Aurélien Graton, Melody Mailliez
LIP/PC2S, Université Savoie Mont-Blanc and Université Grenoble Alpes, France.
ISAE/SUPAERO, Université de Toulouse, France.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2019 Nov 20;9(12):117. doi: 10.3390/bs9120117.
Guilt appeals in the field of persuasion are quite common. However, the effectiveness of these messages is sometimes ambivalent. It is widely acknowledged that guilt leads people to engage into prosocial behaviors, but the effects of guilt can also be counter-productive (e.g., reactance-like effects). We argue that the explanations for these contradictions remain unsatisfactory and suggest that taking into account the implications of underlying cognitive-especially attentional-mechanisms would provide a better understanding of these paradoxical outcomes. This article provides a brief review of the literature on the link between guilt and pro-social behaviors and its classical interpretations. We propose a reinterpretation of this link by taking into account specific attentional processes triggered by the emotion of guilt. Attentional biases are, in our opinion, better predictors of the effectiveness of a message than the amount of emotion induced by the same message. This consideration should guide future research in the field of guilt appeals and pro-social behaviors. Implications, in terms of a broader comprehension of the emotion-behavior association in decision making processes, are discussed.
在说服领域，内疚诉求相当常见。然而，这些信息的有效性有时并不明确。人们普遍认为，内疚会促使人们做出亲社会行为，但内疚的影响也可能适得其反（例如，类似逆反的效应）。我们认为，对这些矛盾现象的解释仍不尽人意，并建议考虑潜在认知机制（尤其是注意力机制）的影响，将能更好地理解这些矛盾的结果。本文简要回顾了关于内疚与亲社会行为之间联系的文献及其经典解释。我们通过考虑由内疚情绪引发的特定注意力过程，对这种联系提出了重新解释。在我们看来，注意力偏差比同一信息引发的情绪强度更能预测信息的有效性。这一考量应指导内疚诉求与亲社会行为领域的未来研究。我们还讨论了在更广泛理解决策过程中情绪与行为关联方面的意义。
