The Temporal Pattern of Shame and Guilt

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The Temporal Pattern of Shame and Guilt

21 January 2014

Joost Knaap

S1715267

Supervisor: Dr Kai Epstude

Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences

University of Groningen


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The temporal pattern of Shame and Guilt

2

Samenvatting

In eerder onderzoek werd bewijs gevonden dat acties (iets gedaan hebben) meer spijt tot gevolg

hebben op de korte termijn, terwijl passiviteit (iets niet gedaan hebben) juist meer spijt tot gevolg

heeft naarmate een langere tijdsduur verstrijkt. In deze scriptie wordt op deze resultaten

voortgebouwd. Onderzocht werd of een dergelijk tijd-effect ook bestaat voor de emoties

schaamte en schuld. Schaamte is een emotie die zich vooral richt op het zelf, terwijl schuld zich

richt op situaties. De hypothese in het onderzoek was dat voor de ervaring van schaamte niet zou

uitmaken of sprake was van iets gedaan of niet gedaan hebben, in tegenstelling met de ervaring

van schuld. Dit omdat het voor mensen moeilijk is voor te stellen datzijzelfanders zouden zijn

geweest (zelfbeeld is stabiel door de tijd heen), maar daarentegen juist makkelijker om zich voor

te stellen dat eensituatieanders zou zijn geweest. Deelnemers lazen verschillende versies vanscenarios die ofwel schaamte ofwel schuld opriepen. Daarnaast werd ook handelen versus niet

handelen en tijdsduur gemanipuleerd, hetgeen resulteerde in een 2x2x2 tussen proefpersonen

onderzoeksopzet. De hypothese werd niet bevestigd. Wel werden significante verschillen

gevonden tussen gebeurtenissen die zich kort gelden (1 dag) en lang gelden (6 maanden) hadden

voorgedaan voor het schuld-scenario. Daarnaast gaven proefpersonen die het schaamte-scenario

hadden gelezen aan meer schaamte te ervaren als gevolg van iets dat ze gedaan hadden ten

opzichte van iets dat ze niet gedaan hadden. De implicaties hiervan voor toekomstig onderzoekworden besproken.


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Abstract

In previous research it has been found that actions produce more regret in the short term, but

contrarily- failures to act produce more regret in the long run. This thesis draws on these

findings, investigating whether such a temporal effect also exists for the other counterfactual

emotions shame and guilt. It is hypothesized that for guilt such an effect would exist, but not for

shame. Participants read about situations evoking either shame or guilt, over actions and

inactions (event type) on the short-term or long run (2x2x2 between subjects design). The results

did not give support for this hypothesis. However, significant differences between events that

happened in the short term (1 day ago) compared to events that happened in the long run (6

months ago) were found for the participants that read a guilt-inducing scenario. When

participants were presented with the shame scenario a significant difference between event type(action and inaction) was found: participants reported more shame because of actions compared

to inactions. Implications for further research are discussed.

Keywords: shame, guilt, regret, counterfactual thinking, simulation heuristic, norm theory,

action, inaction


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Foreword

I would like to thank Kai for his supervision of this thesis. Not only did he give constructive

feedback and inspiration, he also also places a high value in interpersonal relations. I remember

him, when we had an appointment, always first asking how I was doing before going to

business. I did appreciate that a lot. I would also like to thank my parents for their support

throughout my studies and Amy for proofreading parts of it.

Conducting a large research project and writing a thesis about is was not always an easy job.

However, I found and still find that counterfactual emotions (the topic of this thesis) is one of the

most interesting and compelling subjects in (social) psychology and I am glad to have been able

to explore it and maybe even having contributed a little to the understanding of the complex

functioning of these emotions. Writing this thesis has been a valuable experience.

Amsterdam, January 2014

Joost Knaap


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For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been!

-- John Greenleaf Whittier (1989)

If we didnt have birthdays, you wouldnt be you

If youd never been born, well then what would you do?

If youd never been born, well then what would you be?

You mightbe a fish! Or a toad in a tree!

You might be a doorknob! Or three baked potatoes!

You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes!

Or worse than that.. You might be a WASNT!

A Wasnt has no fun at all. No, he doesnt.

A Wasnt just isnt. he isnt present.

But you You are YOU! And, now isnt that pleasant.

-- Theodor Seuss Geisel (1959)

Every path is the right path. Everything could have been anything else and it would have just as

much meaning.

