Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Guilty repair sustains cooperation, angry retaliation destroys it

Skatova, Anya; Ferguson, Eamonn; Leygue, Caroline; Spence, Alexa

Guilty repair sustains cooperation, angry retaliation destroys it Thumbnail


Authors

Anya Skatova

EAMONN FERGUSON eamonn.ferguson@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Health Psychology

Caroline Leygue

ALEXA SPENCE ALEXA.SPENCE@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Professor of Psychology



Abstract

Sustained cooperative social interactions are key to successful outcomes in many real-world contexts (e.g., climate change and energy conservation). We explore the self-regulatory roles of anger and guilt, as well as prosocial or selfish social preferences in a repeated social dilemma game framed around shared electricity use at home. We explore the proposal that for sustained cooperation, guilty repair needs to override angry retaliation. We show that anger is damaging to cooperation as it leads to retaliation and an increase of defection, while, through guilt, cooperation is repaired resulting in higher levels of cooperation. We demonstrate a disconnect between the experience of anger and subsequent retaliation which is a function of participants’ social preferences. While there is no difference in reports of anger between prosocial and selfish individuals after finding out that others use more energy from the communal resource, prosocials are less likely to act on their anger and retaliate. Selfish individuals are motivated by anger to retaliate but not motivated by guilt to repair and contribute disproportionately to the breakdown of cooperation over repeated interactions. We suggest that guilt is a key emotion to appeal to when encouraging cooperation.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 28, 2017
Online Publication Date Apr 27, 2017
Publication Date Apr 27, 2017
Deposit Date Sep 12, 2018
Publicly Available Date Dec 20, 2018
Journal Scientific Reports
Publisher Nature Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 7
Article Number 46709
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46709
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1121329
Publisher URL https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46709

Files




You might also like



Downloadable Citations