When feeling bad makes you look good: Guilt, shame, and person perception

Abstract

In two studies, we examined how expressions of guilt and shame affected person perception. In the first study, participants read an autobiographical vignette in which the writer did something wrong and reported feeling either guilt, shame, or no emotion. The participants then rated the writer's motivations, beliefs, and traits, as well as their own feelings toward the writer. The person expressing feelings of guilt or shame was perceived more positively on a number of attributes, including moral motivation and social attunement, than the person who reported feeling no emotion. In the second study, the writer of the vignette reported experiencing (or not experiencing) cognitive and motivational aspects of guilt or shame. Expressing a desire to apologise (guilt) or feelings of worthlessness (private shame) resulted in more positive impressions than did reputational concerns (public shame) or a lack of any of these feelings. Our results indicate that verbal expressions of moral emotions such as guilt and shame influence perception of moral character as well as likeability.

Effects of users’ envy and shame on social comparison that occurs on social network services

“…It has been known to hinder motivation (Weiner, Russell, & Lerman, 1978) and to exacerbate future behavior of this kind (Ames, 1978). In summary, shame is related to negative appraisal and created shame lowers the self-value and promotes social withdrawal in the form of an avoidance of social relationships (Barrett, 1995;Eisenberg, 2000;Stearns & Parrott, 2012;Tangney, Niedenthal, Covert, & Barlow, 1998). Therefore, we hypothesize the following:…”

Norms and the Flexibility of Moral Action

“…These moral emotions emerge early in childhood (Vaish, 2018), and are negative evaluations of one's own morally transgressive behavior (Eisenberg, 2000). Guilt appears to be a particularly salient motivator of reparative behavior, as it encourages people to make amends for violating moral norms, and can thus enhance how positively the transgressing person is perceived (Stearns & Parrott, 2012). Guilt-proneness consistently correlates with measures of perspective-taking and is inversely related to antisocial and criminal behavior (Tangney et al, 2007).…”

No convincing evidence outgroups are denied uniquely human characteristics: Distinguishing intergroup preference from trait-based dehumanization

“…However, another interpretation is that the secondary emotions utilised in previous research were prosocial in nature and thus individuals who expressed them were simply evaluated more positively (e.g., Stearns & Parrott, 2012). In a final pre-registered and highly powered study, we pitted these two alternative interpretations against each other.…”

“…Although these are likely to be negative to experience, they are not antisocial. Indeed, guilt and shame can both be considered prosocial in that they indicate an appropriate moral response, leading people who display them to be viewed more positively along a number of dimensions (Stearns & Parrott, 2012). Thus, it is not clear why, in the body of work on infrahumanisation, the argument is so often made that empirical findings separate infrahumanisation from ingroup favouritism when only prosocial ascriptions are tested.…”