Costly emotions like guilt persist because they confer compensating communicative gains

Evidence

Sentiments of vengeance, guilt, and so forth often incur substantial avoidable costs—hence, Robert Frank (1988, 54, 57) supposes, they must also confer some sort of compensating gain to have persisted socially or genetically. These sentiments will be most effective if they can be properly communicated to deter or encourage relevant actions from others. If devices for communicating, such as blushing, are genetic, we may then explain the genetic selection as the result of interests—it may even develop through intensive cultural conditioning. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 619

Categorization

• XREF: Emotional signaling as hard-won credibility evidence connects to the book-wide theme of trust requiring observable signals — the wife in Saramago can read others’ faces while the blind cannot, making her sentiment-reading capacity the basis of order. — connects to: Guilt works as motivation whose intensity tracks the cost of required action. — Michael T. Schmitt, Daniel A. Miller, Nyla R. Branscombe, and Jack W. Brehm, The Difficulty of Making Reparations…, 61; A common arousal state follows from any meaning violation and drives compensatory affirmation. — Travis Proulx, Steven J. Heine, and Kathleen D. Vohs, When Is the Unfamiliar the Uncanny?…, 90; Guilt signals damaged relationships and motivates apology and repair. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 343