Semaan Rania W
School of Business Administration, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, United Arab Emirates.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2025 May 24;15(6):725. doi: 10.3390/bs15060725.
Research has shown that much of consumer behavior is goal-directed. However, such behavior is accompanied by emotions that guide goal-directed effort. This research aims to explain how two equally valenced emotions, shame and guilt, arising from goal violation, could lead to different allocations of effort toward goal attainment. Building on emotion attribution theory, I report one experiment that demonstrates the underlying mechanisms of shame and guilt and how they differ in their effect on subsequent goal-directed behavior. Results indicated that individuals with high shame proneness and low guilt proneness and who are primed with shame chose to violate their goal, providing evidence that shame is maladaptive and destructive in nature, leading consumers to withdraw from their goals.
研究表明，许多消费者行为都是目标导向的。然而，这种行为伴随着引导目标导向努力的情绪。本研究旨在解释因目标违背而产生的两种具有同等效价的情绪——羞耻和内疚——如何导致为实现目标而付出的努力出现不同分配。基于情绪归因理论，我报告了一项实验，该实验展示了羞耻和内疚的潜在机制，以及它们在对后续目标导向行为的影响方面有何不同。结果表明，羞耻倾向高、内疚倾向低且被激发起羞耻感的个体选择违背他们的目标，这证明羞耻本质上是适应不良且具有破坏性的，会导致消费者放弃他们的目标。
