Comment: Measuring Guilty and Grateful Behaviors in Children and Adults

This comment explores the use of behavioral measures in the developmental study of guilt and gratitude reviewed by Vaish and Hepach (2020). Although the use of behavioral measures in developmental emotion research might be seen as a limitation in that researchers cannot be sure that young children are actually experiencing guilt or gratitude, behavioral measures have several advantages over self-report measures, including the ability to reduce self-presentation bias and to assess emotions and motivations that may be implicit. Other fields that study guilt and gratitude might follow in developmental psychology’s lead and incorporate more behavioral measures of guilt, gratitude, and prosociality.