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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Shamed into anger? The relation of shame and guilt to anger and self-reported aggression.

The relation of shame and guilt to anger and aggression has been the focus of considerable theoretical discussion, but empirical findings have been inconsistent. Two recently developed measures of affective style were used to examine whether shame-proneness and guilt-proneness are differentially related to anger, hostility, and aggression. In 2 studies, 243 and 252 undergraduates completed the Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory, the Symptom Checklist 90, and the Spielberger Trait Anger Scale. Study 2 also included the Test of Self-Conscious Affect and the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory. Shame-proneness was consistently correlated with anger arousal, suspiciousness, resentment, irritability, a tendency to blame others for negative events, and indirect (but not direct) expressions of hostility. Proneness to "shame-free" guilt was inversely related to externalization of blame and some indices of anger, hostility, and resentment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

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.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

A study of the comparative structure of guilt and shame in a Chinese society.

On the basis of previous theoretical and empirical analyses of the comparative structures of guilt and shame, the authors hypothesized that antecedent condition (personal inadequacy vs. moral norm violation), audience presence, and personal responsibility attribution would distinguish shame from guilt. Although the subject population was Hong Kong Chinese, evidence from previous studies suggests that the comparative structures of guilt and shame are quite similar across cultures. The subjects were asked to recall either a guilt or a shame incident, and their responses were then coded into the predictor variables. The results of the study indicated that guilt was most likely to emerge when individuals had violated a moral norm and held themselves responsible for their conduct. In contrast, shame emerged more frequently when subjects felt personally inadequate than when they had violated moral norms. Moreover, when a guilt incident was reported, and audience was rarely mentioned, whereas subjects who reported a shame incident would generally feel personally responsible and often mentioned being looked at or evaluated. However, neither personal responsibility nor the presence of an audience seemed to be essential for a person to experience shame.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Understanding what is hidden. Shame in sexual abuse.

Competence in treating the victims of sexual abuse and exploitation requires an understanding of shame, the complex and multilayered emotion triggered when we have been exposed or when our self-esteem has been reduced. The experience of shame is initially physiologic, involving a cortical shock momentarily halting higher cognitive function, but followed immediately by a host of associations to previous experiences of shame. Acutely, the affect itself impels hiding, while defenses against it include anger, humor, silence, and a wide range of behaviors. In our culture, all sexuality involves an interplay between exposure and privacy, between control and release. The sexual abuse of adults and the sexual exploitation of children must produce shame, study of the interaction between abuser and abused suggests that shame conflict figures prominently in the genesis of such activity. To the extent that psychotherapy itself involves exposure, it must trigger shame; thus, it is likely that the therapist unskilled in the recognition of shame in all its disguises will overlook or misunderstand many of the issues that should form the core of our treatment of those whose sexual selves have been abused or exploited.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Two promising shame and guilt scales: a construct validity comparison.

This study compared the validity of two promising measures of shame and guilt proneness: revisions of the Harder Personal Feelings Questionnaire (PFQ2; Harder & Lewis, 1987) and the Hoblitzelle Adapted Shame and Guilt Scale (ASGS; Hoblitzelle, 1982). Internal consistency, test-retest stability, factor structure, and construct validity with convergent and discriminant personality dimensions were examined for both scales. In addition to the shame and guilt measures, 63 (37 male, 26 female) mostly freshman college students completed a randomly ordered battery of personality scales theoretically relevant to shame and guilt proneness. Results support the reliability and shame/guilt factor structure of each scale. ASGS Shame correlations appeared marginally more valid with 11 external construct variables than PFQ2 Shame, whereas PFQ2 Guilt was clearly more valid than its corresponding ASGS subscale. New, potentially improved scales were constructed from the factor analyses and from item analyses. However, the resulting scales did not show improved validity.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Shame as an impetus to the creation of conscience.

