Relation of shame and guilt to constructive versus destructive responses to anger across the lifespan.

This study explored the relation of shame proneness and guilt proneness to constructive versus destructive responses to anger among 302 children ( Grades 4–6 ), 427 adolescents ( Grades 7–11), 176 college students, and 194 adults. Across all ages, shame proneness was clearly related to maladaptive responses to anger, including malevolent intentions; direct, indirect, and displaced aggression; self-directed hostility; and negative long-term consequences. In contrast, guilt proneness was associated with constructive means of handling anger, including constructive intentions, corrective action and nonhostile discussion with the target of the anger, cognitive reappraisals of the target's role, and positive long-term consequences. Escapist-diffusing responses showed some interesting developmental trends. Among children, these dimensions were positively correlated with guilt and largely unrelated to shame; among older participants, the results were mixed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Premarital sexual guilt.

Predictors of premarital sexual guilt at both first and current sexual intercourse were obtained for 355 13–20 yr old sexually active single women attending 10 birth control centers. Guilt was assessed as an episodic emotion rather than as a personality disposition. Results show that the best model for predicting guilt at first intercourse contained the variables of planning for first intercourse and self-esteem, and explained 18% of the variance. 26% of the variance in current sexual guilt was explained by the variables of number of sexual experiences, personal attitude toward premarital intercourse, planning for first intercourse, and self-esteem. (French abstract) (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On conceptualizing and assessing guilt.

The psychological construct of guilt and its measurement were investigated in a series of studies (N?=?1,041). Data collection and analyses involved 3 broad issues: (1) the further development and validation of the Guilt Inventory, designed to measure trait guilt, state guilt, and moral standards; (2) comparisons involving extant measures of guilt, shame, moral standards, and other emotions for the purpose of exploring the distinctions between trait guilt and state guilt, affective guilt and moral standards, and guilt and other emotions including both shame and the full range of emotional traits; and (3) an exploration of the factor structure of the trait guilt scales. Results supported the validity and reliability of the Guilt Inventory and the validity of most of the other guilt measures. However, results also raised questions regarding commonly articulated distinctions between trait and state guilt, guilt and shame, and for some measures, affective guilt and moral standards. Discussion focuses on issues of measurement and conceptualization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation of verbal, affective, and physical intimacy to marital satisfaction.

Explored the relation of verbal, affective, and physical intimacy—to marital satisfaction in 43 couples (aged 18–59 yrs). The majority of Ss had sought counseling for marital problems. Ss completed questionnaires on intimacy and marital satisfaction and were then audiotaped during a discussion of their relationship. The 3 types of intimacy were highly predictive of both perceived marital satisfaction and a measure of thought and behaviors indicative of potential for divorce. Measures of verbal and affective intimacy made stronger contributions to the prediction of marital satisfaction than did physical intimacy. The interactions among the 3 types of intimacy did not contribute significantly to the prediction of satisfaction, nor was there any evidence of a curvilinear relation between measures of intimacy and measures of satisfaction. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dispositional inference strikes back: Situational focus and dispositional suppression in causal attribution.

The authors propose that correction of dispositional inferences involves the examination of situational constraints and the suppression of dispositional inferences. They hypothesized that suppression would result in dispositional rebound. In Study 1, participants saw a video of either a free or a forced speaker. Participants shown a forced speaker later made stronger dispositional inferences about a 2nd, free speaker than control participants did. Study 2 provided evidence for higher rebound among participants who reported trying harder to suppress dispositional inferences during the 1st video. In Study 3, participants were asked to focus on situational constraints or to avoid thinking about the speaker's characteristics. Only the latter instructions led to a dispositional rebound. These data support the view that the correction of dispositional inferences involves 2 processes that lead to distinct consequences in subsequent attribution work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Homosexual threat, negative attitudes toward masturbation, sex guilt, and males' sexual and affective reactions to explicit sexual films.

Subjective sexual arousal and affective responses of 215 undergraduate males to films of masturbatory, homosexual, and heterosexual behavior were studied as a function of personality differences in negative attitudes toward masturbation, homosexual threat, and sex guilt. The film of heterosexual behavior elicited more subjective sexual arousal and less disgust, anger, shame, depression, and guilt than did the films of male masturbation and homosexuality. The film of homosexuality elicited both more sexual arousal and more disgust, anger, shame, and guilt than did the film of masturbation. The personality inventories (e.g., Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory, Negative Attitudes Toward Masturbation Inventory) predicted sexual arousal and affective reactions, but the evidence was better for convergent than for discriminant validity. A promising new measure of homosexual threat (Homosexual Threat Inventory) was constructed that was predictive of heterosexual–homosexual orientation and reactions to the films. The concept of homosexual threat is differentiated from the concepts of fear of homosexuals, homosexual panic, and homosexual prejudice. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation of racial identity attitudes to self-actualization and affective states of Black students.

