Exploring negative emotion in women experiencing intimate partner violence: shame, guilt, and PTSD

This study explored the association of shame and guilt with PTSD among women who had experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). Sixty-three women were assessed by a research clinic serving the mental health needs of women IPV survivors. Results indicated that shame, guilt-related distress, and guilt-related cognitions showed significant associations with PTSD but global guilt did not. When shame and guilt were examined in the context of specific forms of psychological abuse, moderation analyses indicated that high levels of both emotional/verbal abuse and dominance/isolation interacted with high levels of shame in their association with PTSD. Neither guilt-related distress nor guilt-related cognitions were moderated by specific forms of psychological abuse in their association with PTSD. These data support the conceptualization of shame, guilt distress, and guilt cognitions as relevant features of PTSD. Results are discussed in light of proposed changes to diagnostic criteria for PTSD.     

Is It Adaptive or Maladaptive? Elaborating Conditional Role of Shame and Guilt in Development of Psychopathologies

The study aimed to explain adaptive and maladaptive functioning of shame and guilt using discomfort intolerance as a moderator. Sample comprised of 387 adolescents and young adults (51.7% females) age ranged 15–20 years. Data were collected using Frustration Discomfort Scale, Test of Self-Conscious Affect, and Youth Self-Report. Bivariate correlations showed that for the first quartile of discomfort intolerance, shame positively correlated and guilt negatively correlated with psychopathologies, whereas for the last quartile of discomfort intolerance, shame negatively correlated and guilt positively correlated with psychopathologies. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that discomfort intolerance moderates effect of both shame and guilt on internalizing problems and externalizing problems. It is concluded that shame and guilt have both adaptive and maladaptive functioning. The conditional effect of discomfort intolerance distinguishes the patterns of relationship between shame and guilt and psychopathology.     

Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Superego Functioning Following CS Readministration Procedures: Case Illustration

The Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2003) has specific procedures to address brief Rorschach protocols when the first administration yields fewer than 14 responses. These procedures involve the assessor's asking the client to retake the test by providing more responses on the second administration than the first administration. The request carries with it an implicit criticism of the client's initial effort and a mandate to improve performance on retake. The retake request, with its ambiguously worded demand for improved performance, engages the client's superego (i.e., the client feels judged) and makes it possible to study superego manifestations (e.g., guilt, shame) on the Rorschach test, using a model of (a) brief first record, (b) retake directive, and (c) second administration. We present a case that illustrates a clinical strategy, modeled on a psychoanalytic understanding of the CS retake procedure, for studying the client's superego functioning under retest conditions.     

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.     

Guilt,shame, and adjustment in three cultures

While guilt and shame may form a second-order factor of ‘sensitivity of conscience’, they form relatively distinct first-order factors. A study of male and female subjects from the United States (Hawaii), the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) revealed a high degree of consistency across national groups in whether individual test items describing socially disapproved conduct loaded on guilt vs shame factors and also in the relative seriousness with which each of these lapses in conduct were viewed. In general, guilt was unrelated to neuroticism and negatively related to psychoticism while shame was positively related to neuroticism and negatively related to psychoticism. Cross-cultural similarities are substantial and call to question the belief that Asian and Occidental societies (at least the better educated segments of such groups) differ in the degree to which guilt vs shame are used as mechanisms for social control.     

Group‐Based Shame and Guilt: Emerging Directions in Research

Research on the role of emotion in social identity, group processes, and intergroup conflict is burgeoning. This paper examines recent research on group‐based shame and guilt and describes important themes in this research. Guilt and shame are distinguished by different appraisals and motivations in intergroup contexts. Group‐based shame is associated with threats to group‐image and motivations to protect and repair that image. In contrast, group‐based guilt is associated with efforts to repair and apologize for ingroup wrongdoing. Current research is expanding in several important directions. First, the scope of emotions is expanding beyond that of shame and guilt to consider the roles of emotions such as ingroup‐directed anger in situations that may also provoke group‐based shame and guilt. Second, people’s motivations to avoid feeling group‐based shame and guilt are becoming better understood, particularly in relation to different aspects of social identification. Finally, we argue that dynamic processes in emotion expression and experience, particularly due to the relation between perpetrator and victim groups, are an important future direction in research on group‐based shame and 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。     

