Nick Kostick

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102
28 October 2015
Annotation 1
"Inside the Mind of a Psychopath Empathic, But Not Always." Psychology Today. N.p.,
n.d.

Web. 30 Sept. 2015.

This article contains is based on information and experiments done on the human brain.
What was found ended up being quite interesting and very useful for my inquiry topic.
Professor Christian Kysers, a French neuroscientist, is a part of a team that does research
on applications of social situations. Furthermore, Kyser was part of a team who helped
discover mirror neurons and from then on lead him in writing his book, The Empathic
Brain. Mirror neurons are the triggers in our brains that allow people to feel empathy.
Moreover, these mirror neurons come into play when one human sees another human
experience a certain type of emotion, like pain or sadness. Scientists such as Kysers have
found that not all people have mirror neurons that work at the same level, which end up
leaving these types of people with little feelings of guilt, remorse, or empathy. To get a
better understanding of these neurons at work, Professor Kysers put together an
experiment to be done on a group of labeled psychopaths. Only to find that after
running a series of tests that were meant to inflict a reaction on the brains neurons, these
labeled psychopaths has a much lower response to videos of violent behavior, and
physical pain tests. Empathy is key to our moral development, according to Professor

Kysers. If a child grows up without knowing how certain things make people feel, or
what it is like to feel a certain pain, how are they supposed to feel guilty?

Annotation 2
MacLin, M. K., Downs, C., MacLin, O. H., & Caspers, H. M. (2009). The effect of
defendant facial expression on mock juror decision-making: The power of
remorse. North American Journal of Psychology, 11(2), 323-331.
This piece was a very interesting one. It gives my inqiry question a whole different
perspective to look at it from. This peer reviewed article, from the North American
Journal of Psychology, talks about how facial expressions of the defendant play a role in
the jurys decision. It does a good job of explaining how guilt can affect the outcome of a
situation. For example, in the second paragraph of the article it says, In a courtroom
setting, anger is also an emotion that has the potential to bias a juror's decision. So it is
not difficult to see why facial expressions in court have such a strong impact. According
to the article, These expressions may have an impact on jury decision making and prove
to be a mitigating factor. The key word in the previous quote, coming from the second
paragraph, is prove. Moreover, the article includes an experiment done that proves
facial expressions have an effect on the decision. So, the people who conducted the test
decided they would experimentally manipulated the display of remorse and anger in
defendant photographs to assess the impact on decision-making by mock jurors. Only to
find that a significant difference was found such that a remorseful defendant resulted in
more lenient verdicts compared to an angry defendant. All in all, after the results from the
experiment came back and showed that facial expressions may reduce the punishment of
the persons sentence, we can conclude that guilt has a major affect in decisions.

Annotation 3
Stossel, John. "Is Guilt Good For You." ABC News. ABC News Network, n.d. Web. 12
Nov. 2015.
John Stossel, a doctor with a Bachelors Degree in Psychology, hosts a weekly business
news show on the Fox Network. Hes got 19 emmy rewards as a reporter and he has been
honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting. John Stossel says guilt is a
positive motivation because it makes you correct your actions that made you feel guilty.
He also says lack of guilt is one trait that defines a psychopath, someone that lacks
sympathy. Instilling guilt into your children is a very important thing to do because kids
with guild are mostly better citizens. Kids with guilt seem to get better grades, be more
involved in the community, and engage in volunteer opportunities. Guilt is something that
is taught however and is not basic human instinct. Jane Bybee says, They feel a sense of
remorse over it. They wish that they could undo it. They feel, they ruminate over it. It is
on the nature side of the nature vs. nurture argument. Guilt begins to show around the age
of three.
Quotes
-Student Sweety Patel, I feel like I owe it to my parents and I owe it to whoever made
any sacrifices to me, to always be doing something. If Im not doing something I feel
kinda guilty.
-Kathleen Vohs "Life might be more fun with less guilt, absolutely, guilt is not a pleasant
state, it really isn't, but in the end, it's better for everyone,"

