Guilt and Shame: Environmental Message Framing Effects

Abstract

The authors examine how two negative emotions—guilt and shame—influence responses to environmental ad messages framed as gains or losses. In Study 1, participants primed with guilt express higher intention to conserve water after they view a gain-framed water conservation ad; participants primed with shame express higher conservation intention after they view a loss-framed ad. Study 2 replicates and supports the proposed matching hypothesis using nonstudent adults. In Study 3, participants react to a recycling ad as they did in Studies 1 and 2 when they expend high effort by transcribing the recycle pledge before they view the ad, but not when they expend low effort by reading the pledge first. The findings overall provide converging evidence for the interplay between negative emotions and message framing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed for developing environmental advertising message strategies.

Notes

1. In this example, Tom's action was self caused (versus other caused). Schmader and Lickel (2006) showed that such self-caused wrongdoings could evoke either guilt or shame where individuals tend to blend two concepts; individuals distinguish between guilt and shame more clearly for other-caused wrongdoings.

2. In the current context, effort investment does not include the lexical processing effort (i.e., the relative ease or difficulty involved in processing words in linguistic context; McDonald and Shillcock 2001) as well as the mental processing effort (i.e., cognitive capability that is allocated to process information; Briley and Aaker 2006; Schwarz and Clore 2006).