Shame 'absorbed by' guilt is an issue that was flagged for consideration by Erikson. The most compelling reason for using guilt to obscure shame is that guilt is associated with a sense of the self as strong, though burdened and culpable, whereas shame brings with it a painful sense of vulnerability. Erikson described the way in which compulsive ordering-about of the self allows a child to feel less helpless and less vulnerable to the shame affect. In instituting this type of self-directive behaviour, the child is developing conscience. The irony of this type of self-manipulation is that ultimately the child, or adult, finds himself again burdened by impotence, though it is the impotence of guilt rather than that of shame. The topic of shame yielding to guilt is of interest in part because it demonstrates the highly interactive relationship between narcissistic concerns and superego responses to impulse-expression, and the role of such interactions in the formation of psychological structures.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Proneness to shame, proneness to guilt, and psychopathology.

The links between shame and guilt and psychopathology were examined. In 2 studies, 245 and 234 undergraduates completed the Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory, the Symptom Checklist 90, the Beck Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Scale, and the Attributional Style Questionnaire. Results failed to support Lewis's (1971) notion that shame and guilt are differentially related to unique symptom clusters. Shame-proneness was strongly related to psychological maladjustment in general. Guilt-proneness was only moderately related to psychopathology; correlations were ascribable entirely to the shared variance between shame and guilt. Although clearly related to a depressogenic attributional style, shame accounted for substantial variance in depression, above and beyond attributional style.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Assessing individual differences in proneness to shame and guilt: development of the Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory.

Individual differences in proneness to shame and proneness to guilt are thought to play an important role in the development of both adaptive and maladaptive interpersonal and intrapersonal processes. But little empirical research has addressed these issues, largely because no reliable, valid measure has been available to researchers interested in differentiating proneness to shame from proneness to guilt. The Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory (SCAAI) was developed to assess characteristic affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses associated with shame and guilt among a young adult population. The SCAAI also includes indices of externalization of cause or blame, detachment/unconcern, pride in self, and pride in behavior. Data from 3 independent studies of college students and 1 study of noncollege adults provide support for the reliability of the main SCAAI subscales. Moreover, the pattern of relations among the SCAAI subscales and the relation of SCAAI subscales to 2 extant measures of shame and guilt support the validity of this new measure. The SCAAI appears to provide related but functionally distinct indices of proneness to shame and guilt in a way that these previous measures have not.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Shame in psychoanalysis: the function of unconscious fantasies.

The conceptualization of shame as an emergent affect in the clinical situation gains clarity by linking it to unconscious fantasies. The author suggests that shame appears when an individual fails in his efforts to obtain from another person, in reality or in imagined scenes, an expected similar affect or a complementary message, or both. A self-evaluation emerges of being undeserving of the desired response. In this respect shame is related to the narcissistic component of any experience or fantasy, be it pre-oedipal, oedipal, or post-oedipal. In cases where there is a pathological predisposition to shame, the predisposition is linked to unconscious fantasies portraying the individual as the desiring and frustrated subject of an unresponded to affective message. After its formation the unconscious fantasy itself, and all its unrepressed derivatives, become a source of shame. A clinical example illustrates these points.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

[Determinants of pride and shame: outcome, expected success and attribution].

In two experiments we investigated the relationship between subjective probability of success and pride and shame. According to Atkinson (1957), pride (the incentive of success) is an inverse linear function of the probability of success, shame (the incentive of failure) being a negative linear function. Attribution theory predicts an inverse U-shaped relationship between subjective probability of success and pride and shame. The results presented here are at variance with both theories: Pride and shame do not vary with subjective probability of success. However, pride and shame are systematically correlated with internal attributions of action outcome.

Achievement↗
PubMed1990

The oedipal organization of shame. The analysis of a phobia.

