Exploring the Consequences of Humiliating a Moral Transgressor

Combs, David J.; Campbell, Gordon; Jackson, Murray; Smith, Richard H.

doi:10.1080/01973531003738379

Cited by 54 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…A public context is associated with shame, a private one with guilt. Such a positive relationship between the reporting of shame and the extent of 4 public exposure of a wrongful act has been found by Combs et al (2010) among others. However, the public/private distinction is not undisputed in the literature as Tangney et al (2007) refer to empirical evidence that contradicts it.…”

Section: Background On Moral Emotionsmentioning

confidence: 72%

Moral emotions and partnership

Bracht

Regner²

2013

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. et al., 2007). Beliefdependant models of social preferences using the framework of psychological games aim to consider such emotions to explain other-regarding behaviour. Our study links recent advances in psychological theory on moral emotions to belief-dependant models in economics. Terms of use: Documents inWe find that -in addition to the positive effect of second-order beliefs and promises -individuals' disposition to guilt (their proneness to respond in an evaluative way to personal transgressions) is an important determinant of kind behaviour. This applies to private as well as public settings.JEL classifications: C70, C91, D03, D82

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Section: Background On Moral Emotionsmentioning

confidence: 72%

Moral emotions and partnership

Bracht

Regner²

2013

Journal of Economic Psychology

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“…According to this distinction, which has its roots in anthropology (Benedict, 1946), transgressions or failures that have not been publically exposed (i.e., private misdeeds) are likely to elicit feelings of guilt, whereas transgressions or failures that have been publically exposed are likely to elicit feelings of shame (Ausubel, 1955;Combs, Campbell, Jackson, & Smith, 2010;Smith et al, 2002). From this perspective, guilt is associated with a private sense of having done something wrong or having behaved in a way that violated one's conscience.…”

Section: Public-private Distinctionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing the GASP scale: A new measure of guilt and shame proneness.

Cohen¹,

Wolf²,

Panter³

et al. 2011

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

512

660

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Although scholars agree that moral emotions are critical for deterring unethical and antisocial behavior, there is disagreement about how two prototypical moral emotions-guilt and shameshould be defined, differentiated, and measured. We addressed these issues by developing a new assessment-the Guilt And Shame Proneness scale (GASP)-that measures individual differences in the propensity to experience guilt and shame across a range of personal transgressions. The GASP contains two guilt subscales that assess negative behavior-evaluations (NBEs) and repair action tendencies following private transgressions and two shame subscales that assess negative self-evaluations (NSEs) and withdrawal action tendencies following publically-exposed transgressions. Both guilt subscales were highly correlated with one another and negatively correlated with unethical decision making. Although both shame subscales were associated with relatively poor psychological functioning (e.g., neuroticism, personal distress, low self-esteem), they were only weakly correlated with one another and their relationships with unethical decision making diverged. Whereas shame-NSE constrained unethical decision making, shame-withdraw did not. Our findings suggest that differentiating the tendency to make negative self-evaluations following publically-exposed transgressions from the tendency to hide or withdraw from public is critically important for understanding and measuring dispositional shame proneness. The GASP's ability to distinguish these two classes of responses represents an important advantage of the scale over existing assessments. Although further validation research is required, the present studies are promising in that they suggest the GASP has the potential to be an important measurement tool for detecting individuals susceptible to corruption and unethical behavior.

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“…Public shaming has been shown to backfire when the target feels powerless to act otherwise or when the punishment is considered too severe (Combs et al, 2010;Kahan, 2006), for example. Because this level of awareness relies on observers to sanction through shaming, it runs the risk of counterproductivity and backlash.…”

Section: Section Four a Pathway Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Homo-economicus to Homo-virtus: A System-Theoretic Model for Raising Moral Self-Awareness

Friedland

Cole

2017

J Bus Ethics

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There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motive behind free markets, but that markets themselves are representations of our individual and collective moral identities. Building on this understanding, we review the research on how economic incentives crowd-out virtue-oriented concerns. We then introduce the concept of moral self-awareness (MSA); an evolving mindset informed by reflection on moral identity, namely, what one's actions say about oneself given the impacts (positive or negative) on others or society that one's action may effect. MSA comprises three fundamental aspects of virtue-oriented reasoning: pride, shame, and guilt. Finally, we offer a four-stage model anchored in systems theory, yielding ever more refined motivating strategies for maximizing human flourishing and social welfare externalities.2

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Exploring the Consequences of Humiliating a Moral Transgressor

Cited by 54 publications

References 33 publications

Moral emotions and partnership

Moral emotions and partnership

Introducing the GASP scale: A new measure of guilt and shame proneness.

From Homo-economicus to Homo-virtus: A System-Theoretic Model for Raising Moral Self-Awareness

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