Morality‐ and identity‐related antecedents of children's guilt and shame attributions in events involving physical illness

It is theorised that guilt‐ and shame‐related appraisals vary on two separate dimensions. Guilt implies an appraisal that one has either committed a moral transgression or that one has otherwise been involved in the creation of a morally wrong outcome. Shame implies one's appraisal that the current event or condition reflects negatively on one's identity. To test these claims, 206 7‐ to 16‐year‐old children gave shame and guilt ratings of three types of events that were drawn from the domain of physical illness and that were designed to elicit primarily guilt, primarily shame, or both emotions. The 12‐year‐olds and older children's ratings were fully consistent with our hypothesis. Younger children's greatest difficulty was in not attributing shame to protagonists who were involved in causing a moral wrong without there being the threat of an unwanted identity.     

Why individuals protest the perceived transgressions of their country: the role of anger, shame, and guilt

The present research examined emotions as predictors of opposition to policies and actions of one's country that are perceived to be illegitimate. Two studies investigated the political implications of American (Study 1) and British (Study 2) citizens' anger, guilt, and shame responses to perceived harm caused by their countries' occupation of Iraq. In both studies, a manipulation of pervasive threat to the country's image increased participants' shame but not guilt. The emotions predicted political action intentions to advocate distinct opposition strategies. Shame predicted action intentions to advocate withdrawal from Iraq. Anger predicted action intentions to advocate compensation to Iraq, confrontation of agents responsible, and withdrawal from Iraq. Anger directed at different targets (ingroup, ingroup representative, and outgroup representative) predicted action intentions to support distinct strategies (Study 2). Guilt did not independently predict any political action intentions. Implications for the study of political action and emotions in intergroup contexts are discussed.     

Me against we: In-group transgression,collective shame,and in-group-directed hostility

People can experience great distress when a group to which they belong (in-group) is perceived to have committed an immoral act. We hypothesised that people would direct hostility toward a transgressing in-group whose actions threaten their self-image and evoke collective shame. Consistent with this theorising, three studies found that reminders of in-group transgression provoked several expressions of in-group-directed hostility, including in-group-directed hostile emotion (Studies 1 and 2), in-group-directed derogation (Study 2), and in-group-directed punishment (Study 3). Across studies, collective shame—but not the related group-based emotion collective guilt—mediated the relationship between in-group transgression and in-group-directed hostility. Implications for group-based emotion, social identity, and group behaviour are discussed.     

Evidence for the Distinctness of Embarrassment,Shame, and Guilt: A Study of Recalled Antecedents and Facial Expressions of Emotion

Following proposals regarding the criteria for differentiating emotions, the current investigation examined whether the antecedents and facial expressions of embarrassment, shame, and guilt are distinct. In Study 1, participants wrote down events that had caused them to feel embarrassment, shame, and guilt. Coding of these events revealed that embarrassment was associated with transgressions of conventions that govern public interactions, shame with the failure to meet important personal standards, and guilt with actions that harm others or violate duties. Study 2 determined whether these three emotions are distinct in another domain of emotion-namely, facial expression. Observers were presented with slides of 14 different facial expressions, including those of embarrassment, shame, and candidates of guilt (self-contempt, sympathy, and pain). Observers accurately identified the expressions of embarrassment and shame, but did not reliably label any expression as guilt.     

大学生心理控制源与内疚感和羞耻感对反事实思维的影响

研究以128名大学生为研究对象,采用2 (心理控制源: 外控型、内控型)×2 (自我道德感: 内疚感、羞耻感) 两因素被试间实验设计,考察了外控和内控大学生在内疚感和羞耻感两种不同的自我道德情感下反事实思维内容的差异。结果表明:(1) 心理控制源对大学生反事实思维不同内容的诱发具有重要的影响:外控者更倾向于产生行为和情境导向的反事实思维,而内控者更倾向于产生自我导向的反事实思维。内疚感和羞耻感对大学生反事实思维内容的产生没有直接的影响;(2) 反事实思维内容的产生受到了心理控制源与内疚感和羞耻感两种自我道德情感的交互影响:外控者在羞耻感的启动条件下比在内疚感的启动条件下表现出了更多的行为和情境导向的反事实思维,而内控者在内疚感的启动条件下比在羞耻感的条件下表现出了更多的自我导向的反事实思维。研究结果有助于解释以中西方不同被试而得出的内疚感和羞耻感与反事实思维关系的矛盾结论。     

What do the TOSCA guilt and shame scales really measure: Affect or action?

