Shame and Guilt: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In the past few decades, we have witnessed a growing body of literature on emotions in the consumer behavior domain. Emotions are defined as “mental states of readiness that arise from appraisals of events or one’s own thoughts” (Bagozzi, Gopinath, & Nyer, 1999, p. 184). Marketers have examined the role of emotions as stimuli, mediators, moderators, and responses to the environment. The broad topic of emotions includes subtopics such as impact of emotions on consumption, attitudes, and behavioral intentions, emotional responses to market stimuli, and the impact of emotions on cognition. However, although the study of emotions is pivotal to consumer researchers, the marketing literature has mostly focused on a few emotions. In this dissertation, our focus is on two emotional states of shame and guilt. Unlike marketing literature, these two emotional states are commonly investigated together in psychology and sociology literature. However, there seems to be an overemphasis on guilt in the marketing literature, while shame has not benefited from similar attention. Over three essays I summarize the literature on shame and guilt, examine these emotional states as mediators, and as interventions to induce behavior modification