Representations of guilt: how people experience guilt inducing events

The present study aims to investigate the way inwhich different configurations of guilt areassociated with different coping or resolvingstrategies. Recently, guilt has been described asa multifaceted moral emotion (Tangney et. al,2007), often involving other emotions such asshame or sadness (Fontaine et. al., 2001). Thecombination of elements regarding appraisal andvarious types of experiences thus leads todifferent guilt constellations. Participants wereasked to imagine themselves in seven differentguilt-provoking situations and to rate theirexperience through 10 emotional scales and 3attributional questions regarding stability,control and locus. Participants were also invitedto think of ways of reducing or resolving theirguilt. Results show that different scenarios leadto different types of emotional guilt constellations: each is characterized by a set ofemotions as well as different intensity ratings.Moreover, scenarios involving closer relationships(parental or romantic) lead to higher levels ofguilt than situations with friends or strangers.Finally, strategies for coping with guilt wereclassified into 9 main categories. There weregenerally associated with different guiltintensities: avoidance or minimisation strategiesare more associated with low levels of guilty ascompared to reparative behaviour orapologizing. Again, in scenarios involving closerrelationships, participants tend to favourapologizing strategies or rumination, whiledefence mechanisms (such as minimisation orexternalizing responsibility) are preferred inmore distant relationships.This researchemphasizes the complexity of the guiltexperience and its close association with therelationships that bind those involved.