Guilt is never to be doubted? A novel experimental procedure

• Authors: Paweł Muniak , Wojciech Kulesza

Abstracts

EN

The literature shows that researchers used a wide variety of types of guilt manipulation. A common feature of these studies was that the subjects were not able to doubt their guilt. Additionally, these methods did not take into account the psychometric measurement of this emotion, as well as the possibility of simultaneously inducing other feelings, such as sadness or anger. In a carefully designed experiments, we found a method that is approachable to arrange, which additionally seems to be free from these methodological flaws. In our study participants were shown an arranged message suggesting that the experimenter’s work has been destroyed. In experiment 1 (N = 44), we showed that the method proposed by us significantly affects guilt. In experiment 2 (N = 89), we replicated our result, additionally demonstrating that our procedure significantly affected only the emotion of guilt (compared to other emotions) - which is a novelty. It also has been shown that complying with the request of the victim (conditional forgiveness) makes us feel less guilty, but it does not restore liking to this person - which was established by previous research. The discussion section summarizes the results, indicates their limitations, and proposes directions for future research.

Keywords

EN

guilt; forgiveness; liking; social influence

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 44-50

Dates

published

2020

Contributors

author

Paweł Muniak

author

Wojciech Kulesza

Identifiers

Biblioteka Nauki

2122089