Why do people (not) share guilt with others?

ABSTRACTDo people share their feelings of guilt with others and, if so, what are the reasons for doing this or not doing this? Even though the social sharing of negative emotional experiences, such as regret, has been extensively studied, not much is known about whether people share feelings of guilt and why. We report three studies exploring these questions. In Study 1, we re-analysed data about sharing guilt experiences posted on a social website called "Yahoo Answers", and found that people share intrapersonal as well as interpersonal guilt experiences with others online. Study 2 found that the main motivations of sharing guilt (compared with the sharing of regret) were "venting", "clarification and meaning", and "gaining advice". Study 3 found that people were more likely to share experiences of interpersonal guilt and more likely to keep experiences of intrapersonal guilt to themselves. Together, these studies contribute to a further understanding of the social sharing of the emotion guilt.

Greed: What Is It Good for?

What is greed good for? Greed is ubiquitous, suggesting that it must have some benefits, but it is also often condemned. In a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 2,367, 51.3% female, Mage = 54.06, SD = 17.90), we examined two questions. First, inspired by Eriksson et al., we studied whether greedy people generate more personal and household income (economic outcomes), have more sexual partners, longer relationships, and more offspring (evolutionary outcomes), and are more satisfied in life (psychological outcomes). We found that greedy individuals had higher economic outcomes, mixed evolutionary outcomes, and lower psychological outcomes. Second, we compared greed and self-interest. We found that they differed in terms of economic outcomes, and partly in terms of evolutionary outcomes, but that they were similar in terms of psychological outcomes. This research provides insights into what greed is and does. Directions for further research are discussed.

Psychological patterns of poverty in Russia: Relationships among socioeconomic conditions, motivation, self-regulation and well-being.

This article aims to extend our understanding of the link between socioeconomic conditions and psychological variables. It focuses on the effects of five distinct socioeconomic indicators on a range of psychological variables in samples of 162 individuals living below the poverty line and 188 of their more well-off counterparts in Russia. Participants completed a questionnaire containing measures of socioeconomic indicators (i.e., income, education, perceived deprivation, subjective socioeconomic status, and childhood socioeconomic status) and psychological variables representing self-regulation, motivation, and well-being. Our main findings include: (a) significant effects of socioeconomic status on all psychological variables, which are in line with other studies seeking to answer similar questions, (b) varying importance of different socioeconomic indicators for different psychological variables, and (c) centrality of all socioeconomic indicators except childhood socioeconomic status, and of values of openness to change and self-transcendence, satisfaction with life and self-esteem in the network of relationships between socioeconomic indicators and psychological variables.

The good, bad and ugly of dispositional greed.

Greed is the insatiable desire for more. It is an important economic motive with numerous implications for consumer behavior and decision processes. We describe research showcasing the good, the bad and the ugly of dispositional greed. The good of greed refers to the potential advantageous consequences for society as a whole and for greedy people themselves. The bad of greed refers to the potential harm that it causes to others, and the ugliness of greed refers to the disadvantageous consequences of being greedy for the people themselves.

Anticipated guilt and going against one's self-interest.

To lend money to someone and to later ask this same person to pay the money back should be relatively unproblematic in modern, monetized societies. Still, some people find it difficult to ask for lent money to be paid back, even though it is in their own interest that this happen and they have the legitimate right to ask their money back. In this article, we examine 1 reason why people might experience such difficulties: the anticipation of guilt. In Study 1, the majority of participants from 3 different countries indicated that they sometimes did not ask money back because doing so would make them feel guilty. Study 2 found that the more people anticipated guilt about asking their money back, the less willing they were to do this. Study 3 found that the effect of guilt became less strong when more money was at stake. Study 4 found that people anticipated more guilt and were less likely to ask money back when the other person was poor compared to rich. Studies 5 and 6 found that the amount of harm people anticipated by asking the money back mediated the effect. Taken together, we interpret these studies (Ntotal = 2988) to showcase the social nature of guilt, in that it can motivate people to sacrifice their (financial) self-interest in order to protect relationships with others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Show or hide pride? Selective inhibition of pride expressions as a function of relevance of achievement domain.

