with the opportunity of situation choice.…”

A Comparison of the Inherent Adaptivity Perspective and Functionalist Perspective on Guilt and Shame

“…Tangney suggests that partialling shame from guilt gives the researcher a measure of "shame-free guilt" which she contends is a more pure measure of the guilt construct [42]. However, many authors disagree with this partialling technique [51][52][53][54]. Further, guilt, as measured by the TOSCA, has been shown to be positively related to several measures of adaptive functioning.…”

“…The functionalist perspective of guilt and shame is built on evolutionary and developmental theory [54,79]. Hutcherson and Gross state that the functionalist perspective "argues that emotions are adaptive solutions comprising a coordinated set of appraisals, communicative gestures, physiological responses, and action tendencies tailored to respond to crucial problems faced by our species over the millennia" [80] (p. 720).…”

“…Conversely, higher status individuals are less likely to express shame [92]. Thus, within an evolutionary framework, shame reminds the individual of his or her relative social rank, lets other group members know the individual is aware of violation of public moral norms, and prompts submissive, appeasement behavior among lower status group members [54,[93][94][95]. In support of this, a recent study by Hejdenberg and Andrews demonstrated that shame and anger were linked only in situations involving criticism and put-downs and not due to a general angry temperament [96].…”

The Role of Language and Cultural Orientation in Guilt and Shame Experienced by Bilingual Female Speakers

“…Shame calls for others (either real or imagined) to forget what was done, whereas guilt asks others to forgive. Although most empirical evidence, largely from the Western world, has supported Lewis's definition of these two self-conscious emotions as substantially different in the manner in which they are felt (Tangney et al, 1996;Wicker et al, 1983), evidence of undifferentiation also exists (Nelissen, Breugelmans, & Zeelenberg, 2013;Smith & Ellsworth, 1985;1987). For instance, Wicker and colleagues (1983) found that differences in the ratings of the two emotions on several phenomenological dimensions were mostly of magnitude rather than of valence.…”