Both guilt and empathic perspective taking have been linked to prosocial, relationship-enhancing effects. Study 1 found that shame was linked to personal distress, whereas guilt was linked to perspective taking. In Studies 2 and 3, subjects were asked to describe a recent experience of interpersonal conflict, once from their own perspective, and once from the perspective of the other person. Guilt-prone people and guilt-dominated stories were linked to better perspective taking (measured by changes between the two versions of the story) than others. Shame had no effect. Guilt improved relationship outcomes but shame harmed them. Path analysis suggested that trait guilt-proneness leads to perspective taking, which leads to actual guilt feelings, which produces beneficial relationship outcomes. Guilt feelings may mediate the relationship-enhancing effects of empathy.

How can self-deception avoid intention and conscious recognition? Nine processes of self-deception seem to involve biased links between plausible ideas. These processes allow self-deceivers to regard individual conclusions as fair and reasonable. Bias is only detected by comparing broad patterns, which individual self-deceivers will not do.

Increased risk taking may explain the link between bad moods and self-defeating behavior. In Study 1, personal recollections of self-defeating actions implicated bad moods and resultant risky decisions. In Study 2, embarrassment increased the preference for a long-shot (high-risk, high-payoff) lottery over a low-risk, low-payoff one. Anger had a similar effect in Study 3. Study 4 replicated this and showed that the effect could be eliminated by making participants analyze the lotteries rationally, suggesting that bad moods foster risk taking by impairing self-regulation instead of by altering subjective utilities. Studies 5 and 6 showed that the risky tendencies are limited to unpleasant moods accompanied by high arousal; neither sadness nor neutral arousal resulted in destructive risk taking.