Mastering moral misery: Emotional and coping responses to intragroup morality (vs. competence) evaluations

Abstract

In social groups, individuals are often confronted with evaluations of their behaviour by other group members and are motivated to adapt their own behaviour accordingly. In two studies we examine emotional responses towards, and perceived coping abilities with, morality vs. competence evaluations individuals receive from other in-group members. In Study 1, we show that evaluations of one's immoral behaviour primarily induce guilt, whereas evaluations of incompetent behaviour raise anger. In Study 2, we elaborate on the psychological process associated with these emotional responses, and demonstrate that evaluations of immorality, compared to incompetence, diminish group members’ perceived coping abilities, which in turn intensifies feelings of guilt. However, when anticipating an opportunity to restore one's self-image as a moral group member, perceived coping abilities are increased and the experience of guilt is alleviated. Together these studies demonstrate how group members can overcome their moral misery when restoring their self-image.

Keywords:

• Intragroup processes
• Morality
• Competence
• Emotions
• Coping ability

Acknowledgement

We thank Wilco van Dijk, Serena Does, Bastiaan Rutjens and Elise Seip for their valuable comments on a previous draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Additionally, we also ran two conditions where the evaluative valence was positive rather than negative. Participants were asked to recall a situation in which they had behaved in a way that was evaluated as either moral or competent (depending on the dimension condition) by others in a group context, and to describe both their behaviour and how (someone from) their group confronted them with their behaviour. Results revealed no effects of Dimension on the discrete negative emotions of guilt, shame and anger (ps > .18). However, participants in the competence conditions reported to feel even less sad (M = 1.86, SD = 1.46) than participants in the morality condition (M = 2.90, SD = 2.11), F(1, 63) = 5.51, p = .02, = .08.

² Two participants did not provide a situational description. Removing those participants, as well as those who failed to describe a situation as instructed from the subsequent analyses did not significantly change our results. We therefore included those participants in all analyses.

³ Examples of the described situations concerning behavioural evaluations are, for immoral behaviour: “It was at a meeting of my fraternity, when I was wearing a shirt of a different fraternity. I was called on my loyalty towards my fraternity” and incompetent behaviour: “I was supposed to make some arrangements for a show on behalf of my fraternity, but I made several mistakes. Eventually it had to be cancelled all together. It was considered as something important, they confronted me with it”.

⁴ In this study, participants were attached to apparatus for measuring impedance cardiographic, electrocardiographic and blood pressure signals. After the described procedure, participants engaged in an additional study in which their cardiovascular responses were explored. Analyses of those data are beyond the scope of the current paper.

⁵ We used a within-subjects design for this study and participants were asked to fill out the questionnaire twice. Hence, we wanted to limit the number of items on the questionnaire.

⁶ Due to technical errors, the situational descriptions of two participants were not saved. Removing those participants, as well as participants who failed to describe a situation conform dimension condition, from the subsequent analyses did not significantly alter our results. We therefore included those participants in all analyses.

⁷ Since we found no effect of dimension on shame and sadness and neither on perceived coping ability in the restore conditions, the latter was ruled out as potentially mediating the link between dimension and feelings of guilt.