The affect of shame in its development and transformations plays an important role in the oedipal period, alongside guilt, as a source of unpleasure and a signal affect. Earlier experiences of shame, associated with loss of control, are now incorporated into the new meanings derived from oedipal conflicts. The analysis of a phobic woman shows how the shame of exposure, experienced by the patient in terms of body concerns, involved complex compromises representing impulses, defenses, and fantasies. Signals of shame anxiety helped to ward off guilty fantasies of love and hostility by motivating character traits in which even ordinary caring was renounced. In the analysis these traits were represented in a transference of defense.

Female↗
PubMed1979

Ethnic differences in expressions of shame feeling by mothers of severely handicapped children.

Shame on the part of parents of mentally handicapped children has pronounced effects on child-rearing practices. The aim of this study was to compare expressions of shame of different ethnic groups in Israel. The attitudes of 23 Western mothers and 26 Eastern mothers towards their moderately and severely retarded children were studied. Significant differences (p less than 0.05-p less than 0.01) were found, suggesting that the Eastern mothers strongly expressed their shame, whereas the Western mothers 'felt ashamed' to express it at all. The Western mothers felt that the social norms that reject feelings of shame and their own personal feelings of embarrassment were in conflict.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1992

Ambiguity as the route to shame.

In patients who have been exposed to extreme conditions, shame is connected with a dilemma of identity: it is indicative of the patient's conflict over his alienation, his adaptation to and familiarization with the conditions offered by an unacceptable frame. Bleger's (1967) theoretical model, with the concepts of the symbiotic link, ambiguity and the ambiguous position (which precedes the classical Kleinian positions), dynamically combines the problem of the frame or context with that of the capacity of discrimination between the ego and its objects. Ambiguity is characterized by the adaptability, malleability, permeability and non-conflictuality which it confers on the personality. Shame appears as an alarm signal concerning ambiguity, connected with the ego's need to maintain its internal conflictuality, its capacity for integration and its sense of continuity. Experiences of dependence and passivity, or ones which touch upon the dilemma between true and false, private and public, ethics and aesthetics, etc., may give rise to feelings of shame. In this paper it is suggested that a common denominator for the many different factors of shame may be found in the dynamics of ambiguity.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Differences in shame and pride as a function of children's gender and task difficulty.

3-year-old children were presented with easy and difficult tasks and their emotional responses of shame and pride were observed. No shame was shown when subjects succeeded on the tasks and no pride was shown when they failed. Significantly more shame was shown when subjects failed easy tasks than when they failed difficult tasks, and significantly more pride was shown when subjects succeeded on difficult than on easy tasks. While there were no sex differences in task failures, girls showed more shame than boys. There were no sex differences in pride when subjects succeeded.

Achievement↗
PubMed1990

Measures of shame and conflict tactics: effects of questionnaire order.

In the context of a theory of the intrapsychic dynamics of violent spousal relationships, in which abuse serves to replace shame with guilt, the effect of the order of presentation of questionnaires assessing shame, guilt, narcissism and conflict tactics was considered. Among 122 male and 133 female students, a shame score was significantly higher if the student had responded first to the Conflict Tactics Scale.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Some psychological aspects of shame and guilt in school children.

The paper presents the results of an investigation into some psychological aspects of shame and guilt of a group of school children aged fourteen. The research, which involved forty seven children, showed that majority of them, and girls in particular, treat guilt as distinctly different from shame. Guilt seems to be as a more intensive, longer-lasting experience, usually accompanied by a feeling of bad or wrong behaviour, with a general tendency to be coped with in privacy and rather consciously. In the case of the feeling of guilt, it is the individual in question who is his/her own judge (inner source), whereas in the case of shame judgement seems to come from the outside (i.e. other people). The paper proposes ways in which children can be protected from these two emotions.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Shame among unemployed men.

Explicit criteria for rating feelings of shame were applied in a group of 80 unemployed men. Shame was prominent in 15% of the sample and milder features were present in a further 10%. It was strongly associated with the presence of minor affective disorder and with some, but not all, of the vulnerability factors associated with the latter. Possible explanations for these associations are discussed.

Adult↗