The relation between racial identity attitudes derived from W. E. Cross's (1971) model of psychological nigrescence, or Black self-actualization, and various affective states hypothesized to be relevant to the racial identification process, were investigated through multiple regression analysis. Cross proposed a model of how a person converts from Negro to Black, a process consisting of 5 distinct psychological stages characterized by different racial identity attitudes. Ss were 166 Black university students, who completed the Personal Orientation Inventory, a racial attitude scale, the SCL-90, and a personal-data information sheet. Both pro-White–anti-Black (preencounter) and pro-Black–anti-White (immersion) attitudes were associated with greater personal distress, as indicated by negative relations between these attitudes and mentally healthy self-actualizing tendencies and by positive relations to feelings of inferiority, anxiety, and hostility. Awakening Black identity (encounter attitudes) was positively related to self-actualization tendencies and negatively related to feelings of inferiority and anxiety. The possibility that cognitive and affective components of racial identity attitudes may evolve via different models is explored. Recommendations for delivery of psychological services to Black populations are discussed. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification and inferential processes in dispositional attribution.

Tested, in 2 experiments, predictions of a formal model that decomposes the attribution of personal dispositions into identification and dispositional inference processes. The model assumes that identification processes initially represent the incoming stimulus information in terms of meaningful attribution-relevant categories. The results of the identification process serve as input for dispositional inference processes wherein causal schemata guide the inference of personal dispositions. The 2 illustrative experiments traced the processing of behavioral and situational information at the identification and dispositional inference stages and examined attributions as a joint product of the different stages. Findings and previous relevant research demonstrate that the proposed model can help reconcile conflicting findings in the literature, reveal new attributional phenomena, and improve understanding of the cognitive processes that produce self- and other-attribution. Dispositional attribution calculations are appended. (90 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effortfulness and flexibility of dispositional judgment processes.

Two experiments investigated situational information is used to identify behavior (assimilative identification) and to adjust dispositional inferences from the identified behavior (inferential adjustment). Participants heard an ambiguous or unambiguous evaluation of a job candidate by an evaluator who was under situational pressure to present either a positive or negative evaluation. In Experiment 1 participants were under low or high cognitive load. In Experiment 2 the situational information was either validated or invalidated. Results showed that cognitive load and invalidation eliminated the use of situational information for inferential adjustment. Behavior ambiguity determined the use of situational information for assimilative identification. The results suggest that the use of situational information for assimilative identification is resource independent but inflexible, whereas inferential adjustment is flexible but resource dependent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shame and guilt in psychotherapy supervision.

Examines the vulnerability to shame and humiliation of clinical trainees, particularly as it emerges in the course of psychotherapy supervision. It is contended that shame in supervision is generated from 4 major contributing factors: (1) the learning regression, (2) the patient population, (3) the supervisor's management of the supervisory hour, and (4) transference and countertransference in supervision. Suggestions are given for reducing the shame that might compromise the professional well-being of neophyte clinicians and their supervisors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shame and guilt in restorative justice.

In this article, I examine the relevance and desirability of shame and guilt to restorative justice conferences. I argue that a careful study of the psychology of shame and guilt reveals that both emotions possess traits that can be desirable and traits that can be undesirable for restoration. More in particular, having presented the aims of restorative justice, the importance of face-to-face conferences in reaching these aims, the emotional dynamics that take place within such conferences, and the relevant parts of the empirical psychology of shame and guilt, I argue that restorative justice practitioners have to take account of a rather more complex picture than it had hitherto been thought. Restorative conferences are not simply about shame management, though practitioners must certainly avoid shaming and humiliation. Given the nature of shame, guilt, and restorative conferences, it is not possible to provide a single concrete precept applicable to all restorative conferences. The successful holding of conferences depends in large part on the cultural and situational specificities at hand. The latter include among others knowledge of the perceived relations standing between victim and offender as well as the affective specificities of the individuals involved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processes of causal explanation and dispositional attribution.