-- Quote from the movieMr Nobody(Van Dormael, 2009)


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Contents

LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................................... 7

SIMULATION HEURISTIC............................................................................................................................................. 7

REGRET................................................................................................................................................................ 10

SHAME AND GUILT,WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? ............................................................................................................ 13

HYPOTHESES......................................................................................................................................................... 14

METHOD ................................................................................................................................. 16

RESULTS................................................................................................................................. 18

DISCUSSION .......................................................................................................................... 21

REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 24

APPENDIX A: ADAPTED VERSION OF THE TEST OF SELF-CONSCIOUS AFFECT..27


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Literature review

Simulation heuristic

Humankind has the ability to do a remarkable thing: it can travel forward or backward in

subjective time, that is: reviewing and thinking about past events, which can be viewed as

mental time travelling (Mandel, Hilton & Catellani, 2005). Mandeland colleagues (2005,

p.1) describe this feature of the human mind as a truly outstanding evolutionary feat, one that

has propelled our species far beyond even the most formidable powers of retrospection.

Kahneman and Tversky (1982) were among the first to theorize about this phenomenon.

They describe two classes of mental operations that can bring things to the mind: retrieval or

construction. With regard to the construction class they come up with a mental operation they

term the simulation heuristic. This simulation heuristic holds that people run events through

in their minds chronologically to assess likely consequences and to aid judgement. Examples

of judgmental activities in which mental simulation appears to be involved are (Kahneman &

Tversky, 1982): prediction (for example when imagining how people will behave in the

future), assessing the probability of a specified event (e.g. how do you assess the likelihood

of American armed intervention in Saudi Arabia in the next decade?) assessing conditioned

probabilities (e.g. if civil war breaks out in Saudi Arabia, what are the likely consequences?)

or assessments of causality (to test whether event A caused event B, we may undo event A in

our mind, and observe whether B still occurs in the simulation).

Another important example of the simulation heuristic (on which the focus lies in this

research paper) iscounterfactual reasoning; the mental simulation of how events might have

occurred in a different manner(Fiske & Taylor, 2008). Roese and Olson (1995) argue that

this ability to imagine alternative (i.e. counterfactual) outcomes is an omnipresent and

essential feature of our (mental) lives.

Counterfactuals are frequently conditional propositions that include both an antecedent

and a consequent (e.g. if A (antecedent) than B (consequent); Roese, 1997). Kahneman

and Tversky (1982) proposed a series of hypotheses. One of these was that counterfactual

simulations are normality-restoring. For example, in their study, participants read a scenario

about Mr. Jones, a 47 year old father of three and a successful banking executive. There were

two versions of the scenario. In the first version Mr. Jones left his office at the normal time

but he took a different route as than he normally did (route-scenario). In the second version of

the story, Mr. Jones left the office early to take care of some household chores, but did drive


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home along his normal route. The scenario also included the information that he occasionally

took a different route along the shore, but did not do so in this instance. In both versions of the

scenario Mr. Jones got involved in a car accident in which he is killed. After reading the

scenario participants were asked to produce, if only... statements.

It was found that the subjects that read the route-scenario were likely to undo the accident

by imagining Mr. Jones driving along his normal route (restoring of normality) instead of

leaving office at a different time (introducing an exception). After reading the time-scenario

participants were more likely to imagine Mr. Jones leaving office at the usual time (restoring

of normality) than think of a version in which he drove along the shore (introducing an

exception). It appears that it is easier for a person that engages in counterfactual thinking to

imagine that something that rarely happens would not have happened at all (i.e. easier to

reason that Mr. Jones would have left the office at the usual time or that he would have driven

home along his normal route). Only very rarely people tend to undo events by making

mutations that involve mentally deleting normal antecedents or inventing new ones instead of

deleting abnormal antecedents.

Another idea by Kahneman and Tversky (1982) was that the ease of undoing has

implications for the intensity of emotions that people experience and judgements they make.

For example, a second scenario depicted two persons, Mr. Crane and Mr. Tees, who were

scheduled to leave the airport on different flights, at the same time (Kahneman & Tversky,

1982). Both used the same car and were 30 minutes late for their flights, due to traffic

congestion. Mr Crane is told that his flight left on time, whereas Mr. Tees is told that his flight

was delayed and has just left, only 5 minutes ago. Participants were asked to indicate who

they thought would be more upset. Almost every participant (96 %) stated that Mr. Tees

would be the person most upset about missing his flight. This is remarkable, because strict

objectively seen, there is not a real difference in outcome between the two, both are in the

same situation of missing their flights.

Kahneman and Tversky (1982) argue that it seems that participants engage in a

simulation exercise, in which they test how close they came to reaching their flight in time.

Mr. Tees is now thought to be more disappointed because it is easierfor him to imagine that

he could have still caught his plane if he would have arrived 5 minutes earlier on the airport,

whereas it is more difficult for Mr. Tees to imagine a situation in which the 30 minutes delay

could have been avoided.


