Feeling Guilty For Your Fellow's Fault:The Psychological And Neural Basis Of Collective Guilt

Guilt is the emotion characterized by the morally motivated individual's belief that he is in a morally unacceptable state.Guilt includes personal guilt and group-based(collective guilt).Human beings feel guilty for transgressions they are causally responsible for,i.e.,when they realize that they are responsible for actions that violates certain moral norms(i.e.,personal guilt).Moreover,guilt exists in inter-group interactions: individuals may feel guilty for transgressions committed by members of social groups they identify as in-group,even when they are not directly responsible for these transgressions(i.e.,collective guilt).Scenario-based imagination or recall of historical events involving intergroup conflict have been widely used to induce group-based guilt in previous studies,which laid a foundation for further research on group-based guilt.However,this approach's strength of high ecological validity often comes at the cost of a well-controlled experimental manipulation,for example,by confounding group-based guilt with the level of harm inflicted on the victims.Moreover,the historical scenario-based method used in previous research limits the investigation of group-based guilt to the populations with a history of intergroup conflict,which hinders the generalizability of the empirical evidence for conceptualizing group-based guilt as a universal psychological capacity.Besides,the historical scenario-based method lack the interaction context inducing guilt.In the current study,we developed a mini group-based interpersonal game to induce and simultaneously measure group-based guilt and personal guilt.Combining the game paradigm with functional MRI,we aimed to answer five questions: 1)whether group-based guilt can be elicited by temporary mini-group manipulation among individuals who are not associated with any racial or ethnic groups involved in real life intergroup conflict;2)whether there are common neurocognitive processes underlying group-based guilt and personal guilt;and 3)whether shared behavioral and neural manifestations between group-based and personal guilt could be explained by responsibility sharing with in-group partners in a transgression.In study 1,we developed a mini group-based interpersonal game to induce and simultaneously measure group-based guilt and personal guilt,it is possible to interrogate how the brain represents these two types of guilt,and whether there are common underlying neurocognitive processes for them.The task consisted of two phases.In the first,mini-group manipulation phase,the six participants of group A were randomly divided into two sub-groups of three members each.Each sub-group was required to work together to solve a problem.The purpose of this phase was to build in-group/out-group context.In the second phase,the participants(i.e.,Transgressors)played multiple rounds of a dots-estimation game either with two in-group partners or two out-group partners.The Victims would receive electric shocks depending on the performance of the transgressors.Then,the participant was asked to rate his/her level of guilt on a 0-6 scale(with an increment of 1)by pressing a key to increase or decrease the rating before pressing the space bar to confirm his/her choice(Experiment one),or the participant was asked to divide 20 yuan(~3 USD)between him/herself and the 3 players B who received the pain stimulation(Experiment two),with the knowledge that the players B were unaware of the existence of this money distribution.The amount allocated to the B-players was interpreted as a measure of compensation for electric shocks.The results showed that Participants perceived a higher level of responsibility,feel guiltier,and compensated more when the harm was caused by in-group partners than out-group partners even when the participants were not causally involved in harm.The results supported the existence of an indirect pathway from shared responsibility via guilt to monetary allocation,suggesting the sense of responsibility plays an important role in experiencing group-based guilt.In Experiment3,we revealed neurocognitive profiles of group-based guilt and demonstrated its similarity with personal guilt.Specifically,shared responsibility for in-group transgressions is a crucial cognitive antecedent of group-based guilt just as personal,objective responsibility is crucial for personal guilt.Moreover,aMCC is commonly activated in group-based guilt and personal guilt,and the MVPA further suggested that the neural representations of group-based guilt are similar to those of personal guilt.Our findings thus provide evidence for the Intergroup Emotion Theory account of group-based emotion,which posits that the neurocognitive machinery for individual-level emotions are co-opted in the group context.On the basis of Study 1,Study 2 directly manipulated the level of perceived responsibility for group harm to further examine whether the perceived responsibility for group harm can regulate the guilty mood and compensation behavior.Study 2 included three behavioral experiments and one functional magnetic experiment.In Experiments 4 and 5,we manipulated the perceived responsibility by whether it is possible for participants to determine the type of task on behalf of the group,to examine how the perceived responsibility regulates the group's internal emotions(Experiment 4)and compensation behavior(Experiment 5).The results of Experiment 4 and Experiment 5 show that the perceived responsibility for group harm will significantly affect their guilty emotional experience and compensation behavior.In the high responsibiity condition,the guilty emotions experienced by the participants and the compensation given to the victims were greater than in the low responsibiity condition.Further mediation pathway analysis also showed that the existence of an indirect pathway from shared responsibility via guilt to monetary allocation in the high responsibiity.These results indicate that perceived responsibility for group harm can regulate group-based guilt and the subsequent compensation behaviors,and further demonstrate that responsibility perception is the cognitive mechanism of group-based guilt.Experiment 6 found that,first,aMCC and bilateral insula were activated in the process of group-based guilt in the high responsibiity condition.Moreover,aMCC activation difference in the in the high responsibiity conditions positively correlated with the post-scan guilt rating difference between these two conditions.The indirect pathway analysis established the existence of an indirect pathway from guilt to compensation.Second,aMCC and bilateral insula were not activated in the low responsibiity condition,due to the individual differences are relatively large in this condition.Third,the MVPA further suggested that the neural representations of group-based guilt in the high responsibiity condition are similar to those in the low responsibiity condition.To conclude,by combining fMRI with an interactive collective game,we provide behavioral and neural evidence demonstrating that the group-based(collective)guilt could promote prosocial behaviors(e.g.,compensations)towards victims of intergroup transgression and the perceived responsibility sharing underlies the common behavioral and neural manifestations between group-based and personal guilt.Our results showed that 1)psychologically,shared responsibility for in-group transgressions is an important cognitive antecedent to experience group-based guilt;2)neurobiologically,aMCC is commonly activated in group-based guilt and personal guilt,and the MVPA further suggested that the neural representations of group-based guilt are similar to those of personal guilt;3)the neural representations of group-based guilt in the high responsibiity condition are similar to those in the low responsibility condition.Membership in a group leads members to share traits,characteristics,and attitudes,and social categorization also triggers emotion sharing.