I am trying to understand whether the feelings of guilt and shame precede social values, and how the three [guilt, shame, and values] determine the choice of [decision for] alternative-actions that will enhance social development.
Interesting question. I don't believe people have looked at the role of shame, guilt, or values in the domain of social development failures. I think it is difficult to study the question exactly the way you're thinking of it, because that specific question assumes that people take collective responsibility for failures of social development. That assumption is not borne out by evidence. People tend to blame each other or institutions or authorities or even past generations for collective problems. You can see this for example in the way that people deflect shame and guilt about their countries' previous generations' acts of genocide (see the Leach paper I have up on my profile for a review). There is another element to this that needs parsing as well. Why do you expect guilt and shame to precede values? The argument for the relationship going the other way is just as strong. If you have conscientousness-associated values at the collective level, aren't you more likely to be shamed or feel guilty upon discovering ingroup blame? And, in the relational and empathic sense of it, if someone tries to shame you and you share no values with them, does it impact you the same way as someone whose opinion you do value doing that? And if all that is relevant to shame and guilt , how do you control for these things in looking at what motivates alternative collective action? These are questions I believe you need to consider before constructing a process model of social-developmental change. In general, though, my research (see my dissertation, again on my profile) seems to indicate that it is not so much negative emotions that motivate any kind of collective action (other than anger of course), but positive ones such as hope and inspiration and empathy. Good luck and keep us updated!
Dear Anthony,
If I understand it well, you ask for the relations among guilt, same, and social and moral values.
These relations have been much studied in the so called happy/unhappy victimizer phenomenon. In these studies, Individuals are asked to say how a victimizer feels after committing an immoral act and why they feel so.
In general, findings have shown that under 7-8 years, children tend to say that the victimizer feels good/happy because s/he got what s/he desired while committing the immoral act at issue (e.g., to steal a chocolate bar from an innocent victim). To say that a victimizer feels good and happy because s/he got what s/he desired amounts to attributing a positive (and immoral) emotion to the victimizer. Older children tend to say that the victimizer feels bad and unhappy (a negative and moral emotion) because s/he committed an immoral act. It is often the case that unhappy victimizers feel guilty and ashamed just because they committed an anti-social and immoral act.
There is accumulated evidence that shows that individuals who feel guilty and ashamed when they commit immoral and antisocial acts tend to be more moral and social that those individuals who do not express such emotions. This means that guilt and shame are a predictor of one's social and moral behaviors, and hence of his/her social development. Actually, the more individuals have, say, a sense of guilt and shame the less they are inclined to behave immorally and antisocially. As such, they also express guilt and shame when they perform immoral and antisocial acts. This means that the relation among guilt, shame, and moral or social values is to be seen as bidirectional. That is, guilt and shame may precede social and moral behaviors, and the other way around.
I know that my answer is a short answer to your question. Even so, I believe that the enormous literature on the happy/unhappy victimizer is quite informative about your main question. If you are not acquainted with it, I think you can profit a lot from reading it.
I hope that this helps.
Best regards .
HI
I would advise to look into works of Rupert Brown and colleagues on differential predictions collective shame vs guilt.
best regards
Article Nuestra Culpa: Collective Guilt and Shame as Predictors of R...
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