Dr. Thomas Stemmler

Full member: January 2008 - December 2010

Dissertation title: The motivational role of guilt in self-control.
Abstract: Guilt is an emotion that arises when an individual has failed to act in line with a valued goal or a standard. Self-control failures are characterized by those violations, thus self-control failures may often lead to feelings of guilt.
However, guilt may not only have an informal, backward-looking function which gives information that one has done something wrong, it may also motivate future behavior by providing punishment as an immediate consequence of a self-control failure (Frank, 1988). This PhD-project aims on examining how and under which circumstances guilt may motivate individuals to exert self-control.

Principal investigator:     

Prof. Dr. Fritz Strack
Department of Psychology II, Röntgenring 10, 97070 Würzburg

http://www.i2.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/

Current position:

Interdisziplinären Zentrum für Verkehrswissenschaften an der Universität Würzburg (IZVW)