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Norm theory

To shortly summarize the key concepts proposed by Kahneman and Tversky (1982):

counterfactuals are normality restoring (1), some alternatives are closer to reality than others

(2) and the effect this has on the ease of undoing is linked with the intensity of emotions

experienced (3). These propositions are included and elaborated further upon in norm theory

(Kahneman and Miller, 1986). Norm theory states that the judgemental and affective

reactions to past events are influenced by a certain standard of comparison; cognitive

reference points that are used as a norm (Mandel et al., 2005). People who engage in

counterfactual thought seek to find restoration of that norm-state. In norm theory,

counterfactual alternatives are thought to be constructed ad hoc (online).

An assumption that is derived from norm theory is the emotional amplificationhypothesis(Kahneman & Miller, 1986). According to this hypothesis the affective response to

an event is enhanced if its causes are abnormal. The findings by Kahneman and Tversky

(1982) that Mr. Tees would be most upset after missing his flight (with only 5 minutes), for

example, are a clear exhibition of this hypothesis (because Mr. Tees plane was delayed,

which is a deviation from normality). Another exhibition of norm theory was demonstrated by

Miller and McFarland (1986). Participants were presented with a scenario in which a person

fell victim of a shooting incident while walking to a shop (Miller & McFarland, 1986). In oneversion it was a shop he frequently went by, in another version it was a shop he rarely visited.

The dependent variable was the amount of money participants awarded to the victim as

compensation. It was found that the participants awarded significantly more money to the

victim who went to the shop he usually very rarely frequented (e.g. the more abnormal

version).

The emotional amplification hypothesis implies that counterfactuals tend to have a

direction. They can be either positive when imagined alternative circumstances are evaluated

better than actuality (upward counterfactuals), or negative when alternative circumstances are

evaluated worse than actuality (downward counterfactuals; Roese, 1997).

Both types of counterfactual thinking, downward and upward, seem to have a

functional basis. Downward counterfactual thinking, for example, can be adaptive in helping

to (re)gain positive affect (Roese, 1994). As for downward counterfactual thinking, feeling

bad results in if only-thoughts, which leads to the imagination of a better world (Roese,

1997). In these situations imagining how things could have happened differently facilitates a


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better understanding of the world. This reconsideration of the past, and creating alternatives to

what actually has happened, can be useful in helping to adapt, and improve outcomes in the

future (e.g. Roese, 1994; Roese, 1997). For example, if Tommy failed an exam and realises

that he would have passed it, had he studied more, than he has identified a causally antecedent

action that he can use in the future to improve his performance (Roese, 1997). Although

upward counterfactuals can have both positive (better understanding of the world) and

negative consequences (feeling bad) that often stand in a state of tension with each other, the

net result will thus be positive on average (e.g. better future performance; Roese, 1997).

Regret

Counterfactual thinking is associated with specific affective experiences. Regret is, together with

the self-conscious emotions shame and guilt (see the next paragraph)pre-eminently associated

with the production of counterfactual thoughts. Gilovich and Medvec (1994, p.357) use an aptly

metaphor: Regrets are like taxes: nearly everyone must suffer them. It seems almost impossible

for a person to live his life without regretting anything. Regret is typically felt in response to

decisions that produce unfavorable outcomes, compared to the alternative (Van Dijk &

Zeelenberg, 2006). It has been found that regret leads to feelings that one should have known

better, having a sinking feeling, thoughts about the mistake that was made and opportunities that

were lost, feeling a tendency to kick oneself, and wanting to undo the event and get a second

chance (Zeelenberg, van Dijk, Manstead & van der Pligt, 1998).

One important factor determining the amplitude of regret is whether the emotions was

caused by actions or inactions. Numerous studies (see for an overview e.g. Gilovich & Medvec,

1995) show that people experience more regret caused by actions than by failures to act (e.g.

failing to seize the moment). For example Kahneman and Tversky (1982) let participants read

the following scenario:

Mr. Paul owns share in company A. During the past year he considered switching to

stock in company B, but he decided against it. He now finds out he would have been

better off by $1.200 if he had switched to the stock of company B. Mr. George owned

shares in company B. During the past year he switched to stock in company A. He now

finds that he would have been better off by $1.200 if he had kept his stock in company B.

Who feels greater regret?


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Participants answered in great majority (92%) that they thought that Mr. George (who loses

money because he fails to act) would experience more regret.

