RT Article
T1 Guilt, Shame, and Reparative Behavior: The Effect of Psychological Proximity
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 114
IS 2
SP 311
OP 323
A1 Ghorbani, Majid
A1 Liao, Yuan
A1 Çayköylü, Sinan
A1 Chand, Masud
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2013
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1785647547
AB Research has paid scant attention to reparative behavior to compensate for unintended wrongdoing or to the role of emotions in doing the right thing. We propose a new approach to investigating reparative behavior by looking at moral emotions and psychological proximity. In this study, we compare the effects of moral emotions (guilt and shame) on the level of compensation for financial harm. We also investigate the role of transgressors’ perceived psychological proximity to the victims of wrongdoing. Our hypotheses were tested through a scenario based questionnaire on a sample of 261 participants. Analyses indicate that (1) guilt has a stronger effect on the level of compensation than shame; (2) psychological proximity influences the level of guilt, shame, and compensation; and (3) shame interacts with psychological proximity to predict compensation, whereas guilt mediates the relationship between psychological proximity and compensation.
K1 Unintended transgression
K1 Reparative behavior
K1 Psychological proximity
K1 Shame
K1 Guilt
K1 Ethical decision making
K1 Emotional ethics
K1 Construal level theory
DO 10.1007/s10551-012-1350-2