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Guilt, Shame, and Reparative Behavior: The Effect of Psychological Proximity

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Abstract

Research has paid scant attention to reparative behavior to compensate for unintended wrongdoing or to the role of emotions in doing the right thing. We propose a new approach to investigating reparative behavior by looking at moral emotions and psychological proximity. In this study, we compare the effects of moral emotions (guilt and shame) on the level of compensation for financial harm. We also investigate the role of transgressors’ perceived psychological proximity to the victims of wrongdoing. Our hypotheses were tested through a scenario based questionnaire on a sample of 261 participants. Analyses indicate that (1) guilt has a stronger effect on the level of compensation than shame; (2) psychological proximity influences the level of guilt, shame, and compensation; and (3) shame interacts with psychological proximity to predict compensation, whereas guilt mediates the relationship between psychological proximity and compensation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of General Management, School of Business, Renmin University of China, Mingde Business Building, No. 59 Zhongguancun St. Haidian Dist., Beijing, 100872, People’s Republic of China

    Majid Ghorbani

  2. Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, 500 Granville St., Vancouver, BC, V6C 1W6, Canada

    Yuan Liao & Sinan Çayköylü

  3. Wichita State University, 1845 Fairmount, Box 88, Wichita, KS, 67260, USA

    Masud Chand

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  1. Majid Ghorbani
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  2. Yuan Liao
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  3. Sinan Çayköylü
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  4. Masud Chand
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Correspondence to Majid Ghorbani.

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This research was partially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Fund of Renmin University of China (Project No. 12XNF032).

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Ghorbani, M., Liao, Y., Çayköylü, S. et al. Guilt, Shame, and Reparative Behavior: The Effect of Psychological Proximity. J Bus Ethics 114, 311–323 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1350-2

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