Guilt is a negative effect and when one has violated an internalised social values or norms. Guilt develops and emerges as we learn a sense of responsibility. A violation of personal norms resulted in guilt to be expressed. The guilt one feels may be exhibited from our individual social and cultural experience. Guilt is induced when the person viewed one’s action as a breach towards one’s personal moral standards and one seem to bear significant responsibility for that violation. The attribution of responsibility towards harm being caused is a key component in understanding guilt. Guilt can also be a way for people to learn past mistake and this can help people to rectify the way they act on future behaviour.
|
Guilt can then be used by policymakers to encourage pro-environmental behaviour through communication and social marketing strategies. “The Hypocrisy Procedure” can be used to change the behaviour or encourage certain behaviour. The type of norms used in the situation may be key to changing behaviour. Injunctive norms concern with people’s perception of what behaviours are approved or disapproved of by others. It concerns what behaviour we think others would approve or disapprove. (i.e. using single-use plastic straw is bad for the environment). It can be used to motivate behaviour through rewards or discourage behaviour through punishments. Descriptive norms concern with people’s perception of how people behave in a given situation while disregarding whether the behaviour is approved or disapproved of behaviour. (i.e. using a single-use plastic straw because straw is provided in the restaurant). It illustrates the situation where certain behaviour is likely and unlikely. It can motivate behaviour – by informing people which behaviour is effective or adaptive. Researchers have suggested that violations of injunctive social norms may create guilt. However, descriptive norm maybe subjective conditioned to the situation and may have less consequence to the self, eliciting behaviour that is not productive. To sum it up, injunctive norm relates to what culture deemed with approval or not; while descriptive norm relates to what people do in actual situations. |
Click the arrow to go to the next page.
