Guilt Aversion Research Articles

Guilt aversion and moral commitment: Eve versus Adam

Guilt aversion and moral commitment: Eve versus Adam

Interpersonal helping in the workplace: social expectation predicts anticipated guilt and intention to help a coworker

ABSTRACT Promoting interpersonal helping among coworkers is an important aim for any organisation that cares about employee well-being. Drawing on guilt aversion hypothesis, this research focuses on the power of social expectations in promoting prosocial behaviour among employees and investigates the role of anticipated guilt for failing to meet coworkers’ expectations. In two preregistered studies, the effect of beneficiary expectation on benefactors’ anticipated guilt and intention to help was investigated. In Study 1, Japanese participants (n = 284) recalled a situation when they helped a coworker spontaneously, and evaluated perceived beneficiary expectation to receive help, as well as anticipated guilt for not helping. Beneficiary expectation positively predicted anticipated guilt, and the effect was stronger when the beneficiary was a same-status colleague, and when interpersonal helping frequency in the organisation was low. Study 2 (n = 499) employed vignettes and manipulated beneficiary expectation. A mediational model revealed that beneficiary expectation leads to more anticipated guilt for not helping, which, in turn, increases employees’ intention to help. Together, these studies show that employees are sensitive to their coworkers’ expectations, and guilt-averse; therefore, interpersonal helping among employees may be promoted by establishing legitimate expectations of prosociality in the workplace.

On the transmission of guilt aversion and the evolution of trust

This paper studies the evolution of trust and trustworthiness by modeling the intergenerational transmission of guilt aversion. The results depend both on features of strategic interaction and on parental transmission. We show that if there is complete information of opponents' traits, independent of parenting style, the share of high-guilt agents in society weakly increases over time, and trust and trustworthiness are maximized. Moreover, when traits are not observable, different levels of guilt always coexist, and trust and trustworthiness might also increase when parents have imperfect empathy in the transmission of traits or if there is homophily in society.

Guilt aversion in (new) games: Does partners' payoff vulnerability matter?

We investigate whether players' guilt aversion is modulated by their co-players vulnerability. In new variations of a three-player Trust game, we manipulate payoff-vulnerability and endowment-vulnerability. The former (standard) vulnerability arises when a player's material payoff depends on another player's action. The latter arises when a player's initial endowment is entrusted to another player. Treatments vary whether trustees can condition their decision on the belief of a co-player who is payoff-vulnerable and/or endowment-vulnerable, or not vulnerable at all, and the decision rights of the vulnerable player. We find that trustees' guilt aversion is insensitive to both the dimension of the co-player's vulnerability and the decision rights of the co-player. Guilt is activated even absent the vulnerability of their co-players. Rather, players' guilt is triggered by the willingness to respond to their co-player's beliefs on their strategy.

Social incentives foster cooperation through guilt aversion: An effect that diminishes with primary psychopathic traits.

The association between primary psychopathic traits and non-cooperative behaviors is well-identified. There is a lack of studies on how to motivate cooperative behaviors in individuals with primary psychopathic traits. This study investigated the effects of monetary incentives and social incentives on promoting cooperation in healthy adults with varying primary psychopathic traits. Participants played a one-shot public goods game (PGG) with other anonymous players in three different contexts: a social incentives context where participants' decisions would be judged by others, a monetary incentives context where participants' decisions would result in winning or losing money depending on their contributions, and a control condition where no additional incentives were implemented. We found that, compared to the control condition, both monetary and social incentives significantly improved participants' contributions to the public project-an indicator of cooperative behavior. However, the association between higher primary psychopathic traits and less cooperation was only observed in the context of social incentives. Computational modeling further revealed that this effect can be explained by the diminishing guilt aversion when participants deliberately violated their inferred expectations of themselves from others' perspectives. This study found that social incentives can encourage cooperative behaviors in non-clinical psychopathy, and identified the mental processes navigating this effect.

Promises and partner-switch

Building on a partner-switching mechanism, we experimentally test two theories that posit different reasons why promises breed trust and cooperation. The expectation-based explanation (EBE) operates via belief-dependent guilt aversion, while the commitment-based explanation (CBE) suggests that promises offer commitment power via a (belief-independent) preference to keep one’s word. Previous research performed a similar test, which we argue should be interpreted as concerning informal agreements rather than (unilateral) promises.

An Experimental Study on Credence Goods Markets: Fraud, Beliefs, and Guilt Aversion

An Experimental Study on Credence Goods Markets: Fraud, Beliefs, and Guilt Aversion

Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners' Payoff Vulnerability Matter?

Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners' Payoff Vulnerability Matter?

Understanding guilt-related interpersonal dysfunction in obsessive-compulsive personality disorder through computational modeling of two social interaction tasks.

