گناه، آزاد و عاقلانه: جبر و اختلالات فکری و روانی، یادگیری از احساسات منفی را کاهش می دهد

Emotional experiences can bring about personal growth. For instance, feeling guilty may prompt one to learn from a mistake, and this learning can bring about different and better future behavior. Three studies found that belief in free will facilitated learning from emotional experiences, as inducing participants to disbelieve in free will was associated with reduced learning. Emotional responsiveness, as defined by low psychopathy scores, also facilitated learning from emotional experiences (Studies 2 and 3). The degree of learning associated with emotional experiences was measured by self-rating (Study 1), independent evaluations of lessons learned (Study 2), and whether participants joined a campus recycling program (after being made to feel guilty about an environmental transgression; Study 3).

The notion that emotions directly cause behavior (e.g., fear causes fleeing) may be popular, but a recent literature review found little empirical support for it (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007). Instead, the review found evidence that emotions indirectly affect behavior. For instance, feeling guilty may prompt one to learn from a mistake, which then affects how one intends to act in the future. The present investigation sought to clarify the conditions under which people learn functional lessons from emotional experiences. Our expectation was that belief in free will is an important factor in learning from emotions, such that discouraging belief in free will would undermine learning from emotional experiences. A second prediction was that trait differences in responsiveness to emotions, as defined by psychopathy, would influence learning from emotions. Specifically, we expected that people high in psychopathy (i.e., emotionally unresponsive) would learn less from emotional experiences than people low in psychopathy. We also predicted an interaction between belief in free will and psychopathy, such that disbelief in free will would reduce learning primarily among nonpsychopaths. Learning from emotional experiences It is important to clarify what emotions are of interest to the present investigation because there is no unanimity of opinion in the literature regarding what constitutes feeling an emotion. The present investigation is concerned with conscious emotions. Conscious emotions are best defined in contrast to automatic affect, which is a relatively immediate and fleeting evaluation of something as good or bad, of which one may or may not be aware ( Baumeister et al., 2007 and Russell, 2003). Conscious emotions are fully developed, arise and dissipate slowly, are deeply entwined with cognition, and often involve physiological changes. Conscious emotions are more likely than automatic affect to produce opportunities for learning, so conscious emotions will be the focus of the present work. Indirect causation theory (Baumeister et al., 2007) holds that conscious emotions enable people to profit from their experiences. This is because conscious emotions promote cognitive reflection, and the content of that reflection affects future behavior. According to the theory, emotions indirectly affect future behavior by virtue of their influence on cognition. For example, a person who carelessly makes a comment that hurts the feelings of a valued friend is likely to feel guilty, which may prompt the offending individual to reflect on the incident and resolve to be more sensitive in the future. Resolving to be more sensitive under such circumstances seems like a rational conclusion, and one that would likely benefit future interactions. Yet this is at odds with the popular notion that emotions primarily cause irrational and socially undesirable behaviors. Instead, indirect causation theory views emotions as indirectly promoting beneficial conduct. Research has demonstrated that experiencing conscious emotions stimulates cognitive reflection, consistent with the notion that emotions affect behaviors indirectly, via cognition. In one study, participants who were asked to describe a time they hurt someone, thereby causing feelings of guilt, spontaneously described learning something from the event (Baumeister et al., 1994 and Baumeister et al., 1995). Multiple literature reviews have also found that conscious emotions are closely tied to learning, reappraisal of past actions, and counterfactual thinking—all of which can shape future behavior. Schwarz and Clore (2007) reviewed published studies on emotion and concluded that the effect of emotions is primarily mental, rather than behavioral, consistent with the position that emotions stimulate cognitive reflection. One survey of the literature concluded that sadness increased counterfactual thinking (Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 2000). This makes sense from the perspective of indirect causation, as counterfactual thinking might enable one to avoid the actions that lead to sadness. A review by Roese (1997) concluded that negative emotions in general are the main source of counterfactual thinking, and counterfactual thinking can inform future behavior. In sum, empirical evidence supports the view that emotions prompt people to reflect cognitively in order to learn a functional lesson for the future (see Baumeister et al., 2007, for a thorough explication of the theory). Yet the process of learning from emotions is imperfect and uneven in its success, such that some emotional events cause people to learn quickly and other events do not. The focus of the current investigation was the identification of variables that would moderate the relationship between emotional events and learning lessons. We concentrated on two variables expected to be closely related to learning from emotional experiences: belief in free will and emotional responsiveness.