AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF GUILT
Abstract
This research investigated the magnitude of conditioned emotional and escape responses to CS representing behaviors having some probability of being punished in the population from which the experimental subjects were drawn. Female undergraduate subjects were divided into two groups, Guilt and Neutral; the Guilt Group was given the stimuli representing socially unacceptable behavior, and the Neutral Group the stimuli representing socially acceptable behavior. Autonomic responses to the two-word phrases were first recorded, and at a later date subjects made their TRs following the reading and answering of each stimulus question. Two separate experiments were done, the second being a repitition of the first, with a few changes in procedure. The main hypotheses predicted that Guilt stimuli would elicit larger autonomic and time report (TR) responses than Neutral stimuli, i.e., Guilt stimuli would elicit guilt, defined in terms of magnitude of autonomic and TR responses. The findings for Experiment I clearly showed these differences between groups. However, although autonomic responses to Guilt stimuli were larger in Experiment II, there were no significant differences in TRs to the two types of stimuli. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1962
- Accession Number
- AD0290255
Entities
People
- Martha E. Bernal
Organizations
- Indiana University Bloomington