Annotation 4
Markman, Art. "What Does Guilt Do?" Psychology Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.
Art Markman holds a Sc.B in Cognitive Science, as well as a Ph.D in Psychology. He has
worked on over 150 published scholarly works, one of the subjects being motivation. He
also spent nine years as executive editor of the journal Cognitive Science. He is currently
a member of the editor board for this magazine. Some would consider guilt a valuable
emotion. Theyd say it helps keep a connection between the people around you, your
community. The pain inflicted by guilt is often times enough to make someone believe
they need to make up whatever wrong doing they did. Some would say this is what
makes guilt a positive motivation factor. A paper written by Cynthia Cryder, Stephen
Springer, and Carey Morewedge contrasted two possibilities pertaining to the actions one
takes to make up for the guilt they feel. The first being that when you do something
wrong, you try to make it up to the exact people that you hurt, while the second says
when you do something wrong, you try to do good in general so that you feel good about
the deeds youve done. A study was done using college students as the subject. The
college students had a project to present, and the control group presented the project,
while the experimental group overslept through the presentation. Later the subjects had a
dinner party, and the bill was short a couple bucks. The students that overslept through
the presentation were much more willing to compensate for the short bill, showing that
guilt may have been related in their wanting to help out.

Quotes
Participants who felt guilty added more money to the bill than those who cheated.
Whenever you do something that could hurt another person, you run the risk of
damaging your relationship with them.

Annotation 5
Gray, Bonnie. "Are You Motivated By Grace or Guilt? Shake Off Feelings of Guilt."
Crosswalk.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.
The author of the article is Bonnie Gray, who is names as one of Pws top six notable new
religion authors. She is a UCLA graduate and has been a missionary, ministry
entrepreneur. Guilt is a feeling that you try to get rid of, but it will never really shake all
the way. Its hard to let go of guilt because it feels safe, it feels good to be able to define
feeling sorry for an action you should not have made. It can serve as a catalyst for
positive actions towards the people around you. Normally we handle guilt by hiding it, or
pretending it doesnt bother us. We also rebel against anyone that tries to control us or try
to be too authoritative towards us. Lastly, we might end up depressed, or living a life of
regret. This article compares guilt with religion, and compares guilt to grace. Bonnie says
grace is beautiful and free, but it is hard for us independent-prone people to practice.
Bonnie also chooses to point out that we may be motivated by guilty feelings out of
habit, as a learned response and also as a preferred choice.

Quotes
Giving thanks requires more faith than merely speaking this phrase during the month of
November. Giving thanks means I have to let go of trying to fix the past and start
focusing on the changes God wants me to make in the future.
Guilty feelings are free agents that float around like dust. They are hard to avoid over
extended periods.

Annotation 6
Davey, Liane. "More Guilt, Less Shame." Psychology Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov.
2015.
The author of this writing is Liane Davey, who also holds a Ph.D in
Industrial/Organizational Psychology, is a Master of Applied Science. She has a strong
business mindset as well as knowledge of group work. She is the Vice President of
Knightsbridge Leadership Solution and he Lead Team Effectiveness. She has served on
the executive of the Canadian Society for industrial/organizational psychology and as an
evaluator for the APA Psychologically healthy Workplace Awards. The article begins by
stating that guild exists when you see that your actions caused harm to others. They
contrast this to shame by stating that shame is when you see that your actions caused
harm to how others view you. Simply put, shame is a very inward-focused emotion
whereas guilt is outwardly-focused. Generally, guilt tends to have you make more
situation based mistakes, but his will teach you and allow you to learn and prosper. The
difference between that and shame is that shame will have you hostile, and will make you
withdraw more from the situation you are in. The shame will kill your self-esteem, and
dissuade you from working to your highest potential in the future. To steer ones emotion
more towards guilt than shame, when talking about mistakes it is more effective to use
the subject plural rather than singular. Our team needs you to deliver to have a chance at
meeting our numbers, rather than you will never rise up the ladder if you keep slipping
up like that.

Quotes
You can get motivational benefits not just from the positive feelings you experience
after success, but also from the negative feelings you have to endure after failure.