This thesis deals with how group members respond to wrongdoing committed in their group's name. In particular, I investigate whether individuals feel ashamed or guilty for these acts, and in turn, what motivational effects these emotions have. A review of the literature on shame and guilt turns up serious inconsistencies regarding both the charac- terisation of these emotions and the empirical evidence relating to them. In particular, shame is found to be related to both prosocial and antisocial outcomes, and guilt is some- times associated with prosocial acts and sometimes not. My empirical work tests an explanation for these inconsistencies. Notably, I test a novel way of seeing shame, and propose that not only are there different forms of shame but that these different forms have divergent motivational effects. I focus on two important forms of shame: moral shame and image shame, which arise when one sees the ingroup's actions as threatening one's morality or reputation, respectively. I show that moral shame is consistently related to increased prosocial attitudes (support for apology and compensation) and decreased an- ger, avoidance and cover-up; whereas image shame is predictive of higher levels of anger, avoidance and cover-up. The effects of guilt are weak or non-existent in the presence of these two forms of shame. I also show that these emotions have a meaningful influence on how group members relate to unrelated minorities in society, borne in part of a feeling of moral obligation for past wrongdoing. A study is also reported that shows that, depend- ing on their individual motivations, different group members prefer different emotional expressions within apologies offered by their leaders.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:554806 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Allpress, Jesse A. |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/39374/ |
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