Hostility-guilt, guilt over aggression, and self-punishment

48 men were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups and partitioned at the median on hostility-guilt in a 2X2 factorial design. Subjects in the experimental condition were induced to aggress verbally by severely derogating a stranger in a study of first impressions. Before and after participating in the first impressions study, the subjects participated in a pain tolerance procedure involving receiving a series of increasingly painful electric shocks. Affect adjective checklists measured guilt and other affects at four times before and after each pain tolerance procedure. As expected, high-hostility-guilt men increased in affective guilt following participation in the experimental condition in which they unfairly distressed a stranger. As expected, the affective guilt of these same high-hostility-guilt men declined after submitting to a procedure measuring pain tolerance. Contrary to expectations, low-hostility-guilt men tolerated more pain in the experimental condition than did high-hostility-guilt men.