Psychologists have long used the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA) as an instrument for empirically distinguishing between trait emotions of guilt and shame. Recent assessments of the internal structure of the TOSCA guilt scale suggest that it may not measure the experience of guilt, but rather motivation to make amends for personal wrongdoing. In contrast, TOSCA shame may better assess the tendency to experience negative self-conscious affect. Previous research did not take into account that TOSCA guilt theoretically should only predict emotions in a situation of wrongdoing; we put this idea to the test in two studies. Experimental, but not control, participants received believable feedback that they had shown involuntary prejudice towards a member of a minority group. In both studies TOSCA guilt predicted reparative action after feedback was given, including expressing non-prejudiced views and recommending financial compensation to the minority group. However, TOSCA guilt had no relationship with feelings of guilt or shame after expressing prejudice. In contrast, TOSCA shame was a better predictor of feelings of guilt, shame and other self-critical emotions, but did not predict compensatory action. These findings suggest motivation rather than emotion as a mechanism behind past findings involving TOSCA guilt.     

Group-based guilt and shame in the context of intergroup conflict: The role of beliefs and meta-beliefs about group malleability

Group-based guilt and shame are part of a wide range of moral emotions in intergroup conflicts. These emotions can potentially motivate group members to make compromises in order to promote conflict resolution, and increase support for reparations and apologies following moral transgressions committed by the in-group. Thus, it is important to understand how to induce these emotions and the mechanisms for their effects. In the present paper, we examined the mechanisms underlying group-based guilt and shame in four studies. Across the first three studies, conducted in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we found that group-based guilt was mostly predicted by individuals’ implicit theories about groups (ITG). Specifically, we found that the more participants believed that groups are malleable, the more they experienced group-based guilt. Group-based shame, however, was found to be dependent upon individuals’ perception of other people’s perceptions about the malleability of groups (i.e., meta-ITG), as the perceived damage to one’s in-group image is a major component in experiencing shame. In Study 4, conducted in the context of gender relations, we differentiated between the two components of shame, that is, moral and image shame. As predicted, while group-based guilt and moral shame showed similar patterns of results, meta-ITG had a moderating effect on the association between ITG and group-based image shame. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed in relation to promoting intergroup conflict resolution and reconciliation.     

The Experiences of Guilt and Shame: A Phenomenological–Psychological Study

This study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in the experiences of guilt and shame. Guilt concerns a subject’s action or omission of action and has a clear temporal unfolding entailing a moment in which the subject lives in a care-free way. Afterwards, this moment undergoes a reconstruction, in the moment of guilt, which constitutes the moment of negligence. The reconstruction is a comprehensive transformation of one’s attitude with respect to one’s ego; one’s action; the object of guilt and the temporal-existential experience. The main constituents concerning shame are its anchorage in the situation to which it refers; its public side involving the experience of being perceptually objectified; the exclusion of social community; the bodily experience; the revelation of an undesired self; and the genesis of shame in terms of a history of frozen now-ness. The article ends with a comparison between guilt and shame.     

Parental guilt: The part played by the clinical geneticist

Parents of children born with a disability often suffer feelings of inappropriate guilt and shame. Although some genetic counselors see their main task to be that of diagnosis and education, they also aim to relieve these feelings of guilt and shame. Little is known about the process of genetic counseling, and whether or not counselors achieve this aim. An exploratory study of one clinic, and one geneticist working with 30 families, using video recordings and taped interviews, indicated that this particular doctor sometimes succeeded in reducing guilt, either intentionally or unintentionally, but on one occasion guilt was iatrogenic, and increased rather than decreased. Further research is needed to examine other types and other styles of genetic counseling so that in future iatrogenic guilt can be avoided, and the distressing aspects of inappropriate guilt and shame reduced as much as possible.     

Hot as hell! The self-conscious nature of action regrets

Gilovich, Medvec, and Kahneman (1998) have shown that real-life regrets for actions and inactions correspond to different emotional states. When people regret something they have done they experience painful “hot” emotions such as disgust or guilt, whereas when the regret is about a failure to act they rather experience wistful emotions. In four questionnaire studies, we have tested the hypothesis that regrettable actions elicit a particular subcategory of these hot emotions: the self-conscious emotions (i.e., guilt, shame, embarrassment, remorse, and anger toward oneself). These studies used different methodologies and all converged to show that self-conscious emotions were the only hot emotions to be systematically greater for action regrets than for inaction regrets. A similar pattern was observed for judgments of responsibility and morality. We emphasize the theoretical and methodological implications of these results in the discussion.     

