Collective Guilt and Shame as Motivation for White Support of Black Programs1

Two studies examined whether exposing Whites to collective guilt‐ and shame‐inducing stimuli would lead to heightened support for Black programs. White participants watched either a civil‐rights videotape or one of two control videos and then completed either a self‐affirmation task or a filler task. Support for Black programs was measured in a bogus second study. Those who watched the civil‐rights video and completed the filler task suppressed their support for Black programs, whereas those who watched the civil‐rights video and then self‐affirmed displayed the highest levels of Black program support. Findings suggest that Whites might react antisocially to guilt‐ and shame‐inducing situations, and react prosocially only after reaffirming their personal integrity.     

Blameworthiness as Deserved Guilt

It is often assumed that we are only blameworthy for that over which we have control. In recent years, however, several philosophers have argued that we can be blameworthy for occurrences that appear to be outside our control, such as attitudes, beliefs and omissions. This has prompted the question of why control should be a condition on blameworthiness. This paper aims at defending the control condition by developing a new conception of blameworthiness: To be blameworthy, I argue, is most fundamentally to deserve to feel guilty. Being blamed by someone else is not necessarily harmful to the wrongdoer. The blame might not be expressed, or the wrongdoer might not care. But to blame oneself necessarily involves suffering. This conception of blameworthiness explains why the control condition should obtain: We are morally blameworthy for A only if A was (directly or indirectly) under our control because (a) to be blameworthy is to deserve to feel guilty, (b) to feel guilty is to suffer, and (c) one deserves to suffer for A only if A was under one’s control.     

Associations between Physical Self-Concept and Anticipated Guilt and Shame: The Moderating Role of Gender

Body-related emotions have been identified as important predictors of mental and physical health. Evaluations of the physical self are inextricably linked with body-related emotions. However, little research has addressed how physical self-concept is associated with anticipated emotions and how associations may differ between men and women. The current study examined associations between physical self-concept and anticipated guilt and shame and examined gender as a moderator of these associations. The sample consisted of 353 Canadian undergraduate students (55% female; M_age?=?21.94. range?=?18–64). Participants read a hypothetical scenario commonly associated with guilt and shame experiences and were asked to anticipate their emotional experience when imagining themselves in the scenario. Participants also indicated their gender and completed a measure of physical self-concept. Gender moderated the relationship between physical self-concept and anticipated shame but not guilt. Specifically, there was a negative association between physical self-concept and anticipated shame for women but not for men. Findings are consistent with the notion that gender role socialization shapes the emotional experiences, specifically feelings of shame, of men and women differently. The results demonstrate that even imagining a situation that runs counter to societal ideals for women’s bodies as thin and toned coincides with the anticipation of shame among adult women with more negative physical self-concept.

     

Anticipated Emotions as Guides to Choice

When making decisions, people often anticipate the emotions they might experience as a result of the outcomes of their choices. In the process, they simulate what life would be like with one outcome or another. We examine the anticipated and actual pleasure of outcomes and their relation to choices people make in laboratory studies and real-world studies. We offer a theory of anticipated pleasure that explains why the same outcome can lead to a wide range of emotional experiences. Finally, we show how anticipated pleasure relates to risky choice within the framework of subjective expected pleasure theory.     

Guilt as a Source of Narcissistic Gratification

This article takes as its starting point a paper by Hugo Bleichmar presented at the 2003 Joseph Sandler Research Conference on Depression. The author argues in favour of viewing depression in a broad perspective. The Freudian prototype of “guilty depression” represents only one of many pathways leading to depressive states. Psychoanalytic understanding of depression should represent a multidimensional approach, characterised by interacting determinants, both internal and external. In clinical practice, this would imply an attitude of greater freedom and flexibility in the analyst. The paper compares the psychoanalytic account of depression with that given by the cognitive approach. It is argued that within a diverse research field, where depression is studied from different angles—as a disorder of the brain and in terms of cognitive deficits—the contribution of psychoanalysis is that depression is most usefully studied at the level of psychological causation. The psychoanalytic understanding of depressive states in terms of unconscious interpretation and meaning of experience represents a distinct contribution. Implications of viewing depression as an “illness” are discussed.     

Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings

Can collectives feel guilt with respect to what they have done? It hasbeen claimed that they cannot. Yet in everyday discourse collectives areoften held to feel guilt, criticized because they do not, and so on.Among other things, this paper considers what such so-called collectiveguilt feelings amount to. If collective guilt feelings are sometimesappropriate, it must be the case that collectives can indeed beguilty. The paper begins with an account of what it is for a collectiveto intend to do something and to act in light of that intention.According to this account, and in senses that are explained, there is acollective that intends to do something if and only if the members of agiven population are jointly committed to intend as a body to do thatthing. A related account of collective belief is also presented. It isthen argued that, depending on the circumstances, a group's action canbe free as opposed to coerced, and that the idea that a collective assuch can be guilty of performing a wrongful act makes sense. The ideathat a group might feel guilt may be rejected because it is assumed thatto feel guilt is to experience a ``pang'' or ``twinge'' of guilt –nothing more and nothing less. Presumably, though, there must becognitions and perhaps behavior involved. In addition, the primacy, eventhe necessity, of ``feeling-sensations'' to feeling guilt in theindividual case has been questioned. Without the presumption that it isalready clear what feeling guilt amounts to, three proposals as to thenature of collective guilt feelings are considered. A ``feeling ofpersonal guilt'' is defined as a feeling of guilt over one's own action.It is argued that it is implausible to construe collective guiltfeelings in terms of members' feelings of personal guilt. ``Membershipguilt feelings'' involve a group member's feeling of guilt over what hisor her group has done. It is argued that such feelings are intelligibleif the member is party to the joint commitment that lies at the base ofthe relevant collective intention and action. However, an account ofcollective guilt in terms of membership guilt feelings is found wanting.Finally, a ``plural subject'' account of collective guilt feelings isarticulated, such that they involve a joint commitment to feel guilt asa body. The parties to a joint commitment of the kind in question may asa result find themselves experiencing ``pangs'' of the kind associatedwith personal and membership guilt feelings. Since these pangs, byhypothesis, arise as a result of the joint commitment to feel guilt as abody, they might be thought of as providing a kind of phenomenology forcollective guilt. Be that as it may, it is argued the plural subjectaccount has much to be said for it.     

Guilt

Because dealing with guilt and morality often makes even counselors uncomfortable, it is useful to reexamine this common experience. Quite often clients even begin with remarks about unworthiness; how counselors respond to this beginning can have crucial significance for the course of therapy. There is a useful and constructive function of morality in socialization. There is also distorted and nonfunctional guilt. We now have a complex view of moral responsibility with many levels of accountability on a freedom-determinism continuum. Once we have made a diagnosis concerning guilt, we need to proceed to appropriate treatment or else the very issue the client came to work on may be bypassed.     

Guilt and/or self-esteem as consequences of religion

Our discussion begins with a consideration of the various types of religion and of guilt. Both religion and morality function in different ways from individual to individual. All these factors need to be taken into account before we can turn to treatment for the painful experience of guilt and bring about an improved self-esteem.     

Shame Proneness,Guilt Proneness,Behavioral Self-Handicapping,and Skill Level: A Mediational Analysis

In this study, the relationship between shame proneness, guilt proneness, behavioral self-handicapping, and skill level was examined in elite youth soccer players (N = 589, M_age = 16.8, SD = 1.8). Mediation analyses showed that shame proneness had a positive direct relationship with self-handicapping and a weak negative indirect relationship with skill level. Guilt proneness was shown to have a negative direct relationship to self-handicapping and a positive weak indirect relationship to skill level. Shame proneness may, thus, stimulate behavioral self-handicapping, whereas guilt proneness may discourage behavioral self-handicapping in soccer players.     