Gilovich and Medvec (1994) elaborated on this theory and came up with the notion of a

temporal pattern of regret, differentiating between short and long term periods of time after an

event took place. When participants were asked what they regretted most in life, among the most

common regrets participants reported were: missed educational opportunities, failures to seize

the moment, not spending enough time with friends and relatives and rushed in too soon

(Gilovich and Medvec, 1994, Study 2). Only the last regret is caused by an action, all the others

regrets imply failures to act. In another study (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994, Study 3 and 4)

participants were presented with a scenario that read as follows:

Dave and Jim do not know each other, but both are enrolled at the same elite East CoastUniversity. Both are only moderately satisfied where they are and both are considering

transferring to another prestigious school. Each agonizes over the decision, going back

and forth between thinking he is going to stay and thinking he will leave. They ultimately

make different decisions: Dave opts to stay where he is and Jim decides to transfer.

Suppose their decisions turn out badly for both of them: Dave still doesn't like it where he

is and wishes he had transferred, and Jim doesn't like his new environment and wishes he

had stayed.

After reading the scenario it was asked which of the persons depicted in the story would

experience more regret, either in the short term or in the long run. The results were that in the

short term subjects actions (Jims transfer to a different university) produced more regret than

their inactions (Dave staying at the university), however, in the long run a reverse effect showed.

A failure to act led to more regret in the long runthan an action.

Gilovich and Medvec (1994) give several explanations for this effect. They suggest

that there is a asymmetry in how easy people engage in behavioral adjustment a situation they

feel bad about. It is easier for people to follows action with another action than it is to follow

inaction with an action. Additionally people are more inclined to engage in dissonance

reduction for actions than for inactions, because tend to feel more responsible for their actions

than inactions (without responsibility there is less dissonance). Both theories (asymmetries in

ameliorative behavior and differential dissonance reduction) lead to the diminishing of the

string of regrettable action (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994, p. 362). That is: the higher amount of

regret experienced after actions in the short run causes psychological (dissonance reduction)


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and behavioral mechanisms (reparative action) to come in place which diminish regret.

Contrarily people do use these strategies less when inactions are concerned and end up

regretting their failures to act more in the long run. A possible explanation is that the reasons

why one did not act in the past seem to become less pressing and harder to image (i.e. less

salient), when time passes (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994). Therefore it may be easier to think

about why one acted, but more difficult why one did not. In the short-term people rely on

bottom-up processes that elicit specific memories, whether over time, people rely top-down

processes. Because of this much less accurate and abstract way of processing, it is harder for

people to remember the reasons why one did not act, leading to greater regret in the long term

(Gilovich & Medvec, 1994).

Furthermore, Leach and Plaks (2009) found that the way in which actions and

inactions are usually represented plays a major role in assessing the perceived amount of regret

of events. That is: actions tend to be more concrete than inactions. For a better understanding the

difference between abstract versus concrete representation it can be useful to image a person

ringing a doorbell (Leach & Plaks, 2009). This persons behavior can be described either in

abstract terms as calling on a friend (which is a higher level representation) or concretely as

pushing a button (lower level representation). A change in a high level representation of an

event produces major changes in the meaning of the event, whereas a change in a lower level

representation produces only relatively minor changes in the meaning of the event, which makes

this a key difference between the two (Trope & Liberman, 2003).

Construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) states that details about distant future

events are often knowable only as the time draws closer, which causes people to associate distant

future events with abstract concepts (e.g. composing of general, superordinate and essential

features). When - in contrast - the event is coming nearer, concrete considerations (e.g.,

subordinate goals, specifics of the situation) are more fruitful for a successful execution of the

task at hand. Actions tend to be more concrete in that they are more causal than inactions

(Leach & Plaks, 2009). That is: a strong and concrete subjective link exists between action and

its effects. Contrarily, such a link is absent for inactions, which leads to a more abstract

processing. It was found, for example, that participants greater regret for inactions in the distant

term was mediated by the level of abstraction (Leach & Plaks, 2009); distant term inactions were

regretted more than actions onlywhen they were represented abstractly. This in turn causes a

greater memorability for the event and an increased focus on the broader implications.


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Shame and guilt, what is the difference?

Both shame and guilt are negatively valenced, self-relevant emotions (Niedental, Tagney &

Gavanski, 1994). Studies suggest that the function of these emotions is to guide behavior that

conforms to social and moral norms and to promote restitution from misdeeds (Parrott, 2001).

Although most people use the terms shame and guilt in an interchangeable manner, there

have been made numerous attempts to differentiate between the two emotions (see for an

overview Tangney & Tracy, 2012).

