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Guilty conscience: motivating pro-environmental behavior by inducing negative moral emotions

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Abstract

Conceptual frameworks in the realm of climate-related policy, attitudes and behavior frequently argue that moral emotions play a crucial role in mobilizing pro-environmental action. Yet, little is known about the direct impact of moral emotions on environmental attitudes and behavior. Drawing on emotion research in the context of intergroup relations, the current paper investigates the role of guilty conscience (guilt and shame) as well as other emotions (anger, sadness, pride, and emotional coldness) in motivating pro-environmental behavior intentions and actual behavior as a specific form of reparative action. When confronted with human-caused (vs. seemingly natural) environmental damages, participants (N = 114) reported significantly more guilty conscience. Importantly, participants in the human-caused condition were significantly more likely to spontaneously display actual pro-environmental behavior (sign a petition addressing environmental issues). Highlighting its psychological significance in motivating pro-environmental behavior, a guilty conscience mediated the experimental manipulation’s effect on behavioral intentions as well as on actual behavior. We conclude by discussing the potential of moral emotions in developing timely and sustainable climate policies and interventions.

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Notes

  1. As our predictions for both emotions were very similar, we deliberately refrain from an approach treating guilt and shame as discrete emotions in the current study. We will, however, report results for guilt and shame separately where appropriate.

  2. A mediating (or intervening) variable can help explain the underlying process of an observed relationship. Statistically, this relationship between the independent and dependent variable is usually significantly weaker or even insignificant after including the mediator in the model (see Baron and Kenny 1986).

  3. With regard to the discussion on guilt and shame mentioned in the introductory part of the paper, we conducted follow-up analyses treating each as a separate emotion. It seems noteworthy that while their predictive power was either significant or approaching significance with regard to behavioral intentions (βguilt = .333, p = .01, and βshame = .217, p = .067), the reported effect of guilty conscience on actual behavior was exclusively driven by shame (Bshame = 0.708, SE = 0.351, p = .044, whereas Bguilt = 0.001, SE = 0.289, p = .998).

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Acknowledgments

The research presented in this paper was facilitated by the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry for Innovation, Science, and Research. The authors would like to thank Gerd Bohner, Marco Grasso, Megan Hurst, Ezra Markowitz, Susanne Täuber, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, P.O. Box 100131, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany

    Jonas H. Rees & Sabine Klug

  2. Department of Social Sciences, Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, Bielefeld, Germany

    Jonas H. Rees & Sebastian Bamberg

Authors
  1. Jonas H. Rees
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  2. Sabine Klug
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  3. Sebastian Bamberg
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Correspondence to Jonas H. Rees.

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This article is part of a special issue on “Multidisciplinary perspectives on climate ethics” with guest editors Marco Grasso and Ezra M. Markowitz

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Rees, J.H., Klug, S. & Bamberg, S. Guilty conscience: motivating pro-environmental behavior by inducing negative moral emotions. Climatic Change 130, 439–452 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1278-x

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