Chapter 18
Criminal Guilt
People Affected: everyone older than 24 months
Type of Emotion: conceptual punishment
Conceptual Trigger: “ I harmed X by breaking the rules ”
Mental Effect: negative
Key Feature: the more harm caused, the stronger the effect
Key Feature: effect generally stronger in men
Purpose
Type of Emotion: conceptual punishment
Conceptual Trigger: “ I harmed X by breaking the rules ”
Mental Effect: negative
Key Feature: the more harm caused, the stronger the effect
Key Feature: effect generally stronger in men
Purpose
Criminal guilt encourages everyone to avoid rule breaking.
Criminal guilt is the lowest cost method of reducing rule breaking. Criminal guilt costs your group nothing. Nobody is physically harmed and no expense is incurred.
Retaliation costs more than criminal guilt. Revenge causes retaliation, which harms both the victim and the rule breaker. A victim cannot work while participating in conviction of a criminal. A criminal does not work while incarcerated.
Obstacles are the highest cost. Obstacles include locks, bulletproof glass, security guards and the police. Everyone pays for obstacles, not just victims and rule breakers. Billions of doors are locked and unlocked everyday to stop theft.
Criminal guilt is used where it is sufficient. Criminal guilt is usually sufficient to cause diners to leave tips in restaurants.
If criminal guilt is not sufficient, retaliation is added. Returning diners tip more. Returning diners want to avoid criminal guilt and retaliation by waiters.
If criminal guilt and retaliation are insufficient, obstacles are added. Tourist restaurants often have a mandatory service charge. If you do not pay it, the police will be called.
Criminal guilt harms potential rule breakers and their genes. You do not live longer or have more children because you tip. The waiter does.
Conceptual Trigger
Criminal guilt is triggered when you harm someone by breaking the rules.
Criminal guilt requires rule breaking. You will feel criminal guilt if your car hits a cyclist after you drive through a red light. You will not feel criminal guilt if your car hits a cyclist after the cyclist rides through a red light.
Criminal guilt requires harm to a victim. Criminals who commit victimless crimes, such as prostitutes and pot smokers, do not feel criminal guilt.
Mental Effect
Criminal guilt is the lowest cost method of reducing rule breaking. Criminal guilt costs your group nothing. Nobody is physically harmed and no expense is incurred.
Retaliation costs more than criminal guilt. Revenge causes retaliation, which harms both the victim and the rule breaker. A victim cannot work while participating in conviction of a criminal. A criminal does not work while incarcerated.
Obstacles are the highest cost. Obstacles include locks, bulletproof glass, security guards and the police. Everyone pays for obstacles, not just victims and rule breakers. Billions of doors are locked and unlocked everyday to stop theft.
Criminal guilt is used where it is sufficient. Criminal guilt is usually sufficient to cause diners to leave tips in restaurants.
If criminal guilt is not sufficient, retaliation is added. Returning diners tip more. Returning diners want to avoid criminal guilt and retaliation by waiters.
If criminal guilt and retaliation are insufficient, obstacles are added. Tourist restaurants often have a mandatory service charge. If you do not pay it, the police will be called.
Criminal guilt harms potential rule breakers and their genes. You do not live longer or have more children because you tip. The waiter does.
Conceptual Trigger
Criminal guilt is triggered when you harm someone by breaking the rules.
Criminal guilt requires rule breaking. You will feel criminal guilt if your car hits a cyclist after you drive through a red light. You will not feel criminal guilt if your car hits a cyclist after the cyclist rides through a red light.
Criminal guilt requires harm to a victim. Criminals who commit victimless crimes, such as prostitutes and pot smokers, do not feel criminal guilt.
Mental Effect
Criminal guilt varies with the harm caused. The more harm caused to a victim, the stronger the negative effect. Stealing $100 from a poor man triggers stronger criminal guilt than stealing $100 from a rich man.
Criminal guilt varies with the harm caused to reduce it. Rule breakers minimize their harm to minimize the guilt they feel. Thieves avoid stealing from the poor.
Modern justice systems graduate punishment in the same manner. If all criminals received the death penalty, all criminals would kill to avoid capture.
The police know that criminal guilt varies with the harm caused. When they have not caught a murderer, they will parade the murder victim’s grieving mother in front of the news cameras. They want to increase the strength of the murderer’s criminal guilt.
Confessing or being punished does not stop criminal guilt. All conceptual punishments are lifelong to ensure that you never forget the learning.
Criminal guilt is generally stronger in men. Given the same harm caused, men feel a stronger negative effect than women. Criminal guilt is more likely to drive men to commit suicide.
Criminal guilt is stronger in men because male rule breaking was more likely to cause death. If a man did not defend his perimeter during an attack, it could let the attackers flood into a fortification and kill all. If a woman took more than her share of food, others were unlikely to die as a result.
Other Species
Capuchin monkeys feel criminal guilt. An experiment required two monkeys to simultaneously pull two parts of a mechanism to receive one reward each. In one instance, only one monkey was able to retrieve his reward before they both let the spring-loaded mechanism pull away. This left one monkey with a reward and one without a reward. The monkey with a reward helped the monkey without a reward pull the mechanism again so that he could retrieve the remaining reward. He did this despite not receiving another reward. Payment for Labour in Monkeys (Nature) is the article that summarizes the experiments led by Frans de Waal and Michelle Berger.
In addition to criminal guilt, the altruistic monkey may have also felt compassion. The altruistic monkey would have felt compassion if it believed the other monkey was unfortunate, as described in the next chapter.
Criminal guilt varies with the harm caused to reduce it. Rule breakers minimize their harm to minimize the guilt they feel. Thieves avoid stealing from the poor.
Modern justice systems graduate punishment in the same manner. If all criminals received the death penalty, all criminals would kill to avoid capture.
The police know that criminal guilt varies with the harm caused. When they have not caught a murderer, they will parade the murder victim’s grieving mother in front of the news cameras. They want to increase the strength of the murderer’s criminal guilt.
Confessing or being punished does not stop criminal guilt. All conceptual punishments are lifelong to ensure that you never forget the learning.
Criminal guilt is generally stronger in men. Given the same harm caused, men feel a stronger negative effect than women. Criminal guilt is more likely to drive men to commit suicide.
Criminal guilt is stronger in men because male rule breaking was more likely to cause death. If a man did not defend his perimeter during an attack, it could let the attackers flood into a fortification and kill all. If a woman took more than her share of food, others were unlikely to die as a result.
Other Species
Capuchin monkeys feel criminal guilt. An experiment required two monkeys to simultaneously pull two parts of a mechanism to receive one reward each. In one instance, only one monkey was able to retrieve his reward before they both let the spring-loaded mechanism pull away. This left one monkey with a reward and one without a reward. The monkey with a reward helped the monkey without a reward pull the mechanism again so that he could retrieve the remaining reward. He did this despite not receiving another reward. Payment for Labour in Monkeys (Nature) is the article that summarizes the experiments led by Frans de Waal and Michelle Berger.
In addition to criminal guilt, the altruistic monkey may have also felt compassion. The altruistic monkey would have felt compassion if it believed the other monkey was unfortunate, as described in the next chapter.
Happiness Dissected is a more practical version of The Origin of Emotions.