自尊、归因方式与内疚和羞耻的关系研究

通过对1040名中学生施测问卷,建立自尊、归因方式与内疚和羞耻的结构方程模型。结果表明：1）自尊与内疚和羞耻呈显著正相关,归因方式与内疚或羞耻呈显著负相关;2）自尊是归因方式与内疚和羞耻之间的中介变量,归因方式对自尊的直接作用大于对内疚和羞耻的直接作用,对内疚和羞耻的间接作用大于直接作用;3）个体对内疚事件更倾向于内归因,对羞耻事件更倾向于外归因。     

Assessment of Shame and Guilt and Their Relationships to Psychopathology

Two studies are reported. First, we tested the previously validated Personal Feelings Questionnaire-2 (PFQ2; Harder & Zalma, 1990) shame and guilt proneness measure and the Adapted Shame and Guilt Scale (ASGS; Hoblitzelle, 1982) Shame subscale against the newly introduced Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory (SCAAI; Tangney, 1990) for shame and guilt dispositions. Fiftynine college undergraduates completed randomly ordered personality inventories reflecting constructs theoretically relevant to the presence of shame and guilt proneness. Correlations between the affect measures and personality variables showed evidence of validity for all shame scales. The PFQ2 Guilt subscale also demonstrated construct validity when partialled for shame, but the SCAAI did not. Second, we tested hypotheses regarding the relative importance of shame and guilt to various symptom types (Symptom Checklist-90-Revised; Derogatis, 1983) using 71 college undergraduates.. Both emotions were approximately equally related to all major symptom clusters, but there was some-evidence for differential patterns of relative importance for shame and guilt to different symptoms.     

Assessment of shame and guilt and their relationships to psychopathology.

Two studies are reported. First, we tested the previously validated Personal Feelings Questionnaire-2 (PFQ2; Harder & Zalma, 1990) shame and guilt measure and the Adapted Shame and Guilt Scale (ASGS; Hoblitzelle, 1982) Shame subscale against the newly introduced Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory (SCAAI; Tangney, 1990) for shame and guilt dispositions. Fifty-nine college undergraduates completed randomly ordered personality inventories reflecting constructs theoretically relevant to the presence of shame and guilt proneness. Correlations between the affect measures and personality variables showed evidence of validity for all shame scales. The PFQ2 Guilt subscale also demonstrated construct validity when partialled for shame, but the SCAAI did not. Second, we tested hypotheses regarding the relative importance of shame and guilt to various symptom types (Symptom Checklist-90-Revised; Derogatis, 1983) using 71 college undergraduates. Both emotions were approximately equally related to all major symptom clusters, but there was some evidence for differential patterns of relative importance for shame and guilt to different symptoms.     

Social cuing of guilt by anger and of shame by disgust

Scholars have proposed a conceptual structure for the self-critical moral emotions of guilt and shame and the other-critical emotions of anger and disgust. In this model, guilt is linked with anger and shame with disgust. This relationship may express itself in asymmetrical social cuing between emotions: In a social context, other people's angry facial expressions may communicate that the target should feel guilty, and other people's disgusted facial expressions may communicate that the target should feel ashamed. We conducted two experiments, one in the United Kingdom and the other in Spain, in which participants were shown pictures of faces expressing either anger or disgust. Participants rated the degree to which the faces would make them feel guilt or shame in a casual social encounter, and they answered questions about inferences concerning the emotional expressions. In both studies, angry expressions led to greater guilt and less shame than did disgusted expressions. This relationship was explained better by the type of norm violation inferred than by whether the violation was thought to involve the target's action or personality versus the target's character.     

What does it mean to be angry at yourself? Categories, appraisals, and the problem of language

According to appraisal theorists, anger involves a negative event, usually blocking a goal, caused by another person. Critics argue that other-agency is unnecessary, since people can be angry at themselves, and thus that appraisal theory is wrong about anger. In two studies, we compared anger, self-anger, shame, and guilt, and found that self-anger shared some appraisals, action tendencies, and associated emotions with anger, others with shame and guilt. Self-anger was not simply anger with a different agency appraisal. Anger, shame, and guilt almost always involved other people, but almost half of the occurrences of self-anger were solitary. We discuss the incompatibility of appraisal theories with any strict categorical view of emotions, and the inadequacy of emotion words to capture emotional experience.     

