Personal Narratives About Guilt: Role in Action Control and Interpersonal Relationships

Abstract

Two studies explored interpersonal and action-control aspects of guilt. Both spontaneous and partner-induced guilt were studied using first-person ac-counts of interpersonal transgressions and guilt manipulations. Guilt was associated with transgressions against valued partners in close relationships, especially involving interpersonal neglect, unfilled obligations, and selfish actions. Feeling guilty was associated with higher rates of learning lessons, changing subsequent behavior, apologizing, confessing the transgression, and recognizing how a relationship partner's standards and expectations differ from one's own. Inducing guilt also appears to be a costly but effective way of influencing the behavior of relationship partners. The results support the view of guilt as a mechanism that alters behavior in the service of maintaining good interpersonal relationships. Although many traditional theories of guilt have portrayed it as a solitary, intrapsychic phenomenon, recent evidence has increasingly emphasized interpersonal contexts, causes, and consequences. Tangney's (1992) sample of accounts of incidents involving guilt were found to be heavily interper-sonal, the only exception being a category of reports of guilt over failures in dieting. Hoffman (1982) proposed that guilt derives from empathy.