The Influence of Humour on Feelings of Guilt and Motivation when Committing a Moral Misstep

Abstract

With the current climate crisis, more and more people are setting goals for themselves regarding climate-conscious living. However, sticking to such goals is sometimes difficult, and people may slip up. This can trigger feelings of guilt and shame that make them give up. The current study investigated how humour influences feelings of guilt and motivation. This was investigated using an experiment with a within-subject design (N = 117) with three conditions and a baseline. Different stories were shown to the participants in which the main character committed a misstep and a friend responded to this with either criticism in the form of no humour, moral humour, competence humour or no critique (the baseline). The results showed that the competence humour condition caused less guilt and more motivation compared to the no humour condition. In addition, the competence humour condition resulted in less guilt and more motivation than the moral humour condition. The difference in motivation was mediated by the difference in feelings of guilt. Furthermore, the results showed that giving no criticism resulted in the most motivation and least feelings of guilt. Although it seems that no critique works best when coping with moral missteps, competence humour is almost as effective. Therefore, it would be interesting for future research to examine the effect of no critique and competence humour combined. Eventually, these insights can be helpful and can be used in social circles to motivate others to stick to moral standards after committing a misstep.