Measures of guilt and shame

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Measures of guilt and shame are used by mental health professionals to determine an individual's propensity towards the self-conscious feelings of guilt or shame.

Contents

Guilt and shame are both negative social and moral emotions as well as behavioral regulators, yet they differ in their perceived causes and motivations: external sources cause shame which affects ego and self-image, whereas guilt is self-originating and focuses on how others are impacted. [1]

Measures of shame and guilt are useful for understanding individuals' reactions to embarrassing and regrettable situations in psychotherapy and psychopathology. Some of the most commonly used measures are Harder's Personal Feelings Questionnaire-2 (PFQ-2), introduced in 1990, Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory (SCAAI), Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA), and the more recently introduced Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale (GASP). [2]

Methods

Measures of guilt and shame are typically a self-report survey that provides examples of feelings of guilt and shame, or scenarios in which a person might experience one of those feelings. The respondents are usually required to indicate, using a numbered scale, the likelihood they would experience each emotional response. In some cases responses are instead multiple choice.

These methods do not require the respondent to formulate or give definitions guilt or shame, and prevent discrepancies that might arise from individual's varied definitions. Differences in the classifications of guilt and shame can and do occur across different measures, however, and can be seen when multiple measures give slightly differing results for the same subject.

Measures

Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale

The GASP is a relatively new measure of guilt and shame developed by Taya R. Cohen that takes a different approach to the classifications of these emotions. The self-report test assesses guilt-proneness and shame-proneness rather than just the presence of the feelings.

The test is unique for its subclassifications of guilt and shame into: guilt-negative-behavior-evaluation (NBE), guilt-repair, shame-negative-self-evaluation (NSE), and shame-withdraw. [3] There are 16 items on the questionnaire, four for each sub classification. Each item is a short description of an everyday embarrassing scenario or transgression; the respondent is asked to imagine they are in that situation and then indicate how likely it is that their experience would match the described through a 1–7 scale, "1" meaning "very unlikely" and "7" meaning "very likely". The scenarios are varied to include workplace failures, petty crime, social faux pas, among others. [4] Research conducted using the GASP showed that it could reliably measure guilt-proneness and shame-proneness, and that guilt proneness was correlated to healthy prosocial behaviors, while shame was correlated with more unhealthy antisocial behavior. [3]

The GASP has an advantage over existing measures of guilt and shame for its ability to test for different types of guilt and shame, especially the ability to distinguish NSE from withdrawal in shame, where there is commonly uncertainty in tests such as the TOSCA. [3] This test is potentially useful in predicting undesirable behavior in individuals by evaluating their dispositions towards the sub types of reactions rather than just their tendency toward either feeling guilt or shame.

Personal Feelings Questionnaire-2

An expanded version of D. W. Harder's original PFQ developed in 1987, the PFQ-2 is a self-response questionnaire consisting of adjectives and statements that describe either shame or guilt. The adjectives and statements are ranked on a 5-point scale, a "0" response meaning the individual does not experience the emotion and a "4" meaning that they experience it very strongly. [2]

The questionnaire has been used to show correlations between guilt and shame, attachment styles, and the "Big Five" personality traits: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. The measure was used in conjunction with other self-report measures of personality and attachment in research which concluded that guilt and shame have significant correlations to "broad, enduring personality constructs". [5]

Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory

Presented in 1990, the SCAAI was developed specifically for young adult populations, offering scenarios that college-age individuals might typically encounter and providing four possible responses to each scenario. The responses correlate to guilt, shame, externalization of blame, and detachment. [6] The measure was one of the first to use scenario-based responses, as opposed to the more commonly used adjective response styles.

