remorse

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Remorse is an emotional expression of personal regret felt by a person after he or she has committed an act which they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or violent. Remorse is closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment. When a person regrets an earlier action or failure to act, it may be because of remorse or in response to various other consequences, including being punished for the act or omission. In a legal context, the perceived remorse of an offender is assessed by Western justice systems during trials, sentencing, parole hearings, and in restorative justice. However, it has been pointed out that epistemological problems arise in assessing an offender's level of remorse.^[1]

A person who is incapable of feeling remorse is often labelled with antisocial personality disorder - as characterized in the DSM IV-TR. In general, a person needs to be unable to feel fear, as well as remorse in order to develop psychopathic traits. Legal and business professions such as insurance have done research on the expression of remorse via apologies, primarily because of the potential litigation and financial implications.

Studies

Two studies on apologizing are "The Five Languages of Apology" by Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas, and "On Apology" by Aaron Lazare. These studies indicate that effective apologies that express remorse typically include a detailed account of the offense; acknowledgment of the hurt or damage done; acceptance of the responsibility for, and ownership of, the act or omission; and an explanation that recognizes one's role. As well, apologies usually include a statement or expression of regret, humility or remorse; a request for forgiveness; and an expression of a credible commitment to change or a promise that it will not happen again. Apologies may also include some form of restitution, compensation or token gesture in line with the damage that you caused. When an apology is delayed, for instance if a friend has been wronged and the offending party does not apologize, the perception of the offense can compound over time. This is sometimes known as compounding remorse. Compunction refers to the act of actively expressing remorse, usually requiring the remorseful individual to physically approach the person to whom they are expressing regret.

Psychological Disorder Aspects

Psychopathic individuals are best known for their flagrant disregard for social and moral norms. Psychopaths have dysfunctional personal relationships, characterized by violence, exploitation, and philandering. Emotionally, they are incapable of feeling guilt or empathy, they respond abnormally to fear and pain, and other emotions are shallow compared to population norms.^[2] Psychopaths refuse to adopt social and moral norms because they are not swayed by the emotions, such as guilt, remorse, or fear of retribution, that influence human beings.^[2]

As human beings, we hold dear to the value of remorse. The lack of remorse leads us to all believe a person to be despicable. It is widely accepted that remorse is the proper reaction to any misconduct. Remorse may originate in from either actual or contrived regret for the misconduct that results in getting caught or causing harm.^[3] Research has shown that the facial expressions of offenders on trial affects the jury's attitude and, in turn, the sentencing decision. While remorse may present guilt that may influence a jury's decision, a lack of remorse influences the jury even more because it is one trait of psychopathy.

Psychopathy represents a configuration of traits that are missing within a person's personality, such as a lack of empathy and remorse. Knowledge of psychopathic traits has been shown to effect how jurors perceive adult and juvenile offenders. Assessments of psychopathy are introduced to direct a relatively wide variety of questions in the legal system, so investigators have started examining the effects of psychopathy evidences.^[4] Through simulations in studies by John Edens, who is a psychology professor at Texas A&M University, data suggests that attributing psychopathic traits to adult and juvenile offenders can have a noticeable negative effect on how these individuals are viewed by others.^[4] Remorselessness, a key feature of psychopathy, proves to be a strong predictor of juror attitudes.^[4] In the study by John Edens, a pool of offenders were labeled as either having a "disorder" condition or having "no disorder." Those labeled as "disorder" were given death verdicts by mock jurors.^[4] In the study, traits, such as callousness, remorselessness, and superficial charm, were a strong predictor of negative consequences for the offenders. This study found that remorselessness has the largest effect on the mock jurors' opinions of the "disorder" offenders and it explains support for the death sentence.^[4] The results of this study suggest that, free of mental health testimonies, perceptions of a defendant's personality traits may have serious implications sentencing decisions in a capital case.^[4]

Forgiveness

The perception of remorse is essential to an apology, as such the greater the perception of remorse the more effective the apology. An effective apology reduces negative consequences and facilitating cognitive and behavioral changes associated with forgiveness.^[5] With empathy as the mediator between apologies and forgiveness and remorse as the essential part to an apology, one can expect empathy to mediate perceived remorse forgiveness. Remorse may signal that one is suffering psychologically because of their negative behavior, which leads to empathy from the second party who then will express forgiveness.^[5] In a study by James Davis and Greg Gold, 170 university students filled out questionnaires about forgiveness within interpersonal relationships. Davis and Greg's findings suggest that when a victim perceives an apology to be remorseful then he/she believes the negative behavior will not occur again, increased empathy results in increased forgiveness, and future offenses could be easily forgiven.^[5]

