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Pain(less) cleansing: Watching other people in pain reduces guilt and sadness but not shame.

ABSTRACT: Past research has shown that pain experience reduces feelings of guilt for earlier wrongdoings. In this paper, we aim to investigate whether watching other people in pain can reduce feelings of guilt. In Study 1 (N = 60), we found that participants' levels of guilt and sadness decreased after they watched a one-minute movie clip showing a painful medical procedure. Study 2 (N = 156), eliminated an alternative explanation in which pain observation but not the misattribution of unrelated excitation reduced guilt. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 60), pain observation lowered participants' feelings of guilt but not their feelings of shame. Overall, these results suggest that the guilt-reducing effect of pain may appear even without the actual experience of physical pain.

SUBMITTER: Bocian K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7773247 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Pain(less) cleansing: Watching other people in pain reduces guilt and sadness but not shame.

Bocian Konrad K Baryla Wieslaw W

PloS one 20201230 12

Past research has shown that pain experience reduces feelings of guilt for earlier wrongdoings. In this paper, we aim to investigate whether watching other people in pain can reduce feelings of guilt. In Study 1 (N = 60), we found that participants' levels of guilt and sadness decreased after they watched a one-minute movie clip showing a painful medical procedure. Study 2 (N = 156), eliminated an alternative explanation in which pain observation but not the misattribution of unrelated excitatio ...[more]

PMID: 33378345

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Project description:Habitual offender drivers are required to recover points lost on their driving license by attending reeducation courses, an experience that may, upon reflection of the incident in question, induce feelings of guilt or shame for the infractions they committed. A simulated driving task studied optimistic offender drivers to analyze the extent to which the controllability of the situational context influenced their use of internal and external factors in counterfactual thoughts and emotions such as guilt and shame. The study involved 160 drivers, of whom 54 were categorized as repeat offender drivers while 106 drivers attended courses for advanced professional driving licenses. The participants drove along a route in a driving simulator, which had been previously adjusted for the difficulty to generate a perception of high or low control. Based on the outcome obtained by the participants in this stage, each driver had to report which resources they required to improve their outcomes. Different factor ANOVAs were used to analyze our findings. The results indicated that optimistic offenders, unlike other groups (i.e., optimistic non-offender and pessimistic non-offender), thought that their results could have been better if external factors had been present (i.e., upward counterfactuals), both under conditions of high and low control. They believed their results would have been worse had it not been for their internal resources (i.e., downward counterfactuals), especially under conditions of low control. Concerning emotions of guilt and shame, offender optimists had the lowest values in both conditions compared with the other groups. We may contend that optimistic offender drivers thought they could have obtained better outcomes if external factors had been involved. In the low control condition, they justified that if it were not for such internal skills, their results could have been worse. When they generated such thoughts, the emotions of guilt and shame were minimal.

Dataset Information

Pain(less) cleansing: Watching other people in pain reduces guilt and sadness but not shame.

Publications

Pain(less) cleansing: Watching other people in pain reduces guilt and sadness but not shame.

Similar Datasets

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