Superego formation, adolescent transformation, and the adult neurosis

The superego is heir to the Oedipus complex but has a much larger developmental legacy which includes preoedipal precursors and the influence of latency and adolescence. The superego continues to change in function and content throughout life, and radical transformation in adolescence may result in developmental discontinuity as well as core developmental continuity. A case is discussed in which adolescence was overlooked in previous analysis and in which adolescent superego modification had a major impact on the patient's character and his adult neurosis. The developmental significance of adolescence experienced under conditions of social isolation and rejection with forebodings of the Holocaust was unrecognized in sanctioned silence and shared analytic denial. These repeated earlier experiences of silent submission and stifled protest, and the silent suffering of the patient and his family, were an integral part of his humiliating and emasculating adolescent experiences. The intimidated adolescent, threatened from within and without, identified with the aggressor as well as with the victim. Identification with the aggressor and glorified victor contributed to a final adolescent structuralization of a punitive, sadistic superego and a rigidly perfectionistic ego ideal. As an adult, he tended to passive masochistic compliance with diminished self-esteem and unconscious self-denigration. He was prone to shame and guilt, self-criticism, and hidden hypercritical attitudes toward others. The adolescent internalization of aggression, intense castration anxiety, and pervasive narcissistic mortification led to retreat from resolution of revived oedipal conflict and to concomitant detrimental superego alteration. These issues were of major importance for analytic understanding and therapeutic progress.     

Shame,guilt, and facial emotion processing: initial evidence for a positive relationship between guilt-proneness and facial emotion recognition ability

Shame and guilt are closely related self-conscious emotions of negative affect that give rise to divergent self-regulatory and motivational behaviours. While guilt-proneness has demonstrated positive relationships with self-report measures of empathy and adaptive interpersonal functioning, shame-proneness tends to be unrelated or inversely related to empathy and is associated with interpersonal difficulties. At present, no research has examined relationships between shame and guilt-proneness with facial emotion recognition ability. Participants (N?=?363) completed measures of shame and guilt-proneness along with a facial emotion recognition task which assessed the ability to identify displays of anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust, and shame. Guilt-proneness was consistently positively associated with facial emotion recognition ability. In contrast, shame-proneness was unrelated to capacity for facial emotion recognition. Findings provide support for theory arguing that guilt and empathy operate synergistically and may also help explain the inverse relationship between guilt-proneness and propensity for aggressive behaviour.     

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.     

中国大学生羞耻和内疚之现象学差异

采用对２６条项目进行定量评定的方法,考察了３０５名中国大学生的羞耻和内疚在现象学表现上所存在的差异。实验结果表明：（１）在中国大学生中,羞耻和内疚在现象学上的差异与西方人基本相似;（２）与西方研究的不同点在于该研究中未发现羞耻和内疚在对个人能力的负性评价上的差异;（３）羞耻和内疚都有可能在有他人在场和无他人在场时被体验到。     

Does the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA) measure maladaptive aspects of guilt and adaptive aspects of shame? An empirical investigation

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA; Tangney, J. P., Wagner, P. E., & Gramzow, R. (1989). The Test of Self-Concious Affect. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University) measures maladaptive forms or aspects of guilt and adaptive aspects of shame that have been described in the literature. First, a judgmental and logical analysis showed that the TOSCA primarily measures mild and adaptive forms and aspects of guilt and maladaptive aspects of shame. Next, principal components analyses (PCAs) in a student (N=328) and adult (N=542) sample showed that items that had a high loading on the guilt factor primarily were items that referred to reparative behavior, while items that had high loadings on the shame factor consisted primarily of items that referred to low self-esteem. To investigate to which extent these items were responsible for correlations found with the TOSCA, we constructed a revised guilt scale containing only items that referred to reparative behavior and a revised shame scale consisting of items that only referred to negative self-esteem, and related these to indices of interpersonal and intrapersonal functioning. The revised TOSCA scales reproduced both the pattern and magnitude of correlations obtained with the original TOSCA scales. Thus, taken together, the results of this study support the interpretation of the TOSCA guilt scale as a measure of mild and adaptive forms of guilt and the TOSCA shame scale as a measure of maladaptive aspects associated with shame. Implications of these findings for further research on the nature of guilt and shame are discussed.     

The Effect of Shame‐Proneness,Guilt‐Proneness,and Internalizing Tendencies on Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury

Nonsuicidal self‐injury is especially common in adolescents and young adults. Self‐injury may be related to shame or guilt—two moral emotions—as these differentially predict other maladaptive behaviors. Using a college sample, we examined not only how shame‐proneness, guilt‐proneness, and internalizing emotional tendencies related to self‐injury, but also whether these moral emotions moderate the relation between internalizing tendencies and self‐injury. High shame‐proneness was associated with higher frequencies of self‐injury. High guilt‐proneness was associated with less self‐injury, although this effect was mitigated at higher levels of internalizing tendencies. These results suggest shame‐proneness is a risk factor for self‐injury, while guilt‐proneness is protective.     

