The Moralizing Effect: self-directed emotions and their impact on culpability attributions

Elisabetta Sirgiovanni; Joanna Smolenski; Ben Abelson; Taylor Webb

doi:10.3389/fnint.2023.1232523

The Moralizing Effect: self-directed emotions and their impact on culpability attributions

Front Integr Neurosci. 2023 Nov 28:17:1232523. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2023.1232523. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Elisabetta Sirgiovanni¹, Joanna Smolenski², Ben Abelson³, Taylor Webb⁴

Affiliations

¹ Section of History of Medicine, Department of Molecular Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
² Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, United States.
³ School of Liberal Arts, Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, NY, United States.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States.

Abstract

Introduction: A general trend in the psychological literature suggests that guilt contributes to morality more than shame does. Unlike shame-prone individuals, guilt-prone individuals internalize the causality of negative events, attribute responsibility in the first person, and engage in responsible behavior. However, it is not known how guilt- and shame-proneness interact with the attribution of responsibility to others.

Methods: In two Web-based experiments, participants reported their attributions of moral culpability (i.e., responsibility, causality, punishment and decision-making) about morally ambiguous acts of killing in different conditions. In Study 1 the vignettes were presented in the 1st person, while in Study 2 in the 3rd person. To test proneness to guilt and shame, we utilized the GASP scale, which differentiates between the affective and behavioral components of each emotion. Statistical analyses were performed in Matlab and R.

Results: We found that guilt- and shame-proneness were associated with the severity of attributions in both the first and the third person, but the effect was strong only in the guilt case (both subtypes) and shame-affect case, and not in the shame-behavior case. We call this the Moralizing Effect.

Discussion: We wonder whether our finding that guilt-prone people tend to attribute a higher degree of culpability to others is really consistent with the view that guilt motivates people to choose the "moral paths in life". This echoes views about the harmful aspects of guilt, which have been expressed historically in philosophy, for example, by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Keywords: culpability; guilt; judgment; morality; responsibility; self-directed emotion; shame.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by Jesse Prinz’s Experimental Philosophy Lab at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. ES received funds from the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission during her stay in the U.S.