IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbioec/v17y2015i2p137-149.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the bioeconomics of shame and guilt

Author

Listed:
  • Klaus Jaffe
  • Astrid Flórez
  • Marcos Manzanares
  • Rodolfo Jaffe
  • Cristina Gomes
  • Daniel Rodríguez
  • Carla Achury

Abstract

Shame has biological roots, possibly enhancing trust, favoring social cohesion. We studied bioeconomic aspects of shame and guilt using three approaches: 1—Anthropo-linguistic studies of Guilt and Shame among the Yanomami, a culturally isolated traditional tribal society; 2—Estimates of the importance different languages assign to the concepts Shame, Guilt, Pain, Embarrassment, Fear and Trust, counting the number of synonyms listed by Google Translate; 3—Quantitative correlations between this linguistic data with socioeconomic indexes. Results showed that Yanomami is unique in having overlapping synonyms for Shame, Fear and Embarrassment. No language had overlapping synonyms for Shame andGuilt. Societies previously described as “Guilt Societies” have more synonyms for Guilt than for Shame. A large majority of languages, including those from societies previously described as “Shame Societies”, have more words for Shame than for Guilt. The number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame strongly correlated with estimates of corruption, ease of doing business and governance, but not with levels of interpersonal trust. We propose that cultural evolution of shame has continued the work of biological evolution, but its adaptive advantageto society is still unclear. Results suggest that recent cultural evolution must be responsible for the relationship between the levels of corruption of a society and the number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame in its language. This opens a novel window for the study of complex interactions between biological and cultural evolution of cognition and emotions, which might help broaden our insight into bioeconomics. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Klaus Jaffe & Astrid Flórez & Marcos Manzanares & Rodolfo Jaffe & Cristina Gomes & Daniel Rodríguez & Carla Achury, 2015. "On the bioeconomics of shame and guilt," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 137-149, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:17:y:2015:i:2:p:137-149
    DOI: 10.1007/s10818-014-9189-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10818-014-9189-5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10818-014-9189-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher Boehm, 2004. "What Makes Humans Economically Distinctive? A Three-Species Evolutionary Comparison and Historical Analysis," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 109-135, May.
    2. M. Keith Chen, 2011. "The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1820, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Dec 2012.
    3. Klaus Jaffe & Roberto Cipriani, 2007. "Culture Outsmarts Nature in the Evolution of Cooperation," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 10(1), pages 1-7.
    4. Klaus Jaffe, 2002. "An Economic Analysis of Altruism: Who Benefits from Altruistic Acts?," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 5(3), pages 1-3.
    5. M. Keith Chen, 2013. "The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 690-731, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sotiropoulou, Irene & Deutz, Pauline, 2021. "Understanding the bioeconomy: a new sustainability economy in British and European public discourse," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 10(4), December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sperlich, Stefan & Uriarte Ayo, José Ramón, 2014. "The Economics of "Why is it so hard to save a threatened Language?"," IKERLANAK info:eu-repo/grantAgreeme, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico I.
    2. Angerer, Silvia & Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela & Lergetporer, Philipp & Sutter, Matthias, 2015. "Donations, risk attitudes and time preferences: A study on altruism in primary school children," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 67-74.
    3. Adrian Chadi & Matthias Krapf, 2017. "The Protestant Fiscal Ethic: Religious Confession And Euro Skepticism In Germany," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1813-1832, October.
    4. Klaus Jaffé, 2015. "Visualizing the Invisible Hand of Markets: Simulating Complex Dynamic Economic Interactions," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(2), pages 115-132, April.
    5. Oded Galor & Ömer Özak, 2016. "The Agricultural Origins of Time Preference," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 3064-3103, October.
    6. Falk, A. & Becker, A. & Dohmen, T.J. & Enke, B. & Huffman, D. & Sunde, U., 2015. "The nature and predictive power of preferences: Global evidence," Research Memorandum 039, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    7. Cahit Guven & Asadul Islam, 2015. "Age at Migration, Language Proficiency, and Socioeconomic Outcomes: Evidence From Australia," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(2), pages 513-542, April.
    8. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Ugo Troiano, 2012. "Social capital, government expenditures, and growth," Economics Working Papers 1307, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jan 2024.
    9. Matthias Sutter & Silvia Angerer & Daniela Rützler & Philipp Lergetporer, 2015. "The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Children's Intertemporal Choices," CESifo Working Paper Series 5532, CESifo.
    10. Liang, H. & Marquis, C. & Renneboog, L.D.R. & Li Sun, Sunny, 2014. "Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility," Discussion Paper 2014-023, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    11. Thomas T. Hills & Eugenio Proto & Daniel Sgroi & Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe, 2019. "Historical analysis of national subjective wellbeing using millions of digitized books," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(12), pages 1271-1275, December.
    12. Dominique Cappelletti & Luigi Mittone & Matteo Ploner, 2015. "Language and intergroup discrimination. Evidence from an experiment," CEEL Working Papers 1504, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    13. Jha, Chandan Kumar & Sarangi, Sudipta, 2018. "Women and corruption: What positions must they hold to make a difference?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 219-233.
    14. Cecilia Boggio & Elsa Fornero & Henriette Prast & Jose Sanders, 2014. "Seven Ways to Knit Your Portfolio: Is Investor Communication Neutral?," CeRP Working Papers 140, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
    15. Liang, H. & Marquis, C. & Renneboog, L.D.R. & Li Sun, Sunny, 2014. "Speaking of Corporate Social Responsibility," Discussion Paper 2014-018, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    16. Rotunno, Lorenzo & Vézina, Pierre-Louis & Wang, Zheng, 2013. "The rise and fall of (Chinese) African apparel exports," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 152-163.
    17. Mancino, Maria Antonella & Navarro, Salvador & Rivers, David A., 2016. "Separating state dependence, experience, and heterogeneity in a model of youth crime and education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 274-305.
    18. Pawel Bukowski, 2015. "What Determines The Long-Run Persistence of the Empires? The Effect of the Partition of Poland on Education," CEU Working Papers 2015_3, Department of Economics, Central European University.
    19. Hübner, Malte & Vannoorenberghe, Gonzague, 2015. "Patience and long-run growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 163-167.
    20. Vasiliki Fouka & Joachim Voth, 2012. "Reprisals remembered: German-Greek conflict and car sales during the Euro crisis," Economics Working Papers 1394, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2013.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:17:y:2015:i:2:p:137-149. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.