What's Good About Feeling Bad?
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Can the emotion of remorse benefit society? Psychologists studying the two types of guilt say yes.
Guilt that generates a concern about punishment and keeps you from behaving in an unacceptable manner in the future is said to come from "withdrawal motivation." "Approach motivation," on the other hand, mirrors moral standards within an individuals community and helps keep them in line with those standards and emphasizes a more positive function of guilt. New York University psychologist, David M. Amodio recently set out to study these two types of guilt under the hypothesis that guilt generally begins as withdrawal motivation which transforms into approach motivation when someone finds an opportunity to make up for his or her wrongdoings. In his study, participants were shown pictures of white, Asian, and black faces and were monitored by EEG for positive or negative reactions and then given randomized scores indicating positive or negative responses to those faces. After receiving feedback indicating that they had responded negatively toward black faces, subjects reported significantly increased guilt, anxiety, and sadness. The increase in guilt was larger than the change in any other emotion. A second portion of the study exposed the subjects to a list of magazine titles, three of which addressed the issue of improving race relations. The subjects whose responses had previously indicated guilt reacted positively when seeing topics related to improving their "bad" behavior. When subjects were given the opportunity for reparation, their feelings of guilt predicted their interest in prejudice-reducing behavior. Previously emotions have been considered relatively unchanging, basic, feeling states. Amodio's research presents a new idea of emotions serving a dynamic motivational function for regulating behavior. These findings also suggest that although it feels bad, guilt plays a critical role in promoting pro-social changes in behavior, and Amodio's research demonstrates these effects in context of reducing racial prejudice. Read more: Guilt can help change behavior SHARE:
Posted In: Guilt | Posted by FindCounseling.com Staff on August 09, 2007 at 10:23 AM | Permalink |
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