Haidt (2003) and Shweder (1994) contributed towards clarification and explanation of the emotional categories in terms of their families. The first large family is self-condemning, including contempt, anger and disgust, which have many other sub branches, e.g. indignation etc. The second family is self-conscious. This includes shame, embarrassment and guilt (Haidt, 1999). Self-conscious emotions lead to self-praising emotions. The third family is a small family that includes: suffering emotions, like empathy, sympathy and the fourth family includes praising emotions of gratitude and elevation (Haidt, 2003). Similarly McCullough et al. (2001) stated that positive moral emotions are produced as a result of good deeds and awe and elevation are triggered by human virtue. However, Western societies also consider gratitude and elevation as positive emotions (McCullough et al., 2001). Thomas et al.
(2005) concluded that other-focused emotion such as sympathy is more appropriate to promote helping behaviour through a campaign, even in developing countries.
However, the debate on moral emotions is still continuing to get clarity about what the moral emotions because, in most of the literature any emotion can be regarded as moral emotion that make people care about others and , to support people’s needs.
However Lazarus (1991) and Roseman (1991) divided moral emotions into four classes based on cause and action relationships as shown in Figure 3.1.
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Source: Developed by the Authors, Drawing on Haidt (2003) and Tangney et al. (2007)
Thus this set of moral emotions provides useful feedback to the self for anticipatory behaviour or actual behaviour in the form of consequential emotional reactions. The feedback loop is important to engage, direct and devise on moral behaviours.
Anticipation of people‘s emotional response is determined only through people’s past experiences or response to similar behaviours. Emotions and moral emotions such as guilt, embarrassment or pride are situation dependent.
Weiner (1985) explained that emotions are of two different types in terms of their occupation. One is outcome dependent and other is attribution dependent. Emotions like anger and happiness function as an outcome of peoples’ experience. In the case of a positive outcome, people feel happy; while negative outcomes make people feel unhappy or angry. Attribution dependent emotions come from people’s ascription about the causes they relate to favourable or unfavourable circumstances. For
Contempt Anger Disgust
Embarrassment Guilt
Shame
Awe Elevation Gratitude
Pride
Praising Condemning
Other Appraisal Self-Appraisal
Figure 3.1: Types of Moral Emotions
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example, gratitude is an attribution dependent emotion that derives from attribution of favourable circumstances to the actions of oneself or of another person.
An emotional state of a person leads to a motivational and cognitive state for goal oriented actions (Frijda, 1986). That is why Haidt (2003) explained the two dimensional (X-axis and Y-axis) view of emotions. The x-axis represents emotions triggered by situational factors, and which do not have much effect on the self.
Emotions at the y-axis are relevant in generation of pro-social action as displayed in Figure 3.2. This is not a perfect arrangement as there could be other possibilities.
However all emotions have a tendency to convert into moral emotion to a greater or lesser degree.
Source: Haidt (2003: p. 854)
3.4.1.1 Positive and Negative Moral Emotions
Most recently, Tangeney et al. (2007) categorized moral emotions into two types;
negatively valanced and positively valanced moral emotions. Negatively valanced Figure 3.2: Types of Moral Emotions
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moral emotions include shame, guilt and embarrassment and positively valanced moral emotions include elevation, gratitude and pride. Similarly Byron (2008) mentioned that many researchers classified emotions according to their valence, i.e.
positive (happiness and joy) and negative (anger and disgust) or neutral (absence of positive and negative emotions), while a few researchers differentiated emotions on the basis of their intensity (perceived strength of emotion) (Byron, 2008).
Haidt (2000, 2003) also considered positive emotions, such as elevation and gratitude. According to him an experience or even observation of gratitude through admiration of others’ deeds stimulates the observer to choose admirable deeds, e.g.
helping others. In addition to Haidt’s (2000, 2003) view of emotions, Tangeney et al.
(2007) suggested empathy to be a ‘morally relevant emotional process’ as opposed to an actual moral emotion. This study does not focus on all types of emotions as antecedents of helping behaviour. It is focused on key emotions that are important in a pro-social behaviour context and in a charity organization perspective. According to the purpose of this study two categories of emotions are highly relevant, one is positive moral emotions and the second is negative moral emotions. Both can help to recognise the reasons for volunteering/action and how to make the outcomes consistent.