Through testing, the SCAAI was determined reliable over the four sub scales of shame, guilt, externalization and detachment; the pride sub scales had much lower reliability and are thus not considered one of main uses of the measure. Tests using the SCAAI found the shame and guilt sub scales to be positively intercorrelated, allowing researchers to conclude that the two sub scales are highly related but functionally different. [6]

Test of Self-Conscious Affect

Originally modeled after the SCAAI, the current version of the TOSCA, the TOSCA-3 is the most commonly used measure of guilt and shame today. The TOSCA-3 measures guilt and shame proneness through a series of 16 scenarios [7] developed from descriptions of real personal experiences of guilt, shame, and pride, including several positive scenarios. The test is of a multiple choice response format, offering four responses to each of the 16 scenarios, where each choice is rated on a 5-point scale, a "1" rating meaning "not likely" and a "5" rating meaning "very likely". [2]

The validity of the TOSCA has been supported through research on guilt and shame proneness as a risk factor for psychological maladjustment. [8] However, the TOSCA has been criticized for being overly simplistic in judging guilt as a healthier, more prosocial response than shame, for problems distinguishing guilt and shame, and for attempting to measure personality dispositions through a test of specific scenarios. [9] Though typically used to measure the trait emotions of guilt and shame, the TOSCA has been found to be a good predictor of tendency towards guilt-related and motivated behaviors or shame-related emotions; the test was not able to distinguish the tendency to feel either emotion, which is important in determining risks for related psychological issues such as depression, low self-esteem, etc. [10]

Uses

Guilt and shame are key motivators to moral action and highly affect how a person responds to emotional stimuli. And individual's proneness to feel guilt or shame and their proneness to act according to one of them have implications for emotional stability and interpersonal tendencies. Motivations for moral actions can be give insight into how an individual perceives themselves and negative situations, which may be valuable information in psychotherapy, workplaces, schools, and many other environments yet to be explored in this context.

The TOSCA has shown links between shame-proneness and depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. [11] As such, researchers using the TOSCA have concluded that "it may be useful for clinicians to pay attention to a client's propensity to feel shame and their tendency to externalize blame as indicators of risk for psychological maladjustment". [8] The TOSCA and SCAAI have both been used in studies concerning the relationship between feelings of guilt/shame and anger/aggression, which found that shame is positively related to anger, suspiciousness, and hostility while guilt was negatively related to anger. [12] This finding supports that guilt is the more pro-social emotional response and also opens new areas of interest in studies of anger and violence. Shame scales in studies using the TOSCA and PFQ-2 have shown correlation to a multitude of aspects of psychopathology, but have also shown enough overlap with the guilt scales that there is potential for more research in this area. [13]

In addition, recent research by Mintz, Etengoff & Grysman in the Journal of Child and Family Studies linked retrospective reports of parenting behaviors to emerging adults' reports of shame and guilt as measured by the TOSCA. [14]

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guilt (emotion)</span> Cognitive or an emotional experience

Guilt is a moral emotion that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that they have compromised their own standards of conduct or have violated universal moral standards and bear significant responsibility for that violation. Guilt is closely related to the concept of remorse, regret, as well as shame.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shame</span> Affect, emotion, cognition, state or condition

Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remorse</span> Distressing emotion experienced by a person who regrets actions they have done in the past

Remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past that 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've caused, or self-imposed punishments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Empathy</span> Capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing

Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are more definitions of empathy that include but is not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and types that include cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mood swing</span> Extreme or rapid change in mood

A mood swing is an extreme or sudden change of mood. Such changes can play a positive part in promoting problem solving and in producing flexible forward planning, or be disruptive. When mood swings are severe, they may be categorized as part of a mental illness, such as bipolar disorder, where erratic and disruptive mood swings are a defining feature.

Distressed personality type, or "type D" individuals, tend to suppress powerful negative emotions as a means of coping with stressful events or situations. These individuals suppress feelings of anger or sorrow even when they are in an environment that is supportive of emotional expression, such as suppressing anger when clearly justified, or refusing to cry at a funeral. The type D individual tends to be anxious, irritable, insecure, and uncomfortable with strangers. These types of people are constantly experiencing and anticipating negative emotions, which results in their being more tense and inhibited around others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affect (psychology)</span> Experience of feeling or emotion

Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. In psychology, "affect" refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive or negative. Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components: emotion, mood, and affectivity. In psychology, the term "affect" is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts, though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass: emotion, feeling, mood, emotional state, sentiment, affective state, emotional response, affective reactivity, disposition. Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and the context of their work.

A self-report inventory is a type of psychological test in which a person fills out a survey or questionnaire with or without the help of an investigator. Self-report inventories often ask direct questions about personal interests, values, symptoms, behaviors, and traits or personality types. Inventories are different from tests in that there is no objectively correct answer; responses are based on opinions and subjective perceptions. Most self-report inventories are brief and can be taken or administered within five to 15 minutes, although some, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), can take several hours to fully complete. They are popular because they can be inexpensive to give and to score, and their scores can often show good reliability.