The main approach in the field has for long been based on the assumption that shame and

guilt can be differentiated by the types of situations that induce these emotions. Shame was

thought to be an affective reaction following public exposure (and disapproval) of some

shortcoming. Guilt on the other hand was thought to be a reaction of the internalized

conscience of a person when ones personal standards are violated andcould in this manner be

seen a more private emotion. Evidence for this theory is mixed. For example, Walbott and

Scherer (1995) conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study in which participants from different

cultures were asked to recall situations in which they had experienced a whole range of different

emotions including shame and guilt. It was found that shame experiences were elicited

significantly more often by other people or by external sources, whereas guilt experiences were

more often attributed to the self. Walbott and Scherer (1995, p. 174) conclude: This [finding] is

consistent with the idea that guilt is caused by internal sanctions, whereas shame is caused by

external sanctions emanating from other people of institutions. On the other hand, there is

empirical evidence that although shame and guilt occurred most often in social contexts, also

solitary shame experiences were not uncommon(e.g. Tangney, Miller, Flicker & Barlow,

1996).

Helen Block Lewis (1971) was the first to come up with a different theory that draws

upon the role of the self instead of the role of private-public situations. She theorises that a

distinction of shame and guilt can be made on the basis of the functional role of the self. In her

theory the experience of shame is associated with the self, which is the focus of evaluation,

whereas the self is not the central object of evaluation in guilt. Instead, the focus in guilt lies on

the thingdone or undone. As a result shame leads to a fairly global self-condemnation, whereas

guilt is experienced somewhat apart from the self (Niedenthal et al., 1994).

A consequence of this is that shame and guilt seem to be involved in different types of

counterfactual thinking. For example, Niedenthal and colleagues (1994, study 1) asked subjects


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to read about two situations inducing shame or guilt and then to undo these situations (i.e.

generating counterfactuals).

It was found that subjects tended to undo the shame inducing situations by altering the

self, whereas subjects tended to undo guilt situations by altering actions (behavior). In a second

study (Niedental et al., 1994, study 2), participants read about an ambiguous event that could

induce both shame and guilt. Subsequently, participants were asked to produce counterfactuals in

which they either altered the self or behavior. This led to similar results. Subjects who were

asked to change the self, reported to experience more shame subsequently, whereas subjects who

were asked to change behavior experienced more guilt. Tracy and Robins (2006) found that

individuals do not regulate feelings of guilt through making external attributions. Instead, they

make internal attributions, which lead to an even greater experience of guilt. It seems that guilt is

regulated behavioral rather than cognitive (Tracy & Robins, 2006). Guilt motivates reparative

behavior (apology, future hard work). In contrast shame leads to blaming stable, uncontrollable

aspects of the self (Tracy & Robins, 2006). Therefore, an ashamed person has to adopt a long-

term strategy of behavioral modification to reduce the emotional experience of shame. That is:

working toward becoming a different kind of person.

Hypotheses

In the present study the main aim is to investigate whether actions and failures to act have also

consequences for the experience of shame and guilt. In addition it is investigated whether the

temporal pattern reported by Gilovich and Medvec (1994) exists for the experience of shame and

guilt as well. In the literature it has been shown that some aspects of reality are appear more

mutable than others, depending on the relative ease to which aspects of reality can be altered to

produce counterfactuals (Kahneman & Miller, 1986).

This concept could be useful to make a distinction between shame and guilt. Shame is

pre-eminently an emotion focused on the self, whereas guilt is focused on situational factors

(e.g. Niedenthal et al., 1994). Because the self-concept is viewed as relatively stable over time

(e.g. Demo, 1992) it is hypothesized that events inducing shame are less mutable than events

inducing guilt. This idea hinges on the premise that it is considerably easier for a person to

imagine how a situationcould have been different (if only I didt), compared to how he himself

could be different (if only I werent). As a result it is assumed that the reversed effect on the

time dimension (inactions induce more regret in the long run) will show for situations inducing


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guilt, but not shame.

It short is expected that:

- In the short-term subjects experience greater guilt stemming from actions than from

inactions (hypothesis 1);

- In the long run subjects experience greater guilt stemming from inactions than from

actions (hypothesis 2);

- No such time effect exists for the experience of shame (hypothesis 3). That is: in both

the short-term and long run subjects experience greater shame from inactions than from

actions.


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Method

Participants and design.234 undergraduate Psychology students at the University ofGroningen took part in the present study, of which 70 were male and 164 female. The

youngest participant was 18 years old, the oldest 29, whereas the mean age of all the

participants was 20.35. The participants received credits in exchange for their participation

and were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions. The study can be

characterized as a 2 (shame vs. guilt) x 2 (short vs. long term) x 2 (action vs. inaction)

between subjects design.