Motivation as an epistemic ground

In several papers, Mark Wrathall argued that French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, identifies a sui generis type of grounding, one not reducible to reason or natural causality. Following the Phenomenological tradition, Merleau-Ponty called this form of grounding “motivation,” and described it as the way in which one phenomenon spontaneously gives rise to another through its sense. While Wrathall’s suggestion has been taken up in the practical domain, its epistemic import has still not been fully explored. I would like to take up the epistemic dimension of Wrathall’s thought in this paper. Following Wrathall, I explain how motivation can help us understand the manner in which perceptions ground singular, experiential judgments. But I extend this work in two ways. First, I suggest some additional considerations that support Wrathall’s view. Second, I argue that motivation can also help account for the way perceptions ground general judgments. My aim here will not be so much to rule out other answers to these longstanding epistemological questions, as to show that motivation carves out an attractive epistemological space.

     

Testing Behavioral Consistency and Coherence with the Situation-Response Measure of Achievement Motivation

The Situation-Response (S-R) Measure of Achievement Motivation was developed to analyze the cross-situational consistency of achievement-related behavior. This measure was based on a conceptualization of achievement motivation that included the following three components: need to achieve, need to avoid failure, and perceived self-efficacy. Data obtained from 246 college students provided evidence for the validity of the new instrument. However, exploratory factor analyses performed on the items in the instrument indicated the presence of only two factors, namely Striving and Apprehensiveness. Regression analyses further indicated the possible inappropriateness of a theoretically-based difference score, which combined the striving and apprehensiveness composites into a resultant tendency. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test behavioral consistency of the responses to the S-R measure. Although all of the models tested had relatively poor fits with the data, the results (a) provided evidence for item-specific covariation that inflated the cross-situational correlations among the achievement-related composites of the S-R measure, and (b) indicated, after this item-specific covariation had been partialled out, a lack of support for second-order factors representing general achieving tendencies across situations. A final set of analyses indicated the presence of three distinct types of response patterns. These types were tentatively called socially anxious, cynically motivated, and anxiously striving. It was found that membership in one of these subgroups was more informative of an individual's pattern of achievement motivation than conventionally used personality tests.     

On Irrational Guilt

A person raised in a religious family may have been taught that going to the theater is not allowed, and even if he has rejected this taboo years ago, he still feels guilty when attending theater. These kinds of cases may not be rare, but they are strange. Indeed, one may wonder how they are even possible. This is why an explanation is needed, and in my paper I aim to give such an explanation. In particular, I will first provide a brief review of the explanations of irrational guilt that are compatible with the cognitive theories of emotions, that is, theories that presuppose that there is a causal or a constitutional connection between emotions and cognitive factors, such as judgments, beliefs or thoughts. Following many other reviewers, I found most of the explanations of irrational guilt unsatisfactory, although my reasons for critical conclusions will partly differ from the usual ones. After the review, I will defend a solution according to which it is possible to believe that an act does not have any moral costs and at the same time to have an impression that is has, which explains the guilty feelings.     

Anticipated compatibility as a function of attitude or status similarity1

Two experiments explored the effects of self-other discrepancies in attitude or status on judgments of another's desirability as a companion It was found that increasing discrepancy in status or attitudes led to lower judgments of compatibility and liking In one experiment, similarity of attitudes of another was found to correlate with liking him, desire to befriend him, do favors for him, and possibly conform to him. The contribution of some personality measures to the relationship between similarity and anticipated compatibility was a major focus of the study The inhibitory effect of a target's status discrepancy was more pronounced for subjects who were more sensitive to rejection Also, between targets of equally discrepant status, there was a general preference to affiliate with the one whose status was higher than the one whose status was lower–an effect which was even more pronounced for subjects who were sensitive to rejection More anxious subjects judged themselves as generally less acceptable to others, particularly to others of higher status. When predicting attitudes on the basis of limited information, females showed a greater tendency than males to see others as similar to themselves Finally, persons holding different attitudes from one's own were judged as more harmful socially, a bias which was more pronounced in females than in males.