Neuroticism is a personality trait associated with negative emotions. It is one of the Big Five traits. Individuals with high scores on neuroticism are more likely than average to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, pessimism, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. Their behavioral responses may include procrastination, substance use, and other maladaptive behaviors, which may aid in relieving negative emotions and generating positive ones.

Discrete emotion theory is the claim that there is a small number of core emotions. For example, Silvan Tomkins concluded that there are nine basic affects which correspond with what we come to know as emotions: interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, fear, anger, shame, dissmell and disgust. More recently, Carroll Izard at the University of Delaware factor analytically delineated 12 discrete emotions labeled: Interest, Joy, Surprise, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Self-Hostility, Fear, Shame, Shyness, and Guilt.

Affect consciousness refers to an individual's ability to consciously perceive, tolerate, reflect upon, and express affects. These four abilities are operationalized as degrees of awareness, tolerance, emotional (nonverbal) expression, and conceptual (verbal) expression of each of the following eleven affect categories:

Affect measures are used in the study of human affect, and refer to measures obtained from self-report studies asking participants to quantify their current feelings or average feelings over a longer period of time. Even though some affect measures contain variations that allow assessment of basic predispositions to experience a certain emotion, tests for such stable traits are usually considered to be personality tests.

The self-discrepancy theory states that individuals compare their "actual" self to internalized standards or the "ideal/ought self". Inconsistencies between "actual", "ideal" and "ought" are associated with emotional discomforts. Self-discrepancy is the gap between two of these self-representations that leads to negative emotions.

In psychology, manipulation is defined as subterfuge designed to influence or control another, usually in a manner which facilitates one's personal aims. The methods used distort or orient the interlocutor's perception of reality, in particular through seduction, suggestion, persuasion and non-voluntary or consensual submission. Definitions for the term vary in which behavior is specifically included, influenced by both culture and whether referring to the general population or used in clinical contexts. Manipulation is generally considered a dishonest form of social influence as it is used at the expense of others.

Meta-mood is a term used by psychologists to refer to an individual's awareness of their emotions. The term was first utilized by John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey who believed the experience of mood involved "direct" and "indirect" components. While the direct level refers to the simple appearance of mood - happiness, fear, anger, sadness, and surprise, the indirect level, or the meta-mood experience, does not solely consist of the emotions experienced by an individual in the moment. Rather, it is a reflective state which involves additional thoughts and feelings about the mood itself. "I shouldn’t feel this way" or "I am thinking of ways to improve my mood" are examples of reflective thoughts during a meta-mood experience.

Social emotions are emotions that depend upon the thoughts, feelings or actions of other people, "as experienced, recalled, anticipated or imagined at first hand". Examples are embarrassment, guilt, shame, jealousy, envy, elevation, empathy, and pride. In contrast, basic emotions such as happiness and sadness only require the awareness of one's own physical state. Therefore, the development of social emotions is tightly linked with the development of social cognition, the ability to imagine other people's mental states, which generally develops in adolescence. Studies have found that children as young as 2 to 3 years of age can express emotions resembling guilt and remorse. However, while five-year-old children are able to imagine situations in which basic emotions would be felt, the ability to describe situations in which social emotions might be experienced does not appear until seven years of age.

Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Differential Emotions Scale</span>

The Differential Emotions Scale (DES) is a multidimensional self-report device for assessment of an individual's emotions. The DES helps measure mood based on Carroll Izard's differential emotions theory, The DES consists of thirty items, three for each of the ten fundamental emotions as visualized by Izard: interest, joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame/ shyness, and guilt, which are represented on 5-point Likert scale. There are currently four different versions of the scale. Despite the different versions, the basic idea of are very similar. Participants are asked to rate each of the emotions on a scale, and depending on the instructions given, they either rate their current feelings, feelings over the past week, or over long-term traits. The DES is similar to other scales such as the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL) and the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List-Revised (MAACL-R) which are used to assess either the state or trait affect by varying the time of which instructions are given to the participants.