Positive and negative emotions are different from each other. Negative emotions persuade towards corrective procedures while positive emotions arise in fair conduct and motivate consistency of behaviour. They encourage continuing practice of skills and improving relationships (Fredrickson, 1998). According to Lazarus (1991) coping strategies could mediate the severity of negative emotions by engaging the viewer in counter action. Negative emotional states and engagement in the pro-social action as a remedial or corrective measure usually reduce emotional
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incongruence. Bekkers and Wiepking (2007) explained that donor’s behaviour is a result of an impulsive action to avoid guilt and attain a positive image. It is noticed that in charity campaigns moral emotional appeals are usually applied; either positive or negative and even sometimes both. These appeals stimulate the giving behaviour through arousing either love and affection or shame and guilt feelings (Harris and Harris, 1977; Bekkers and Wiepking, 2007). Not much research is founded on the effectiveness of moral emotions that stimulate the helping behaviour and charitable motives.
Positively valanced moral emotions such as moral pride may also have a role to play in attitude development within the pro-social and volunteering context. As McCullough et al. (2001) explained pride is a positive emotion that results from good deeds and self-competence. Indeed Mascolo and Fischer (1995) defined pride as “generated by appraisals that one is responsible for a socially valued outcome or for being a socially valued person” (p. 66). Pride operates by enhancing one’s self-worth or identity and encouraging future behaviour with high social or moral standards (Barrett, 1995). Feelings of pride, for meeting or exceeding morally relevant standards for instance of helping behaviour, are common in pro-social contexts. For instance it is possible that helping behaviour may be the focus of pride for some people but in others who have experienced helping people, it may become pride in them (Tangney, 1990).
With the growth of the positive psychology movement and Haidt’s (2002, 2003) seminal work on other orientated moral emotions, a number of “newer” moral emotions are being investigated in the literature relative to the traditional self-conscious, inner-directed and often negatively valanced moral emotions of shame and guilt. Such emotions also include anger, contempt and disgust.
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Guilt is aroused by communal relationship with an object (Baumeister et al. 1994;
Tangney, 1991), and due to violation of standards that can harm others. It affects more if the person who suffers is known rather than a stranger (Baumeister et al., 1994). It motivates to help the victim and manage the relationship properly. This emotion strengthens the morality and values in one’s core self and creates tendencies to avoid violations. It guides daily life behaviour and help to manage relations with others properly. Guilt is activated in the course of failure or to do one’s duty or to meet the standards, which causes a sense of regret, tension and anxiety. It is a negative emotion in which a person feels responsible for failure (Weiner, 1985;
Smith and Ellosworth, 1885). Tangney and Dearing (2002) explained that guilt is not self-focused but rather a self-conscious emotion that concerns what has or has not been done. So the experience of guilt leads to negative evaluation of self in response to a negative incident.
Guilt appeals within social marketing have used a self-esteem ‘formula’ to encourage pro-social behaviour which if enacted should enhance self-esteem or maintain pre-advert exposure levels. A guilt appeal presents a social problem that an audience is vulnerable to; to arouse a sense of personal responsibility, and a “safety”
condition that provides a solution (often presented as “neutralising”) that is “easy to execute” (Ruiter et al., 2001: p. 614) such as the decision to support the charity or making a donation through a telephone line (Donovan and Henley, 1997; LaTour and Rotfeld, 1997). Guilt appeals have been found to have the desired effect. There is also greater acceptance that guilt appeals are becoming more effective and more congruent to the needs of social marketing audiences. Almost the same concept can be adopted for internal marketing application to make internal communication more effective for volunteers.
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Lewis (1971) further elaborated on this distinction, by suggesting that global evaluation of the self is critical whereas guilt involves a negative appraisal of a negative situation or behaviour. It is surprising that sometimes negative emotions bring positive outcomes; for example guilt has the potential to generate a positive response as an amendment or commitment (Soscia, 2007). Thomas (2005) argued that emotions affect volunteerism, but this is not the case for all of them; for example guilt is self-focused and provides limited motivation for volunteerism. So self-focused emotions have limited potential to influence volunteerism. On the contrary Leach et al. (2002) suggested that the emotions focus on the needs of others provides better motivation for volunteering than self-focused emotions.