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a high-prevalence personality disorder characterized by subtle but stable interpersonal dysfunction. There have been only limited studies addressing the behavioral patterns and cognitive features of OCPD in interpersonal contexts. The purpose of this study was to investigate how behaviors differ between OCPD individuals and healthy controls (HCs) in the context of guilt-related interpersonal responses. A total of 113 participants were recruited, including 46 who were identified as having OCPD and 67 HCs. Guilt-related interpersonal responses were manipulated and measured with two social interactive tasks: the Guilt Aversion Task, to assess how anticipatory guilt motivates cooperation; and the Guilt Compensation Task, to assess how experienced guilt induces compensation behaviors. The guilt aversion model and Fehr-Schmidt inequity aversion model were adopted to analyze decision-making in the Guilt Aversion Task and the Guilt Compensation Task, respectively. Computational model-based results demonstrated that, compared with HCs, the OCPD group exhibited less guilt aversion when making cooperative decisions as well as less guilt-induced compensation after harming others. Our findings indicate that individuals with OCPD tend to be less affected by guilt than HCs. These impairments in guilt-related responses may prevent adjustments in behaviors toward compliance with social norms and thus result in interpersonal dysfunctions.

Psychological and social motivations in microfinance contracts: Theory and evidence

We study, theoretically and empirically, the effort choices of microfinance borrowers under individual liability (IL) and joint liability (JL) contracts when loan repayments are made either privately or publicly. Our theoretical model identifies guilt aversion in a JL contract and shame aversion under public repayment of loans as the main psychological drivers of effort choice. Evidence from our lab-in-the-field experiment in Pakistan reveals large treatment effects and confirms the central roles of guilt and shame. Under private repayment, a JL contract increases effort by almost 100% relative to an IL contract. Under public repayment, effort levels are comparable under IL and JL contracts, indicating that shame aversion plays a more important role than guilt aversion. Under IL, public repayment relative to private repayment increases effort by 60%, confirming our shame-aversion hypothesis. Under JL, the private versus public repayment contrast shows that shame trumps guilt in explaining borrowers’ effort choices.

Trust, Beliefs and Cooperation: Excavating a Foundation of Strong Economies

One reason trust is positively correlated with standard of living across societies may be that people treat trustworthiness in sequential social dilemmas as a sign that others will also cooperate in simultaneous collective action problems, and trust tends to correlate with trustworthiness. Trustworthiness and cooperation may both reflect the same disposition: reciprocity. Whether trust itself predicts cooperation is less clear, a priori. We conduct a laboratory experiment and find that subjects infer cooperativeness from trustworthiness and on average cooperate more when they predict others to be more cooperative. A novel result is that subjects make the same inferences from trusting as from trustworthiness. We find that subjects’ priors entail considerable heterogeneity of trustworthiness, trust and cooperation within the population. Finally, conditional cooperation explains contributions better than guilt aversion, in our data.

Gender differences in guilt aversion in Korea and the United Kingdom

Guilt aversion, which describes the tendency to reduce the discrepancy between a partner’s expectation and his/her actual outcome, is a key driving force for cooperation in both the East and West. A recent study based on functional magnetic resonance imaging and online behavioral experiments reported that men show stronger guilt aversion than women and also suggested that men’s predominance in guilt aversion arises from stronger sensitivity to social norms. However, since the participants of that study were all Japanese, it remains unaddressed how common the gender difference in guilt aversion is. Here, we conducted online behavioral studies on people from Korea and the UK (Korea; n = 294, UK; n = 347) using the same trust game. We confirmed that men exhibit stronger guilt aversion than women in both countries. Furthermore, consistent with the Japanese study, our Lasso regression analysis for UK participants revealed that Big Five Conscientiousness (rule-based decision) correlated with guilt aversion in men. In contrast, guilt aversion in Korean men correlated with Big Five Neuroticism. Thus, our results suggest that gender differences in guilt aversion are universal but the underlying cognitive processes may be influenced by cultural differences.

Measuring Belief-dependent Preferences without Data on Beliefs

Abstract We derive bounds on the causal effect of belief-dependent preferences (reciprocity and guilt aversion) on choices in sequential two-player games without data on the (higher-order) beliefs of players. We show how informative bounds can be derived by exploiting a specific invariance property common to those preferences. We illustrate our approach by analysing data from an experiment conducted in Denmark. Our approach produces tight bounds on the causal effect of reciprocity in the games we consider. These bounds suggest there exists significant reciprocity in our population—a result also substantiated by the participants’ answers to a post-experimental questionnaire. On the other hand, our approach yields high implausible estimates of guilt aversion—participants would be willing, in some games, to pay at least three Danish crowns (DKK) to avoid letting others down by one DKK. We contrast our estimated bounds with point estimates obtained using data on stated higher-order beliefs, keeping all other aspects of the model unchanged. We find that point estimates fall within our estimated bounds, suggesting that elicited higher-order belief data in our experiment is weakly (if at all) affected by various reporting biases.

Proneness for and aversion to self-conscious emotion in posttraumatic stress.