Moral emotions are a variety of social emotions that are involved in forming and communicating moral judgments and decisions, and in motivating behavioral responses to one's own and others' moral behavior. As defined by Jonathan Haidt, moral emotions "are linked to the interests or welfare either of a society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent". A person may not always have clear words to articulate, yet simultaneously, that same person knows it to be true deep down inside.

References

  1. ↑ Teroni, Fabrice; Deonna, Julien A. (2008). "Differentiating shame from guilt". Consciousness and Cognition. 17 (3): 725–740. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2008.02.002. PMID   18445530. S2CID   27526879.
  2. 1 2 3 Tracy, J. (2007). Assessing Self-Conscious Emotions: A Review of Self-Report and Nonverbal Measures. In The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research. New York: Guilford Press.
  3. 1 2 3 Cohen, TR; Wolf, ST; Panter, AT; Insko, CA (May 2011). "Introducing the GASP scale: A new measure of guilt and shame proneness". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 100 (5): 947–966. doi:10.1037/a0022641. PMID   21517196.
  4. ↑ Cohen, T. R.; Wolf, S. T.; Panter, A. T.; Insko, C. A. (2011). "Introducing the GASP scale: A new measure of guilt and shame proneness". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 100 (5): 947–966. doi:10.1037/a0022641. PMID   21517196.
  5. ↑ Harder, David W.; Creenwald, Deborah F. (1999). "Further Validation of the Shame and Guilt Scales of the Harder Personal Feelings Questionnaire-2". Psychological Reports. 85 (1): 271–281. doi:10.2466/pr0.1999.85.1.271. PMID   10575992. S2CID   7656273.
  6. 1 2 Tangney, June P. (1990). "Assessing individual differences in proneness to shame and guilt: Development of the Self-Conscious Affect and Attribution Inventory". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 59 (1): 102–11. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.1.102. PMID   2213483.
  7. ↑ Robins, R. W., Noftle, E. E., & Tracy, J. L. (2007). Assessing self-conscious emotions: A review of self-report and nonverbal measures. In J. L. Tracy, R. W. Robins, J. P. Tangney, J. L. Tracy, R. W. Robins, J. P. Tangney (Eds.), The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research (pp. 443-467).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. 1 2 Woien, Sandra L; Ernst, Heidi A.H; Patock-Peckham, Julie A; Nagoshi, Craig T (2003). "Validation of the TOSCA to measure shame and guilt". Personality and Individual Differences. 35 (2): 313–326. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00191-5.
  9. ↑ Montes Sánchez, A (2014). "Intersubjectivity and interaction as crucial for understanding the moral role of shame: a critique of TOSCA-based shame research". Frontiers in Psychology. 5: 814. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00814 . PMC   4114200 . PMID   25120517.
  10. ↑ Giner-Sorolla, Roger; Piazza, Jared; Espinosa, Pablo (2011). "What do the TOSCA guilt and shame scales really measure: Affect or action?" (PDF). Personality and Individual Differences. 51 (4): 445–450. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.04.010.
  11. ↑ Silfver, M., Helkama, K., Lönnqvist, J., & Verkasalo, M. (2008). The relation between value priorities and proneness to guilt, shame, and empathy. Motivation and Emotion Motiv Emot, 69-80.
  12. ↑ Tangney, June P.; Wagner, Patricia; Fletcher, Carey; Gramzow, Richard (1992). "Shamed into anger? The relation of shame and guilt to anger and self-reported aggression". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 62 (4): 669–675. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.62.4.669. PMID   1583590.
  13. ↑ Averill, Patricia M; Diefenbach, Gretchen J; Stanley, Melinda A; Breckenridge, Joy K; Lusby, Beth (2002). "Assessment of shame and guilt in a psychiatric sample: a comparison of two measures". Personality and Individual Differences. 32 (8): 1365–1376. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00124-6.
  14. ↑ Mintz, Gavriella; Etengoff, Chana; Grysman, Azriel (2017-10-01). "The Relation between Childhood Parenting and Emerging Adults' Experiences of Shame and Guilt". Journal of Child and Family Studies. 26 (10): 2908–2920. doi:10.1007/s10826-017-0778-5. ISSN   1573-2843.
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