Relational utility refers to the value of another person for the attainment of one’s future goals through social interaction. Nelissen (2014) found that relational utility influences the intensity of guilt feelings. Specifically, people would feel stronger guilt for hurting the victim if this victim has a higher relational utility than a low relational utility. However, previous research suggested that regret is typically experienced when one’s own benefit is involved. Regret, a highly related emotion of guilt, was not measured in the Nelissen (2014)’s research. In the present research, we examined the role of relational utility in experienced guilt and regret and explored whether the effect of relational utility on regret can explain the relation between relational utility and guilt. Specifically, we attempt to replicate and extend Nelissen’s (2014) Study 1 by adding a measure of regret. We did not replicate the effect of relational utility on guilt in both two Studies with different sample sizes and we only found the effect of relational utility on regret in our Study 1. But we did not find this effect in our Study 2. Possible reasons for the contradictory findings of the two studies are discussed.

Additional documentation and metadata can be found in the files Data Report Chapter 3.pdf, Documentation of all author responsibilities.pdf, and the metadata files in the rawdata folders.

Preregistration: This research has preregistered all materials, hypothesis and sample size through: https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=e595y3 for Study 1 and https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=em4tk7 for Study 2.

Method: The data was collected on Mturk website.

Universe: Study 1 includes samples: American sample (N total = 346, 156 females, Mage = 39.67, SD = 11.57); Study 2 includes samples: American sample (N total = 1132, 543 females, Mage = 38.99, SD = 11.85).