Gender Differences in the Organization of Guilt and Shame

Lewis [(1971) Shame in Guilt in Neurosis, New York: International Universities Press] argues that guilt and shame represent distinct modes of perceiving and experiencing information about the self that are congruent with gender-linked differences in socialization. We tested predictions from Lewis' model that shame-proneness in adult White females (n = 102), but guilt-proneness in adult White males (n = 99), would account for a substantial proportion of the variance in measures assessing their characteristic use of defense mechanisms and endorsement of gender roles. Certain results confirmed Lewis' broader claim that guilt for men, but shame for women, were predominant modes of organizing information about the self. Other results did not support certain specific predictions made by Lewis or they provided only equivocal support (e.g., in men, the joint positive relationship of guilt-proneness to communal orientations but its negative relationship to externalization). Similar discrepant findings emerged for females' construal of guilt, which also related positively to internalization. Although shame-proneness did emerge as the principal emotion variable for females, it was linked to both internalization and externalization. Lewis' model is reconsidered in light of recent empirical findings and the need to conduct more on-line investigations of transgression-emotion induction-emotion reduction cycles.     

Differentiating shame from guilt

How does shame differ from guilt? Empirical psychology has recently offered distinct and seemingly incompatible answers to this question. This article brings together four prominent answers into a cohesive whole. These are that (a) shame differs from guilt in being a social emotion; (b) shame, in contrast to guilt, affects the whole self; (c) shame is linked with ideals, whereas guilt concerns prohibitions and (d) shame is oriented towards the self, guilt towards others. After presenting the relevant empirical evidence, we defend specific interpretations of each of these answers and argue that they are related to four different dimensions of the emotions. This not only allows us to overcome the conclusion that the above criteria are either unrelated or conflicting with one another, it also allows us to tell apart what is constitutive from what is typical of them.     

Shame, guilt, and depressive symptoms: a meta-analytic review

Recent theoretical and empirical work has facilitated the drawing of sharp conceptual distinctions between shame and guilt. A clear view of these distinctions has permitted development of a research literature aimed at evaluating the differential associations of shame and guilt with depressive symptoms. This study quantitatively summarized the magnitude of associations of shame and guilt with depressive symptoms. Two hundred forty-two effect sizes were obtained from 108 studies employing 22,411 participants. Shame showed significantly stronger associations with depressive symptoms (r = .43) than guilt (r = .28). However, the association of shame and depressive symptoms was statistically indistinguishable from the associations of 2 maladaptive variants of guilt and depressive symptoms (contextual-maladaptive guilt, involving exaggerated responsibility for uncontrollable events, r = .39; generalized guilt, involving "free-floating" guilt divorced from specific contexts, r = .42). Other factors also moderated the effects. External shame, which involves negative views of self as seen through the eyes of others, was associated with larger effect sizes (r = .56) than internal shame (r = .42), which involves negative views of self as seen through one's own eyes. Depressive symptom measures that invoked the term guilt yielded stronger associations between guilt and depressive symptoms (r = .33) than depressive symptom measures that did not (r = .21). Age, sex, and ethnicity (proportion of Whites to Asians) did not moderate the effects. Although these correlational data are ambiguous with respect to their causal interpretation, results suggest that shame should figure more prominently in understandings of the emotional underpinnings of depressive symptoms.     

Self-conscious emotions and depression: rumination explains why shame but not guilt is maladaptive

Feelings of shame and guilt are factors associated with depression. However, studies simultaneously investigating shame and guilt suggest that only shame has a strong unique effect, although it is not yet clear which psychological processes cause shame and not shame-free guilt to be related to depression. The authors hypothesized that shame, in contrast to guilt, elicits rumination, which then leads to depression. Therefore, in this study we investigated event-related shame and guilt, event-related rumination, and depression among 149 mothers and fathers following family breakup due to marital separation. Data were analyzed using latent variable modeling. The results confirm that shame but not guilt has a strong unique effect on depression. Moreover, the results show that the effect of shame is substantially mediated by rumination. The results are discussed against the background of self-discrepancies and self-esteem.     

Scham und Schuld – Sein und Tun

Shame and guilt are affective experiential dimensions regulating the different forms of being and behaving in a social context. Constructive or even pathologic feelings of guilt are to be distinguished from real guilt. Shame refers to the judgment of ?So-sein” even if being often manifests itself in action. Shame is generated by the ideal ego. Guilt and feelings of guilt are dimensions of acting, real guilt requires the recognition of guilt, guilt is generated by the superego (conscience). The implications of familiar as well as extreme traumatisation for shame and feelings of guilt are discussed. The most frequent wish for a therapy nowadays that offers perspectives of changes by action can be considered as a defence against processing of the being in psychoanalytical therapy.