Procedure. After completing an assent form, participants read one of six scenarios,

which were an adaption of the original scenarios used byNiedenthal, Tangley and Gavanski(1994). The participants were asked to carefully read the scenario and to imagine experiencing

the situation that was described. It was noted that it was not important for the experiment

whether they thought the experiences could actually happen, but that the researchers were

interested in their thoughts about the experiences if they were to happen. The scenario

inducing shame stemming from an action (scenario 1a) read as follows (with the short vs.

long term conditions in bold):

Imagine yourself sitting in a class of 15 students that is taught by a professor you admire

more than any other on campus. You really believe that he/she is brilliant. The professor

asks a question about one of the readings/assignments and you immediately volunteer

the answer with some enthusiasm. But its the wrong answer, the professor informs you

somewhat dryly and he/she turns to address another student in the class.

Please image that this event [has happened 1 day ago / has happened six months ago].

The scenario inducing shame stemming from an inaction (scenario 1b) read as follows:

Imagine yourself sitting in a class of 15 students that is taught by a professor you admire

more than any other on campus. You really believe that he/she is brilliant. The professor

asks a question about one of the readings/assignments where you have previously

written an essay about. Everybody in class expects you to answer it. But you seem

paralyzed and keep quiet. The professor looks disappointed and addresses another


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student in the class.


The scenario inducing guilt stemming from an action (scenario 2a) read as follows:

You are house-sitting for a friends parents. Its a pretty easy task actually. All you have

to do is eat their food, collect the mail, and feed their bird. Everything is going just fine

until one morning you discover that the bird died during the night. You did not feed him

with the bird food as you were instructed but you bought some nuts on the market

yourself. The bird died from choking while swallowing a particularly large nut.


The scenario inducing guilt stemming from an inaction (scenario 2b) read as follows:

You are house-sitting for a friends parents. Its a pretty easy task actually. All you have

to do is eat their food, collect the mail, and feed their bird. Everything is going just fine

until one morning you discover that the bird died during the night. You forgot to turn the

air conditioning down at night as you had been instructed. The bird died from the

excessive cold.


After this, participant were asked to indicate to what extent they agreed with a number of

statements adapted from the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA; Tangney, Wagner &

Gramzow, 1989). The ratings were done on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from totally agree till

totally disagree.

An example of a statement measuring shame is You would feel like you wanted to hide. An

example of a statement indicating feelings of guilt is You would feel unhappy and eager to

correct the situation(the complete survey is added as a supplement to this thesis).

Manipulation checks. After these statements participants answered three questions that

served as a manipulation check. They were asked how long ago the events portrayed in the

scenario were supposed to happen (time manipulation check) and whether he or she thought

the event happened because he did something or did not do something (action vs. inaction

manipulation check). After this, the participant indicated whether other people knew about the


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events that had happened (guilt-shame manipulation check).Finally the participant was asked

how big the change would be that he would feel the same way in a similar situation.

Results

The data met the assumptions of homogeneity of variance. The dependent variable shame was

normally distributed (for the groups that consisted of the combination of the levels of action

(action versus failure to act) and time (long versus short; Shapiro-Wilk > .05). There was an

indication that the dependent variable guilt was not normally distributed (Shapiro-Wilk


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Guilt scenario measuring guilt

Similarly, a two-way analysis of variance with time and event-type as the independent

variables and guilt as the independent variable showed a main effect on the time dimension

(F(1,100) = 10.71,p= .01), for the subjects that were presented with the guilt scenario.

Again, participants reported experiencing less guilt if they read about events that happened a

long time ago (M= 3.22, SD= .67), versus not long ago (M= 3.63, SD= .57).

Shame scenario measuring shame

A significant effect existed between the scenario in which an action was described compared

to the scenario in which an inaction was described (F(1,126) = 10.538 ,p= .01). It was found

that when subjects read about an event that induced shame because they failed to do

something, they reported more shame (M= 2.93, SD= .73), than when they read a scenario in

which they did something (M= 2.49, SD= .73). No other effects were significant.

Shame scenario measuring guilt

Interestingly, also a significant difference between actions (M= 2.73, SD= .76) and inactions

(M= 3.21, SD= .67) was found for guilt when participants were presented with the shame

scenario (F(1,126) = 14.45,p< .01), that is: participants reported more guilt over failures to

act. No other significant effects were found.

Repeated measures ANOVA for the guilt scenarios

A repeated measures ANOVA with a Greenhouse-Geisser correction determined that mean

ratings on the guilt scale differed significantly from mean ratings on the shame scale for the

participants that were presented with a guilt scenario (F(1, 100) = 56.80,p< 0.01). In

accordance with what one might expect, indeed ratings on the guilt scale (M= 3.41, SD= .66)

were higher than on the shame scale (M= 2.97, SD= .74). Additionally it was found that a

significant effect existed with respect to the time dimension (F(1,100) = 12.16,p< .01).