The relationship between shame and guilt: cultural comparisons between Ireland and the United Arab Emirates

The current study examines whether proneness to shame and guilt is related to the cultural dimensions of collectivism and individualism. Two groups of participants from Ireland (n?=?120) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (n?=?115) completed measures assessing collectivism, individualism, and shame and guilt proneness. Results indicated that both samples displayed similar levels of individualism and collectivism. The UAE sample reported significantly higher levels of guilt proneness and shame proneness characterised by negative self-evaluation. In contrast, the Irish sample displayed significantly higher levels of shame characterised by withdrawal tendencies. Guilt was positively correlated with individualism, but shame was not correlated with either scores on collectivism or individualism. Young Arab women appear to experience higher levels of guilt and shame characterised by negative self-evaluation in comparison to their Irish counterparts who displayed higher levels of guilt proneness.     

Reappraising the Moral Nature of Emotions in Decision Making: The Case of Shame and Guilt

Emotions play a crucial role in moral behavior. The present paper does not contest this point but argues that qualifications of certain feelings such as shame and guilt as moral emotions should not exclusively be based on a proximal analysis of their function. A proximal analysis details how moral emotions produce moral behavior. Emotions are qualified as moral when they are elicited by concerns for others rather than the self and produce prosocial action tendencies. Although researchers have acknowledged that moral emotions may also have an ultimate function that details why it is in the individual interest that these moral effects occur, they have neglected to translate such ideas into testable hypotheses. Using guilt and shame as an example, we show how an analysis of ultimate functions accommodates recent findings, which contest the view that guilt is more moral than shame and provides new insights as to when and why moral emotions will produce moral effects.     

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.     

Reassessing the dimensionality of the moral emotions

The dimensionality of the moral emotions was tested to examine whether theoretical distinctions between specific emotions were empirically supported. A total of 720 drink‐driving offenders indicated the degree to which they experienced feelings associated with the moral emotions, in an interview conducted after attending court or a restorative justice conference. Expected distinctions between shame and guilt were not found. Instead the principal components analysis identified three factors: shame‐guilt, embarrassment‐exposure, and unresolved shame. The results also show that shame‐guilt was related to higher feelings of empathy and lower feelings of anger/hostility. It is concluded that differences between shame and guilt may be overstated. Furthermore, it is suggested that the relationship between situational experiences of shame and the disposition to feel it may be more complicated than initially thought.     

Visuospatial perspective shifting and relational self-association in dispositional shame and guilt

Although dispositional shame and guilt have been distinguished by perceptions of the self and behavioral responses, the underlying information processing patterns remain unclear. We hypothesized that an ability to contemplate alternatives to perceptions of the current environment, i.e., flexibility in perspective shifting, may be essential to both dispositions. Dispositional shame may additionally relate to negative relational knowledge that involves a self-representation of being rejected. One hundred and six community participants rated the two dispositions, and had their flexibility in perspective shifting and internalized self-association with rejection assessed. Regression analysis indicated that a lower cost of perspective shifting was observed with dispositional guilt and shame. Yet, unlike a direct association with perspective shifting for dispositional guilt, it was an interaction between perspective shifting and negative relational knowledge that accounted for dispositional shame. The association of dispositional shame with perspective shifting was contingent upon the tendency to pair the self with rejection.     

Acknowledging the skeletons in our closet: the effect of group affirmation on collective guilt, collective shame, and reparatory attitudes

Just as with threats to personal identity, people defend against social identity threats. In the context of intergroup injustice, such defensiveness undercuts collective guilt and its prosocial consequences. The current research examines whether group affirmation allows perpetrator groups to disarm threat without undermining guilt. In Study 1, men accepted greater guilt for gender inequality after affirming the ingroup. Given the distinction between collective guilt and collective shame, Studies 2-4 assessed both emotions and revealed that Canadians accepted greater guilt and shame over the mistreatment of Aboriginals following group affirmation. In Study 3, group affirmation also moderated the relation of each emotion with reparatory attitudes. When controlling for each other, collective shame predicted compensation in a nonaffirmation control condition whereas guilt predicted compensation once identity threat had been disarmed by group affirmation. In Study 4, the effect of group affirmation on the collective emotions was mediated by defensive appraisals of the injustice.     

Treating the Catholic patient: Unique dynamics and implications for psychotherapy

The Catholic patient presents a unique challenge to the therapist because of the special psychological dynamics they present. Issues such as shame, guilt, masochism, anger, sex, and magical thinking, take on a unique significance when applied to Catholic patients. These issues are a constant struggle for the Catholic because they represent “mortal sins.” Committing these sins will result, in the patient's mind, in spending an eternity in the tortures of Hell unless they can be erased by confession and appropriate penance. The therapist must actively work to “exorcise” this punitive superego in a way that may differ from psychotherapy with other patients.