The role of causal attribution in hurt feelings and related social emotions elicited in reaction to other's feedback about failure

Abstract

The present research addressed the question of what it is that makes certain types of feedback on the reasons for failure hurtful. The results of two studies demonstrated that the causal structure implied by an explanation for failure explains the degree to which the explanation is perceived as hurtful and likely to elicit anger, shame, and guilt. In contrast, the perceived validity of the explanations is of relatively less importance for the elicitation of hurt feelings and anger than the content of the explanation. Overall, these results provide further evidence for the importance of attributional information for social emotions, whereas the validity of the information had a relatively lesser effect.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Inna Blank for help with the data collection. We are also grateful to Bernard Weiner, the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous versions of the manuscript.