Repeated measures ANOVA for the shame scenarios

Similarly, a repeated measures ANOVA with a Greenhouse-Geisser correction showed that

mean ratings on the guilt scale differed statistically significantly from mean ratings on the

shame scale for the participants that were presented with a shame scenario (F(1, 126) = 26.17,

p< .01). Contrary to what one would expect, ratings on the guilt scale were higher (M = 2.75,

SD = .76), than on the shame scale (M= 2.73, SD= .76), indicating that participants did


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experience more guilt instead of shame when confronted with a shame scenario. An

significant effect existed between the scenario in which an action was described compared to

the one in which an failure to act was described (F(1,126) = 14.75,p< 0.01), indicating that

ratings on the shame and guilt scales were on average higher for inactions than actions.

Manipulation checks

Almost all participants answered the time manipulation check (How long ago did the events

portrayed in the story happen?) correctly. Two participants answered that they did not now

and one answered 34 (without specification whether this were days or months). Another two

participants answered that they read about events that happened 2 years ago, whereas another

answered 4 weeks (this actually was the 6 months condition), and one participant reported

that the events were supposed to happen 3 years ago (whereas he or she was in the 1 day

condition). With regard to whether the events in the scenario happened because of an action

or an inaction 33 participants (of 234 in total) failed this check, whereas 41 failed the guilt-

shame manipulation check. The participants indicated a change of average 70.14 %

(SD=22.55) that they would feel the same in a similar situation.

An additional analysis of the data was carried out, in which all participants that failed

one or more manipulation checks were eliminated. In total 79 responses were eliminated. All

effects of the previous analysis were found. Only, the finding that the participants that read

the guilt scenario reported less shame in the long run was not replicated, that is: in the second

analysis no effect was found.


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Discussion

Previous research on counterfactual thinking has shown that people tend to experience more

regret over actions than inactions on the short run, but as time passes, a shift takes place: people

tend to experience more regret because of things they failed to do compared to the things they

did (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994). A possible explanation is that the reasons why one did not act in

the past seem to become less pressing and harder to image (i.e. less salient), when time passes

(Gilovich & Medvec, 1994). Therefore it may be easier to think about why one acted, but more

difficult why one did not. Peoples regret may thus intensify because the failure to act in the past

seems inexplicable to them in the present.

In the present research it was expected that the time effect observed for the experience of

regret would exist for the experience of shame and guilt as well. Since shame is pre-eminently an

emotion focused on the self (whereas guilt is focused on situational factors) and the self-

concept is viewed as relatively stable over time it was hypothesized that events inducing shame

are less mutable than events inducing guilt. This idea hinges on the premise that it is

considerably easier for a person to imagine how a situation could have been different (if only I

didt), compared to how his own behavior could be different (if only I werent). It was

expected that in the short-term subjects experience greater guilt stemming from actions than

from inactions (hypothesis 1). Furthermore, it was expected that in the long run subjects would

experience greater guilt stemming from inactions than from actions (hypothesis 2) and that no

such time effect exists for the experience of shame (hypothesis 3), that is: subjects experience

more guilt over inactions in both the short term and the long run.

The results did not give support for this hypothesis. When participants were presented with

the bird scenario (inducing guilt) they experienced overall more guilt in the short term (compared

to the long run), but this was independent of event type (action and inaction). When participants

were presented with the professor scenario (inducing shame) a significant difference between

event type (action and inaction) was found. That is: overall, participants who read the professor

scenario experienced more shame as a consequence of something they failed to do compared to

something they did. This finding is in line with the idea that simulations are more likely to

increase the perceived likelihood of a potential outcome than to reduce the probability or extent

of an outcome. It has been shown in previous research (e.g. Dunning and Parpal, 1989), that in

general simulations are more likely to increase the perceived likelihood of a potential outcome


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(mental addition) than to reduce the probability or extent of an outcome (mental subtraction).

Dunning and Parpal (1989, study 1) asked subjects to indicate how many morequestions on a

test they would get right if they studied 3 ours longer. Alternatively they asked how manyfewer

questions subjects would get right if they studied three hours less. Subjects estimated a greater

impact when presented with the additive frame (studying 3 ours longer), than when presented

with the subtractive frame (studying three hours less). In other words: although the time period

of studying or not-studying was the same, subjects thought that studying for three hours more

would result in a greater change in the amount of right answers, than studying less would. In a

second study Dunning and Parpal (1989, study 2) asked students at Stanford University in what

extent coming to Stanford as opposed to the university of their second choice had influenced

their education, social life and future prospects. Other students estimated the potential

consequences of attending their second favorite university. Also in this study subjects perceived

greater impact when they were confronted with an additive (Stanford) as opposed to a subtractive

frame (university of second choice). The effect seems to exist because people give more weight

to features of the particular mental stimulation serving as the subject of comparison and place a

higher value in factors that produce instead of inhibit the relevant outcome (Dunning & Parpal,

