How (why) could this have happened? The influence of construal level on shame versus guilt and related action tendencies

Shame and guilt are social emotions that share several similarities. However, there are important differences between these two emotions: Shame relates to the whole self and involves more global appraisal tendencies, whereas guilt relates to a specific behaviour. Therefore, shame may be a more high-level emotion than guilt. Considering construal-level theory and the construal-matching hypothesis, we hypothesised that a high-level construal of one's transgression would more likely result in shame than guilt compared to a low-level construal. We investigated this hypothesis with two studies that experimentally manipulated the level at which transgressions were construed using different methods: the category-versus-exemplar task (Study 1) and focusing on the how or the why of diverse transgressions (Study 2). We tested whether these manipulations affected shame versus guilt. Study 1 provided only correlational support, whereas Study 2 provided causal support for our hypothesis. Study 2 additionally showed that construal level affected downstream consequences in particular: A high-level construal caused relatively more hide and escape tendencies than a low-level construal. Implications of these findings are discussed.