Are Emotions Reliable Predictors of Future Behavior? The Case of Guilt and Other Post-action Emotions

Abstract

This study had two goals: 1) to establish the relative importance of the violation of a moral norm and of the damage done to another person in the genesis of guilt and other post-action emotions; 2) to investigate if the post-action emotions are reliable predictors of future behavior in conditions similar to the ones that elicited them the first time. Through the scenario technique, four typical antecedents of guilt were built, in which the intentionality of the norm violation and of the damage to others were manipulated. In all scenarios the protagonist acted in such a way as to elicit guilt and the other emotions that participants were asked to assess. Thus, we presented a similar situation happening a few months later in which he had to choose whether to behave in the same way as he had behaved previously or in the opposite way. We expected that: (1) moral emotions would stimulate a different behavior from the previous one, whereas selfish emotions should lead to repeat the same behavior; (2) emotions should influence future behavior in an indirect way, through the cognitive mediation of thoughts preceding the decision; (3) the norm violation would have analogous relevance in eliciting guilt to harming another person. On the whole, the results corroborated our predictions, with some exceptions that were discussed.