Remorse versus Self-condemnation

Remorse is closely linked with the willingness to humble one self and to repent for one's misdeeds. Remorse is not as such when defined through the view of self-condemnation.^[6] Self-condemnation, more so than remorse, is said to be associated with poor psychological well-being. Remorse captures feelings of guilt, regret, and sorrow. Forgiveness does not eliminate all negative feelings, but it may entail the reduction of bitter and angry feelings, not feelings of disappointment, regret, or sorrow. A study by Mickie Fisher found that people who forgive themselves for serious offenses may continue to harbor remorse or regret.^[6] In contrast to remorse, self-condemnation reflects a more global, negative, severe stance toward oneself. Remorse may convey a sense of sorrow, while self-condemnation suggests the kind of loathing and desire for punishment that characterizes interpersonal grudges. Fisher suggests that self-forgiveness does not necessarily require one to get rid of feelings or regret or remorse.^[6] Based on the study by Fisher, self-forgiveness seems to relate more closely to self-condemnation and not remorse. When trying to convince people to forgive themselves, it is crucial to not erase the potentially adaptive feelings of remorse along with the more destructive self-condemnation.^[6] People can grow and experience prosocial behaviors once they accept responsibility for their own transgressions. For genuine self-forgiveness, one must first accept responsibility for their offenses and not rush to rid themselves of guilty feelings.

Buyer's Remorse

Purchases can be divided into two different categories: material or experiential. A material good is made to be kept in the buyer's possession, while an experiential good provides the buyer with a life experience. A material good provides the buyer with a more enduring pleasure compared with an experiential, as these two purchases also result in different types of regret.^[7] While experiential purchases bring about regrets of a missed opportunity, material purchases result in buyer's remorse, which means that a person dwells on how their material purchase measure up to other purchases they could have made and how it compares with other people's purchases. These comparisons diminish satisfaction from the original purpose.^[7] Past research explains that regrets of action are intense, but only in the short term, while regrets of inaction gains intensity over time and dominates people's experience. Major life choices, such as marriage, jobs, and education, are often the focus of regret. Everyday experience suggests that everyday decisions are the most frequent causes of regret.^[7] Marketing directors know the effects of buyer's remorse, and use it to their advantage when planning marketing strategies. The regret felt over choosing a material over an experiential purchase depends on the pain of the factors underlying the purchase. Based on research by Thomas Gilovich and Emily Rosenzwig, material purchases are more likely to lead to regret, while experiential purchases give the buyer more satisfaction even over time.^[7]

In marketing

In a business and marketing context, "buyer's remorse" is the concept of regretting a purchase after buying it. From a business perspective, the problem with "buyer's remorse" is that a consumer's fear of regretting having made a purchase may influence them to delay or avoid making these major purchases, which can reduce the sales of companies selling these products. Customers' fears of ending up with "buyer's remorse" is typically much greater for expensive purchases, such as appliances, cars, and houses. Customers' fears range from the mild worry that the item in question may not meet all of their needs (or their families' needs) to the fear that they will end up buying a mechanically or structurally unsound product. To allay consumers' fears, and encourage them to make "big ticket" purchases, companies have used a variety of techniques, such as offering "try-before-you-buy" programs, warranties, money-back guarantees, and "30-day exchange" programs.

"Try-before-you-buy" programs range from relatively short trials, as in the case of 30-minute test drives in the automobile market, to several-week loans for other types of products. With high-end home audio products and pro-level musical instruments, the qualities of these expensive products are very subtle and hard to assess; a customer is not able to determine if a $3000 loudspeaker or a $30,000 violin has the sound or tone that they subjectively prefer merely by listening to it or using it in the store for a few hours. To determine if a high-end stereo or musical instrument meets their needs, clients typically take the product out on loan for several weeks, so that they can test the equipment or instrument's response to different types of music and listening environments. Warranties, money-back guarantees, and exchange programs all help to allay the fears of the customer that there will be costly problems with the product; with these programs, the customer knows that in the event of a breakdown, it will be fixed by the store or the product will be replaced.

See also

Look up remorse in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Remorse

• Guilt
• Resentment
• Regret

References

v t e Emotions (list) Emotions Adoration Affection Agony Awe Amusement Anger Anguish Annoyance Anxiety Arousal Attraction Caring Compassion Contempt Contentment Defeat Dejection Depression Desire Despair Disappointment Disgust Ecstasy Embarrassment Empathy Enthrallment Enthusiasm Envy Euphoria Excitement Fear Frustration Grief Guilt Happiness Hatred Homesickness Hope Horror Hostility Humiliation Hysteria Infatuation Insecurity Insult Interest Irritation Isolation Jealousy Loneliness Longing Love Lust Melancholy Neglect Optimism Panic Passion Pity Pleasure Pride Rage Regret Rejection Remorse Resentment Sadness Sentimentality Shame Shock Sorrow Spite Suffering Surprise Sympathy Tenseness Thrill Revenge Wonder Worry Zeal Zest Worldviews Compatibilism Existentialism Fatalism Incompatibilism Metaphysics Nihilism Optimism Pessimism Reclusion Social justice Weltschmerz Source: Parrott, W. (2001), Emotions in Social Psychology, Psychology Press, Philadelphia.