The British CBA Test Responses

The descriptors selected may either add emphasis to features of guilty already found in the FA responses, or add new meanings. The following four descriptors were selected most frequently by the British participants:

x I feel responsible (21)

x I feel sick inside my body (19) x I want to undo what I did (19)

x I want to make things good again (13)

As can be seen, there is agreement among the participants on what descriptors to select. Almost all of the 22 participants selected the first three, though only ten selected all four descriptors. However, there is a major leap from the third (19) to the fourth (13), which is closely followed by the fifth most frequently selected (11) (see below). The specific choice of descriptors made by the British participants enables us to discover additional meanings and features of their understanding of

‘guilty’ rather than find further evidence for existing ones.

It is no surprise that the Responsibility-descriptor is the most popular one as this feature is also prevalent in the FA responses. With 95.5%, the selection of this descriptor enhances the role of responsibility in the British understanding of ‘guilt’. The Regret-descriptor (‘I want to undo what I did’) can also be found in the FA test either through direct expressions of regret and remorse, or through indirect expressions such as disgusts of one’s actions.

Neither the bodily aspect nor the feature of making amends can be seen in the free written responses although it could be argued that the expression feel badmay refer to a bad physical sensation in the body. Nevertheless, with a selection rate of almost 60% and higher, these two descriptors convincingly add to the overall understanding.

The feature of other people being affected by the wrongdoers’ action is partly visible in the FA responses. In the CBA, it has been selected by exactly half of the participants:

x What I did makes other people feel bad (11) x I don’t want to look at people (8)

As the stimulus for the CBA test – ‘I feel guilty because I did something bad’ – does not specify the exact action that caused the ‘guilt’, or whether other people are affected by this action, it is up to the participants’ themselves to decide whether or not the meaning of feeling guilty in this context requires that other people are affected by the wrongdoing. Since only half selected this option, and since the feature is only partially expressed in their free responses, it would appear that it is only a possibility, and not a requirement for other people to be affected in order for the wrongdoers to feel guilty.

With respect to the descriptor ‘I don’t want to look at people’, there is no direct evidence in the FA responses to support this aspect of avoiding and hiding from people. However, this descriptor can be combined with the facial expression component of gaze aversion to imply that people who feel guilty avert their gaze to avoid eye contact. Nevertheless, although this feature has been selected and therefore forms part of overall understanding, the fact that is has only been selected by eight participants – less than a third – shows that this feature is not strongly emphasised by the British.

In order to fully understand the results of the CBA test, it is necessary to also investigate the descriptors that were not selected. This may be especially important in the cases where descriptors have been selected by one participant group but not by another. With respect to the British understanding of guilty, it is worth looking more closely at the Reveal- and Display-descriptors ‘I want people to see how I feel’ and ‘I show people I feel bad’.

The Reveal-descriptor – ‘I want people to see how I feel’ – reflects the notion that it is a positive thing to show others that one feels ‘guilty’. This descriptor was selected by less than a third of the British participants. In contrast, both of the two other language groups included this descriptor among the most frequently selected descriptors. In continuation of this, we find that, unlike the two non-native groups, almost none of the native English speakers selected the Display-descriptor, which was one of the most popular ones among the Asian groups.

The Display-descriptor is related to the Reveal-descriptor, and together they illustrate the idea that is it necessary to reveal and show one’s ‘guilt’ as a form of (self)-punishment or apology for committing the offence that caused the feeling of ‘guilt’ in the first place. The non-selection of this descriptor, combined with the selection of the Avoidance-descriptor – ‘I don’t want to look at people’ – suggests that the British participants do not show their ‘guilt’ as a form of punishment, remorse, or a way of making amends. Evidence to support this argument can be found from the fact that not a single British participant selected the descriptor ‘This feeling goes away when I say to people how I feel’. In fact, these three descriptors, which all refer to a means of showing one’s

‘guilt’ in some way, were selected by only few native speakers, if any.

By combining the features found in both the FA and CBA test responses, it is possible to create a simplified paraphrase of our interpretation of the British participants’ understanding of guilty(fig.6) in an emotional context, i.e. a context in which there is no reference to legal ‘guilt’:

I did something that I know is bad. I feel responsible for it and it makes me feel sick inside. I wish it had not happened and I want to make things good again. What I did might make other people feel bad I do not want to look at them.

Figure 6: Paraphrase of the British Understanding of Guilty