Theory suggests that self-conscious emotions (guilt and shame) may play a role in the development/maintenance of posttraumatic stress. Propensities to experience these emotions (i.e., proneness) may confer risk for posttraumatic stress, while difficulties tolerating or coping with them (i.e., aversion) may maintain or exacerbate symptoms. However, no research to date has examined the importance of guilt aversion or shame aversion in posttraumatic stress. A total of 336 participants provided open-ended information on their experience of potentially traumatic events; a team of trained raters determined that a final sample of 186 participants had a clinically significant history of trauma. These participants completed measures of posttraumatic stress, along with measures of proneness for and aversion to both guilt and shame. Negative affect and experiential avoidance were assessed as covariates. Zero-order correlations indicated that guilt-proneness and guilt aversion were not associated with posttraumatic stress. By contrast, shame-proneness was associated with posttraumatic stress over and above trait negative affect and experiential avoidance. Moreover, a significant interaction revealed that shame-proneness was only associated with posttraumatic stress when shame aversion was high. Results suggest that people high in shame-proneness, and therefore likely to experience shame in response to traumatic events, may experience greater posttraumatic stress if they are shame averse. If this is the case, addressing shame directly and teaching better skills for regulating it may be an important treatment goal for some individuals with posttraumatic stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners’ Vulnerability Matter?

Guilt Aversion in (New) Games: Does Partners’ Vulnerability Matter?

Functional Connectivity Basis and Underlying Cognitive Mechanisms for Gender Differences in Guilt Aversion.

Prosocial behavior is pivotal to our society. Guilt aversion, which describes the tendency to reduce the discrepancy between a partner’s expectation and his/her actual outcome, drives human prosocial behavior as does well-known inequity aversion. Although women are reported to be more inequity averse than men, gender differences in guilt aversion remain unexplored. Here, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study (n = 52) and a large-scale online behavioral study (n = 4723) of a trust game designed to investigate guilt and inequity aversions. The fMRI study demonstrated that men exhibited stronger guilt aversion and recruited right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)-ventromedial PFC (VMPFC) connectivity more for guilt aversion than women, while VMPFC-dorsal medial PFC (DMPFC) connectivity was commonly used in both genders. Furthermore, our regression analysis of the online behavioral data collected with Big Five and demographic factors replicated the gender differences and revealed that Big Five Conscientiousness (rule-based decision) correlated with guilt aversion only in men, but Agreeableness (empathetic consideration) correlated with guilt aversion in both genders. Thus, this study suggests that gender differences in prosocial behavior are heterogeneous depending on underlying motives in the brain and that the consideration of social norms plays a key role in the stronger guilt aversion in men.

Guilt and Prosocial Behavior: Lab-in-the-Field Evidence from Bangladesh

AbstractThe goal of this study is to examine the relevance of guilt aversion preference in financial decisions. Using data from a lab-in-the-field experiment in rural Bangladesh, this study elicits...

Descriptive Norms and Guilt Aversion

It has been argued that guilt aversion (the desire to meet others’ expectations) and the social norm compliance (the desire to act similarly to other individuals in the same situation) are important drivers of human behavior. However, as we show in a theoretical model, these two motives are empirically indistinguishable when only one signal (either the expectation of a person affected by the choice or a signal about the descriptive norm) is revealed as each of these signals transmit information on the other benchmark. We address this problem by running an experiment in which signals for both benchmarks are revealed simultaneously. We find that both types of information affect dictator transfers in a one-shot game, yet the information about the behavior of others has a stronger effect than the disclosed recipient’s expectation. The effect of the recipient’s expectation is non-monotonic and becomes negative for very high expectations. We provide further evidence for the importance of guilt aversion in a second experiment where we display the recipient’s expectation and the expectation of a randomly picked recipient of another dictator.

Moral strategies and psychopathic traits.

Psychopathy is a personality construct encompassing impaired interpersonal-affective functioning, combined with the inclination to lead an erratic lifestyle and to engage in antisocial acts. Individuals with elevated psychopathic traits often make decisions that have a negative impact on others. Some findings suggest that a lack of empathy and guilt is a key explanatory factor, while other results point toward a decreased sense of fairness in individuals with elevated psychopathic traits. The goal of the present study was to directly compare these hypotheses. Eighty-six healthy individuals completed the Self-Report Psychopathy scale and performed the Hidden Multiplier Trust Game, a socioeconomic decision-making task designed to untangle the roles of guilt and fairness during decision-making. Computational modeling of choice data identified five types of moral decision strategies: inequity aversion, guilt aversion, moral opportunism, greed, and generosity. The model-free results demonstrated that psychopathic traits were associated with lower levels of reciprocity. The model-based results suggested that a reduced sense of fairness, associated with affective traits, was driving this behavior. Our findings stress the importance of treating guilt and fairness as independent concepts, and highlight the importance of improving conceptual precision in untangling the individual impact of fairness and guilt, as this could help explain the mixed results in moral decision-making literature. Elucidating the psychological motivations underlying the relationship between psychopathic traits and poor social decision-making opens new avenues for research on the underlying cognitive mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

On the Transmission of Guilt Aversion and the Evolution of Trust

On the Transmission of Guilt Aversion and the Evolution of Trust