Pride expressions draw positive attention to one's achievements. There is also evidence that expressing pride can result in negative outcomes, such as being envied and negatively evaluated. We investigated whether people anticipate such negative outcomes and regulate their pride expressions accordingly. Five experiments (total N = 953) suggest that people selectively inhibit their expressions of pride when their achievements are relevant to the audience, and that failing to do so could result in social costs. Pride expressions were reported to be less intense when the achievement was relevant to the observer of those expressions, both in hypothetical (Experiments 1a, b, c, 2a, b, and 3) and actual pride experiences (Experiment 4; first four experiments Hedge's g = 0.50). This effect was independent of the experienced intensity of pride. In Experiment 5, we recorded actual pride expressions of people expressing pride to relevant and nonrelevant audiences and found that raters also perceived pride expressions to be less intense toward relevant than nonrelevant audiences. The results illustrate the importance of social context in understanding the intensity of pride expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Evidence for Opportunity Cost Neglect in the Poor.

People often neglect opportunity costs: They do not fully take into account forgone alternatives outside of a particular choice set. Several scholars have suggested that poor people should be more likely to spontaneously consider opportunity costs, because budget constraints should lead to an increased focus on trade-offs. We did not find support for this hypothesis in five high-powered experiments (total N = 2325). The experiments used different products (both material and experiential) with both high and low prices (from $8.50 to $249.99) and different methods of reminding participants of opportunity costs. High-income and low-income participants showed an equally strong decrease in willingness to buy when reminded of opportunity costs, implying that both the rich and the poor neglect opportunity costs.

The social side of shame: approach versus withdrawal.

At present, the consequences and functions of experiences of shame are not yet well understood. Whereas psychology literature typically portrays shame as being bad for social relations, motivating social avoidance and withdrawal, there are recent indications that shame can be reinterpreted as having clear social tendencies in the form of motivating approach and social affiliation. Yet, until now, no research has ever put these alternative interpretations of shame-motivated behaviours directly to the test. The present paper presents such a test by studying the extent to which shame motivates a preference for social withdrawal versus a preference for social approach. Two studies (N = 148 and N = 133) using different shame inductions both showed people experiencing shame to prefer to be together with others (social approach) over being alone (social withdrawal). In addition, the preference for a social situation was found to be unique for shame; it was not found for the closely related emotion of guilt. Taken together, these findings provide direct empirical support for the idea that shame can have positive interpersonal consequences.

An exploration of third parties' preference for compensation over punishment: six experimental demonstrations.

Research suggests that to restore equity, third parties prefer compensation of a victim over the punishment of a perpetrator. It remains unclear, however, whether this preference for compensation is stable or specific to certain situations. In six experimental studies, we find that adjustments in the characteristics of the situation or in the available behavioral options hardly modify the preference of compensation over punishment. This preference for compensation was found even in cases where punishment might refrain a perpetrator from acting unfairly again in the future, and even when punishment has a greater impact in restoring equity than compensation does. Thus, the preference of compensation over punishment appears to be quite robust. Implications and ideas for future research are discussed.

The self and others in the experience of pride.

Pride is seen as both a self-conscious emotion as well as a social emotion. These categories are not mutually exclusive, but have brought forth different ideas about pride as either revolving around the self or as revolving around one's relationship with others. Current measures of pride do not include intrapersonal elements of pride experiences. Social comparisons, which often cause experiences of pride, contain three elements: the self, the relationship between the self and another person, and the other person. From the literature on pride, we distilled three related elements; perceptions and feelings of self-inflation, other-distancing, and other-devaluation. In four studies, we explored whether these elements were present in pride experiences. We did so at an implicit (Experiment 1; N = 218) and explicit level (Experiment 2; N = 125), in an academic setting with in vivo (Experiment 3; N = 203) and imagined pride experiences (Experiment 4; N = 126). The data consistently revealed that the experience of pride is characterised by self-inflation, not by other-distancing nor other-devaluation.