1989). People that engage in counterfactual thought because they have done something are

eliminating that outcome (i.e. subtraction; if only I hadnt done that). On the other hand, people

that engage in counterfactual thought because they did not do something are adding an outcome

(i.e. mental addition; if only I did that). When people are thinking back about an event in

which they failed to do something (inaction), compared to when they did do something (action),

imagining that they wouldhave acted will have greater impact.

In the present study (counterfactual) thinking about not having answered the question of the

professor (if only I didnt, which is mental subtraction) is harder for people than thinking about

having answered the question (if only I did, which is mental addition). Because it is easier for

participants to come up with counterfactuals for the outcome caused by an inaction (death of the

bird by leaving a window open), they experience a higher amount of shame.

However, a difference in time between actions and inactions (short versus long ago) such as

in the classic regret studies by Gilovich and Medvec (1994) was not found. Morrison and Roese

(2011, p.580) name an important disadvantage of using students as participants in research:

College student samples are quick and cheap, but whether effects gleaned from such samples

generalize to the wider population remains a key challenge for psychological theory.In their

study they investigated real-life regrets using a national representative sample in the US and they


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did replicate the time effect (regrets over inactions were more common over long term). The

notion that using students as participants can be problematic applies to the present study as well:

a percentage between 10-20 % of the participants failed multiple manipulation checks. Another

important shortcoming of the present study is the use of a scenario design, which leads to a

diminishing of experimental realism compared to surveys assessing real life emotions (such as

the study by Morrison and Roese, 2011). On the other hand: the participants did indicate

indicated a chance of on average 70.14 % that they would feel the same in a similar (real world)

situation. The clear disadvantage of asking participants about actual experiences is that it is

harder to compare their answers with each other (as opposed to using a scenario). However,

Morrison and Roese (2011) give a clear example of the fact that it is possible, however time

consuming and costly.

A rather curious finding was that participants reported experiencing a higher amount of guilt

than shame when they were presented with a shame scenario (about the professor). Apparently

the scenario did produce more guilt than shame. Niedenthal and colleagues (1994), however, did

find in a pilot study, using the exact same professor scenario, that participants rated the scenario

4.82 on the shame scale and 2.51 on the guilt scale. In the present study the participants rated the

professor scenario 2.75 on the guilt scale and 2.73 on the shame scale. Part of the difference can

be explained by measurement differences: the scale Niedenthal and colleagues used was a 7

point scale, whereas in the present study a 5 point scale was used. However, why participants

rated a higher amount of guilt instead of shame for the professor scenario (that was supposed to

induce shame) cannot be explained by this.

Conclusion

A temporal effect for actions and inactions in the experience of shame and guilt, such as Gilovic

and Medvec (1994) found (in which actions produce more regret in the short term and inactions

in the long run) failed to show in this study. However, it was found that participants that read a

scenario inducing shame experienced more shame as a consequence of something they failed to

do compared to something they did (without a time effect). Participants that read a scenario

inducing guilt experienced more guilt in the short term, compared to the long run. To further

investigate how these emotions operate in time, additional research is needed, in whichas a

recommendationreal life emotional events are taken into account.


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Appendix A: adapted version of the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA; Tangney, Wagner

& Gramzow, 1989).

Totally

disagreeDisagree Neutral Agree

Totally

agree

You would feel like

you wanted to hidex x x x x

You would feel

inadequatex x x x x

You would feel stupid x x x x x

You would feel

incompetentx x x x x

You would feel

disgusted with your

lack of will power

and self-control

x x x x x

You would feel

immaturex x x x x

You would feel like a

cowardx x x x x

You would think you

are basically lazy

x x x x x

You would think:

This is making me

anxious. I need either

fix it or get someone

else to

x x x x x


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Totally

disagreeDisagree Neutral Agree

Totally

agree

You would think:

Im terriblex x x x x

You would feel small

... like a mousex x x x x

You would probably

avoid eye-contact for

a long time

x x x x x

You would feel alone

and apart from other

people

x x x x x

You would think

about quittingx x x x x

You would feel: I

deserve to be

reprimanded

x x x x x

You would keep quiet

and avoid other

people

x x x x x

You would feel

unhappy and eager to

correct the situation

x x x x x

You would feel you

should not accept itx x x x x


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The Temporal Pattern of Shame and Guilt

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