Remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past which they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or wrong. Remorse is closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment. When a person regrets an earlier action or failure to act, it may be because of remorse or in response to various other consequences, including being punished for the act or omission. People may express remorse through apologies, trying to repair the damage they have caused, or self-imposed punishments.
In a legal context, the perceived remorse of an offender is assessed by Western justice systems during trials, sentencing, parole hearings, and in restorative justice. However, there are epistemological problems with assessing an offender's level of remorse.
In general, a person needs to be unable to feel fear, as well as remorse, in order to develop psychopathic traits. Legal and business professions such as insurance have done research on the expression of remorse via apologies, primarily because of the potential litigation and financial implications.
Studies on apologizing
thumb|right|300px|The Remorse of [[Orestes (1862), by William-Adolphe Bouguereau]]
Studies on apologizing include The Five Languages of Apology by Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas and On Apology by Aaron Lazare. These studies indicate that effective apologies which express remorse typically include:
- a detailed account of the offense
- acknowledgment of the hurt or damage done
- acceptance of the responsibility for, and ownership of, the act or omission
- an explanation that recognises one's own role.
As well, apologies usually include a statement or expression of regret, humility, or remorse; a request for forgiveness; and an expression of a credible commitment to change or a promise that it will not happen again. Apologies may also include some form of restitution, compensation or token gesture in line with the damage that one has caused. John Kleefeld has encapsulated this into "four Rs" that typically make for a fully effective apology: remorse, responsibility, resolution and reparation. When an apology is delayed, for instance if a friend has been wronged and the offending party does not apologise, the perception of the offense can compound over time. This is sometimes known as compounding remorse.
Compunction
The word "compunction" in modern times generally denotes a relatively slight pricking of conscience, while its older meaning expressed a sense of actively expressing remorse, usually requiring remorseful individuals to physically approach the person to whom they wish to express regret.
Medieval-style compunction could serve as an incentive to partake in the sacrament of confession or penance.
In an encyclical letter to the Catholic church published in 2024, Pope Francis explores the nature of "sincere" compunction, noting that
Falsified expressions
In a study led by Leanne ten Brinke, a professor at the University of British Columbia, participants' genuine and falsified emotions were studied to investigate behavioral and facial cues. Brinke and others found a significant difference in the presence of facial expressions in real and false remorse. With falsified emotions of remorse, they found that the participants experienced a greater range of emotions, which are close to genuine feelings, while deceptive descriptions of remorse were associated with positive emotions, such as happiness and surprise. The positive emotions felt by participants demonstrating a deceptive description of remorse are likely due to the leakage of genuine feelings from incomplete deception. Brinke and others established that participants appeared surprised because they could only raise their eyebrows when trying to appear sad, which then caused the participants to feel embarrassed, feel genuine happiness, and let a smile slip. Psychopaths refuse to adopt social and moral norms because they are not swayed by the emotions, such as guilt, remorse, or fear of retribution, that influence other human beings. Research has shown that the facial expressions of offenders on trial affect the jury's attitude and, in turn, the sentencing decision. While remorse may present guilt that may influence a jury's decision, a lack of remorse influences the jury even more because it is one trait of psychopathy.
Psychopathy represents a configuration of traits that are missing within a person's personality, such as a lack of empathy and remorse. Knowledge of psychopathic traits has been shown to affect how jurors perceive adult and juvenile offenders. Assessments of psychopathy are introduced to direct a relatively wide variety of questions in the legal system, so investigators have started examining the effects of psychopathy evidences. Through simulations in studies by John Edens, who is a psychology professor at Texas A&M University, data suggests that attributing psychopathic traits to adult and juvenile offenders can have a noticeable negative effect on how these individuals are viewed by others.
One problem with the theory that the ability to turn empathy on and off constitutes psychopathy is that such a theory would classify socially sanctioned violence and punishment as psychopathy, as these entail suspending empathy towards certain individuals and/or groups. The attempt to get around this by standardizing tests of psychopathy for cultures with different norms of punishment is criticized in this context for being based on the assumption that people can be classified in discrete cultures while cultural influences are in reality mixed and every person encounters a mosaic of influences. Psychopathy may be an artefact of psychiatry's standardization along imaginary sharp lines between cultures, as opposed to an actual difference in the brain.
Work conducted by Professor Jean Decety with large samples of incarcerated psychopaths offers additional insights. In one study, psychopaths were scanned while viewing video clips depicting people being intentionally hurt. They were also tested on their responses to seeing short videos of facial expressions of pain. The participants in the high-psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and periaqueductal gray parts of the brain, but more activity in the striatum and the insula when compared to control participants. In a second study, individuals with psychopathy exhibited a strong response in pain-affective brain regions when taking an imagine-self perspective, but failed to recruit the neural circuits that were activated in controls during an imagine-other perspective—in particular the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala—which may contribute to their lack of empathic concern.
Researchers have investigated whether people who have high levels of psychopathy have sufficient levels of cognitive empathy but lack the ability to use affective empathy. People who score highly on psychopathy measures are less likely to exhibit affective empathy. There was a strong negative correlation, showing that psychopathy and lack of affective empathy correspond strongly. found those who scored highly on the psychopathy scale do not lack in recognising emotion in facial expressions. Therefore, such individuals do not lack in perspective-talking ability but do lack in compassion and concern towards the wellbeing of others.
In fact, in an experiment published in March 2007 at the University of Southern California neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that subjects with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lack the ability to empathically feel their way to moral answers, and that when confronted with moral dilemmas, these brain-damaged patients coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers, leading Damasio to conclude that the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that when they were confronted by a difficult issue – in this case as whether to shoot down a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city – these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that afflicts those with normally functioning brains. According to Adrian Raine, a clinical neuroscientist also at the University of Southern California, one of this study's implications is that society may have to rethink how it judges immoral people: "Psychopaths often feel no empathy or remorse. Without that awareness, people relying exclusively on reasoning seem to find it harder to sort their way through moral thickets. Does that mean they should be held to different standards of accountability?"
Psychopathic individuals do not show regret or remorse. This was thought to be due to an inability to generate this emotion in response to negative outcomes. However, a study found that psychopathic people experience regret but did not use the regret to guide their choice in behavior.
Forgiveness
The perception of remorse is essential to an apology, and the greater the perception of remorse the more effective the apology. An effective apology reduces negative consequences and facilitates cognitive and behavioral changes associated with forgiveness. With empathy as the mediator between apologies and forgiveness and remorse as the essential part to an apology, one can expect empathy to mediate perceived remorse forgiveness. Remorse may signal that one is suffering psychologically because of one's negative behavior, which leads to empathy from the victim, who may then express forgiveness. Self-condemnation, more so than remorse, is said to be associated with poor psychological well-being. Remorse captures feelings of guilt, regret, and sorrow. Forgiveness does not eliminate all negative feelings, but it may entail the reduction of bitter and angry feelings, not feelings of disappointment, regret, or sorrow. A study by Mickie Fisher found that people who forgive themselves for serious offenses may continue to harbor remorse or regret. While experiential purchases bring about regrets of a missed opportunity, material purchases result in buyer's remorse, which means that a person dwells on how their material purchase measure up to other purchases they could have made and how it compares with other people's purchases. These comparisons diminish satisfaction from the original purpose.