The elusive constellations of poverty.

Pepper & Nettle describe possible processes underlying what they call a behavioral constellation of deprivation (BCD). Although we are certain about the application of evolutionary models to our understanding of poverty, we are less certain about the utility of behavioral constellations. The empirical record on poverty-related behaviors is much more divergent and broad than such constellations suggest.

On the context dependence of emotion displays: Perceptions of gold medalists' expressions of pride.

In spite of various claims for cross-cultural differences in the experience of pride, studies on the expression of pride have revealed few cross-cultural differences. Five studies using archival data from Olympic and national championships do show cross-cultural differences in the expression of pride and other positive emotions in pride-eliciting contexts, contingent on the social context of the expression, notably the in-group or out-group status of the audience. Chinese gold medalists were perceived to express less pride than American medalists when outperforming in-group competitors; when outperforming out-group members, however, no or smaller cross-cultural differences were observed. These findings are important because they indicate that cultural norms about emotion expression may be activated only in situations in which they serve a function in coordinating people's behaviour.

Dispositional greed.

Greed is an important motive: it is seen as both productive (a source of ambition; the motor of the economy) and destructive (undermining social relationships; the cause of the late 2000s financial crisis). However, relatively little is known about what greed is and does. This article reports on 5 studies that develop and test the 7-item Dispositional Greed Scale (DGS). Study 1 (including 4 separate samples from 2 different countries, total N = 6092) provides evidence for the construct and discriminant validity of the DGS in terms of positive correlations with maximization, self-interest, envy, materialism, and impulsiveness, and negative correlations with self-control and life satisfaction. Study 2 (N = 290) presents further evidence for discriminant validity, finding that the DGS predicts greedy behavioral tendencies over and above materialism. Furthermore, the DGS predicts economic behavior: greedy people allocate more money to themselves in dictator games (Study 3, N = 300) and ultimatum games (Study 4, N = 603), and take more in a resource dilemma (Study 5, N = 305). These findings shed light on what greed is and does, how people differ in greed, and how greed can be measured. In addition, they show the importance of greed in economic behavior and provide directions for future studies.

When envy leads to schadenfreude.

Previous research has yielded inconsistent findings concerning the relationship between envy and schadenfreude. Three studies examined whether the distinction between benign and malicious envy can resolve this inconsistency. We found that malicious envy is related to schadenfreude, while benign envy is not. This result held both in the Netherlands where benign and malicious envy are indicated by separate words (Study 1: Sample A, N = 139; Sample B, N = 150), and in the USA where a single word is used to denote both types (Study 2, N = 180; Study 3, N = 349). Moreover, the effect of malicious envy on schadenfreude was independent of other antecedents of schadenfreude (such as feelings of inferiority, disliking the target person, anger, and perceived deservedness). These findings improve our understanding of the antecedents of schadenfreude and help reconcile seemingly contradictory findings on the relationship between envy and schadenfreude.

Defining greed.

Although greed is both hailed as the motor of economic growth and blamed as the cause of economic crises, very little is known about its psychological underpinnings. Five studies explored lay conceptualizations of greed among U.S. and Dutch participants using a prototype analysis. Study 1 identified features related to greed. Study 2 determined the importance of these features; the most important features were classified as central (e.g., self-interested, never satisfied), whereas less important features were classified as peripheral (e.g., ambition, addiction). Subsequently, we found that, compared to peripheral features, participants recalled central features better (Study 3), faster (Study 4), and these central features were more present in real-life episodes of greed (Study 5). These findings provide a better understanding of the elements that make up the experience of greed and provide insights into how greed can be manipulated and measured in future research.