Causal explanation and dispositional attribution are distinguished. Causal explanation involves giving an explanation for why a particular event occurred, whereas dispositional attribution involves learning about the characteristics of some entity. Moreover, it is proposed that production of causal explanations requires J. S. Mill's (1872/1973) method of difference, whereas production of dispositional attributions requires Mill's method of agreement. Exp 1 shows that both the method of difference and the method of agreement are used to make causal explanations. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 indicate that lay attributors consistently favor use of the method of agreement but not the method of difference to make dispositional attributions of both faciliatory and inhibitory characteristics. The distinction between causal explanation and dispositional attribution is used to organize seemingly contradictory findings and to provide an integrative framework for models of causal judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abortion and guilt

11 patients and 14 staff members including 4 nurses were interviewed in a study of guilt felt by abortion patients and the role of nurses in its management. All patients experienced guilt feelings that were expressed in psychological, physical, or relational symptoms. 65% of the staff members believed that guilt is a normal reaction to the experience of abortion. Guilt may arise from personal factors or the abortion procedure itself, or it may be provoked by such elements of the social system as the education of young girls and religious culture. The attitude of health personnel is of utmost importance. Staff should not judge or influence their abortion patients. 93% of the staff interviewed believed that patients should be aided in managing their guilt feelings.     

Thematic hostility and guilt responses as related to self-reported hostility, guilt, and conflict.

Thematic hostility and guilt responses were investigated as a function of hostile cues and self-reported drive, guilt, and conflict over hostility. From a pool of 181 college males, extreme groups of 20 each were selected on each of the self-report measures. It was found that: (a) self-reported hostility across levels of guilt was directly related to TAT hostility on pictures of low relevance for hostility only; (b) TAT hostility across pictures was directly related to self-reported hostility when guilt was low and inversely when guilt was high; (c) TAT hostility was inversely, and TAT guilt directly, related to self-reported guilt; and (d) there was no evidence that conflict produces a simultaneous increase in drive related responses to cues of low relevance and decrease in drive related responses to cues of high relevance. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

State-trait measure of experiential guilt.

Developed the Perceived Guilt Index, a self-report measure, to meet the need for a situational measure of guilt. 2 scales which assess guilt as an affective state of the person at the moment (G-State) and as a generalized self-concept (G-Trait) were formed from initial studies with 300 undergraduates. Comprised of 11 adjectives empirically weighted to represent relatively evenly distributed intensity points along a guilt continuum and chosen because of their common semantic structure, the Perceived Guilt Index represents an attempt to quantify common verbal labels used to communicate the intensity of emotional relations to guilt. Construct validity studies were performed with 93 undergraduates and strong support was found for the theory underlying the development of the instrument. Implications pertaining to future research with the Perceived Guilt Index are discussed. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Informational and dispositional determinants of children's achievement attributions.

Investigated how informational cues and dispositional biases influence children's attributions in an achievement setting. A 2 * 2 * 2 (Consistency of Performance Over Trials * Immediate Outcome * Level of Achievement Motivation) factorial design was used. 64 6th-grade males classified as high or low in achievement need from a subscore of the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale developed by V. C. Crandall et al (1965) solved achievement-related puzzles in an individual setting. Results show that consistency of performance was related to the stability dimension of attributional behavior and attributions for immediate outcome varied along the locus of control dimension. The Consistency * Outcome interaction findings and the relative absence of significant effects on the achievement motive variable suggest the dominance of an informationally oriented influence on attributional behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex guilt in abortion patients.

Mosher's Forced-Choice Sex Guilt Inventory was administered to 45 clients of a university problem pregnancy counseling service who were planning to have abortions and to 47 sexually active nonpregnant university coeds. Sex guilt was found to be significantly higher for abortion Ss than for nonpregnant Ss. It was also found that for each type of contraceptive, abortion Ss had higher sex guilt than nonabortion Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repression and guilt in relation to aggression.

College men and women who were opposed to electric shock in research were instructed to deliver intense shock to others (victims). Before administering shock ? the Ss read a positive communication (shock is beneficial) and the other ?, a negative communication (shock is harmful). There was significantly less recall of the negative communication. For the same-sex pairs (male S-male victim and female S-female victim) the positive communication elicited significantly more guilt and opposition to shock than did the negative communication; for opposite-sex pairs the results were reversed. These findings could be explained by cognitive dissonance theory or by an identification hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation between barrier scores and aggressive behavior.

A study by Fisher and Cleveland (1958) indicated that high barrier Ss express anger outwardly, yet other investigations have indicated low barrier Ss are more impulsive and aggressive. A study of barrier scores in a sample of 75 juvenile delinquents indicated that the delinquents had barrier scores significantly lower than nondelinquent adolescents; moreover the more seriously delinquent Ss had barrier scores significantly lower than the less seriously delinquent Ss. Correlational data also indicated some association between low barrier scores and aggressiveness. Adaptiveness of aggression in various situations and on the interpretation of the barrier score as an index of ego identity as opposed to ego diffusion are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)