Summary: Guilt and shame arise from different cognitive triggers and depend on different neural systems to guide compensatory behavior. Using a controlled game that manipulated both harm and responsibility, the researchers showed that guilt is more strongly driven by the severity of the harm caused, while shame is more determined by how responsible someone feels for that harm.
Guilt also translated more reliably into financial compensation, while shame required greater cognitive control to influence behavior. Brain imaging confirmed that harm and responsibility are embedded in regions linked to inequity processing and value calculation, with acts driven by guilt and shame activating different circuits.
These findings offer a clearer framework for understanding (and potentially regulating) these two powerful social emotions.
Key facts:
Different triggers: Intensity of harm predicts guilt, while perceived responsibility predicts shame. Different Behaviors: Guilt more directly drives compensation; shame depends on stronger cognitive control. Neural pathways: posterior insula and striatum integrate damage and responsibility; Shame affects the lateral prefrontal regions.
Source: eLife
Feelings of guilt and shame can lead us to behave in different ways, including trying to make amends or save face, cooperating more with others, or avoiding people altogether.
Now, researchers have shed light on how the two emotions emerge from cognitive processes and, in turn, guide how we respond to them.
Their study was published December 9 in eLife as the final version of the record after previously appearing as a revised preprint. The editors say it provides compelling behavioral, computational, and neural evidence to explain the cognitive link between emotions and compensatory actions.
They add that the findings have broad theoretical and practical implications in a variety of disciplines related to human behavior, including psychology, neuroscience, public policy and psychiatry.
Guilt and shame often coexist after we behave in a way considered morally wrong and serve to prevent those behaviors from recurring. But they differ in their associations with psychological and behavioral responses. Psychologically, shame is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, while guilt is typically unrelated or negatively related to these problems.
Behaviorally, guilt is known to drive altruistic behaviors, such as apologizing and making amends, while shame is less associated with these behaviors and more with noncooperative and antisocial responses, such as hiding, avoidance, and self-improvement.
“Extensive studies have documented the psychological processes and neural activities related to our experiences of guilt and shame, but the cognitive antecedents – or preceding triggers – of these emotions and the neural mechanisms behind them remain unclear,” says first author Ruida Zhu, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Sun Yat-sen University, China.
“Previous research has identified harm – that is, the severity of the harm someone causes – and responsibility – a person’s sense of responsibility for causing harm – as triggers of guilt and shame. However, it is not clear whether these two factors differ in the strength with which they influence these emotions. It also remains an open question whether the transformation of guilt and shame into behavior depends on different neural activity.”
To help address these gaps, Zhu and her colleagues developed a novel game to investigate how harm and responsibility trigger guilt and shame, and how these emotions drive compensatory behavior.
In the game, a participant acted as one of four deciders performing a point estimation task. If one of the decision makers made an incorrect estimate, a “victim” received an electric shock whose intensity was determined at random. This task was repeated over multiple trials. Unbeknownst to the participant, the others who made the decision were accomplices and the victim was fictitious.
After each outcome, the participant decided how much financial compensation to give the victim. The level of harm they caused (on a scale of one to four) was manipulated by the intensity of the electric shock, while the level of responsibility for causing that harm (also on a scale of one to four) was manipulated by varying how many of the other decision makers also made incorrect estimates.
Participants underwent an fMRI scan while participating in the compensatory decision-making portion of the game. They then completed a survey in which they reported their feelings of guilt and shame for different outcomes and rated their perception of responsibility. This experiment allowed the researchers to explore the associations between harm, responsibility, guilt, shame and compensation, and discover relevant neural activity.
The results showed that the harm caused to victims had a stronger impact on participants’ guilt, while their sense of responsibility for causing that harm had a stronger impact on their feelings of shame.
Furthermore, participants’ greater feelings of guilt greatly influenced the compensation they decided to offer, supporting the established association of guilt with altruistic behaviors.
Results from the computational modeling approach indicated that harm and responsibility are integrated across individuals in a manner consistent with diffusion of responsibility (a phenomenon in which individuals feel less personally responsible when making a decision in a group setting compared to doing so on their own) before influencing compensation.
The fMRI results revealed that brain regions associated with inequity in processing (the posterior insula) and value calculation (the striatum) encode this integration.
Furthermore, fMRI results showed that participants’ compensatory decisions driven by guilt and shame recruited distinct neural activity: Shame-driven decisions in particular were more strongly related to activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in cognitive control.
“Taken together, our findings demonstrate distinct effects of harm and responsibility on guilt and shame, as well as differences in the efficiency with which these emotions are translated into compensatory behaviors,” says lead author Chao Liu, senior investigator at the IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, State Key Laboratory, Beijing Normal University, China.
The authors note that there are some limitations to their study. For example, fMRI cannot establish causality. They say that future studies using brain stimulation techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, are therefore needed to clarify the causal role of brain regions in altruistic behaviors driven by guilt and shame.
“Our current approach in providing computational, algorithmic and neural explanations of guilt and shame has advanced our holistic understanding of these emotions,” concludes Liu.
“The findings provide greater understanding of how guilt and shame may be regulated, with possible implications for the treatment of mental health disorders related to these emotions.”
Key questions answered:
A: Guilt increases the greater the harm inflicted, while shame increases the greater the personal responsibility.
A: Guilt, which strongly predicts compensatory actions such as offering restitution.
A: Yes. Guilt and shame activate different neural circuits, especially in regions linked to value, inequality and cognitive control.
Editorial notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor. Magazine article reviewed in its entirety. Additional context added by our staff.
About this news about research in neuroscience and behavior
Author: Emily Packer
Source: eLife
Contact: Emily Packer – eLife
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News.
Original research: Open access.
“Human Neurocomputational Mechanisms of Guilt- and Shame-Driven Altruistic Behavior” by Ruida Zhu et al. eLife
Abstract
Human neurocomputational mechanisms of altruistic behavior driven by guilt and shame.
Although previous research has examined the psychological and neural correlates of guilt and shame, the cognitive antecedents that trigger them, as well as their transformation into social behavior, remain poorly understood.
We developed a novel task to investigate how two cognitive antecedents, harm and responsibility, elicit guilt and shame, and how these emotions subsequently drive compensatory behavior, combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with computational modeling in human participants.
Behaviorally, we found that harm had a stronger impact on guilt, while responsibility had a stronger impact on shame. Furthermore, compared to shame, guilt had a greater effect on compensation.
The results of computational modeling indicated that the integration of harm and responsibility by individuals is consistent with the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility. The fMRI results revealed that brain regions associated with inequality representation (posterior insula) and value calculation (striatum) encode this integrated measure.
Individual differences in responsibility-driven shame sensitivity were associated with activity in theory of mind regions (e.g., temporoparietal junction). Guilt- and shame-driven compensatory behavior recruited distinct neural substrates, and shame-driven compensatory sensitivity was most strongly linked to activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in cognitive control.
Our findings provide computational, algorithmic, and neural explanations of guilt and shame.