Generality and cultural variation in the experience of regret.

Regret is the prototypical decision-related emotion. Most theory and research on regret comes from the United States and Europe, but recent research has suggested potential cross-cultural differences in regret. We examined generality and cultural variation in the experience of regret. A cross-cultural study compared experiences of regret with those of disappointment and guilt as reported by participants from the United States (n = 143), the Netherlands (n = 147), Israel (n = 148), and Taiwan (n = 115). We found strong evidence for generality of the distinct emotion components of regret, compared with those of disappointment and guilt. We also found cultural variation in the frequency and intensity of regret in intrapersonal situations (regrets about outcomes affecting the self) and interpersonal regrets (regrets about outcomes affecting others). Whereas in the U.S. sample, regret was experienced more intensely in intrapersonal than interpersonal situations, both emotions were experienced more intensely in interpersonal situations in the Taiwanese sample.

On the valence of surprise.

While surprise is a common emotion in everyday life, some of its fundamental characteristics are still unclear. For example, what does surprise feel like, positive or negative? The emotion literature has been somewhat unclear about the experiential valence of surprise. Surprise has been depicted as a pre-affective state, or as an emotion that can be both positive and negative, depending on the goal conduciveness of the surprising event. Based on recent work on cognitive consistency and neuroscientific/psychophysiological studies on surprise, we explored the possibility that surprise may be a (mildly) negative emotion in a study of autobiographical recall of unexpected and surprising events (Experiment 1) and in two studies of facial expressions of surprise (Experiments 2 and 3a/b). The studies show that experience of surprise and the perception of surprise in others may indeed be initially negative. We furthermore show how linguistic features of surprise and the temporal dynamics may have contributed to previous confusion regarding its valence.

Vicarious shame.

We examined an account of vicarious shame that explains how people can experience a self-conscious emotion for the behaviour of another person. Two divergent processes have been put forward to explain how another's behaviour links to the self. The group-based emotion account explains vicarious shame in terms of an in-group member threatening one's social identity by behaving shamefully. The empathy account explains vicarious shame in terms of empathic perspective taking; people imagine themselves in another's shameful behaviour. In three studies using autobiographical recall and experimental inductions, we revealed that both processes can explain why vicarious shame arises in different situations, what variation can be observed in the experience of vicarious shame, and how all vicarious shame can be related to a threat to the self. Results are integrated in a functional account of shame.

A functionalist account of shame-induced behaviour.

Recent research has shown that shame activates both a restore and a protect motive (De Hooge, Zeelenberg, & Breugelmans, 2010), explaining the hitherto unexpected finding that shame can lead to both approach and avoidance behaviours. In the present article we show a clear difference in priority and development of restore and protect motives over time. Our experiment reveals that shame mainly motivates approach behaviour to restore the damaged self, but that this restore motive decreases when situational factors make it too risky or difficult to restore. In contrast, the motive to protect one's damaged self from further harm is not influenced by such situational factors. As a consequence, the approach behaviour that shame activates may change over time. These findings add to our understanding of the motivational processes and behaviours following from shame.

What is moral about guilt? Acting "prosocially" at the disadvantage of others.

For centuries economists and psychologists have argued that the morality of moral emotions lies in the fact that they stimulate prosocial behavior and benefit others in a person's social environment. Many studies have shown that guilt, arguably the most exemplary moral emotion, indeed motivates prosocial behavior in dyadic social dilemma situations. When multiple persons are involved, however, the moral and prosocial nature of this emotion can be questioned. The present article shows how guilt can have beneficial effects for the victim of one's actions but also disadvantageous effects for other people in the social environment. A series of experiments, with various emotion inductions and dependent measures, all reveal that guilt motivates prosocial behavior toward the victim at the expense of others around-but not at the expense of oneself. These findings illustrate that a thorough understanding of the functioning of emotions is necessary to understand their moral nature.