Copyrrght e; 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great ... Two moral affective processes, shame and guilt, have been researched by psychologists. Shame.
Prr.so,z. in&id. Dilf. Vol. 21, No. 6, Pp. 891-896. 1996 Copyrrght e; 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Brrtarn. All rights reserved 0191-8869196 $15.00+0.00 SO191-8869(96)00135-3
Pergamon
MORAL AFFECT AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES: DIFFERENTIATING SHAME FROM GUILT AMONG AND WOMEN
MEN
Nita Lutwak CUNY Department of Psychology, Baruch College, Lexington Avenue. New York, NY 10010, USA and Joseph R. Ferrari DePaul
University,
2219 North
Kenmore
(Receiced
Avenue.
Chicago,
IL 60614-3504,
U.S.A
15 March 1996)
Summary-Men (n = 103) and women (n = 183) completed measures of shame, guilt, self-critical cognitions, and perfectionism in order to explore gender differences in cognitive processes associated with moral affect. Women reported significantly higher rates of shame and guilt than men. Separate factor analyses for gender indicated that for men, shame loaded with self-critical cognitions while guilt loaded with dimensions of perfectionism. For women, both shame and guilt loaded with self-critical cognitions, but only socially-prescribed perfectionism. Results suggest that a person’s gender may need to be considered in evaluations of shame and guilt. Copyright ‘i:‘ 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.
INTRODUCTION Two moral affective processes, shame and guilt, have been researched by psychologists. Shame involves a malignant self, not a malignant behavior. Lewis (1971, 1987) postulated that shame involves a malignant self in which a person imagines being criticized by another real or imagined individual. The self is thought of as being observed disapprovingly by others, so that even when alone the individual feels scrutinized (Tangney, 1991, 1994). Thus, shame is an overwhelmingly painful and self-critical experience that involves a direct threat to one’s sense of self-worth and selfefficacy (Tangney, Wagner & Gramzow, 1992b). Miller (1963) suggested that shame may lead to maladaptive self-functioning, and Lutwak, Ferrari and Cheek (submitted) found supporting evidence that persons with a shame-prone tendency reported a maladaptive, diffuse personal identity. In contrast, guilt is a negative affect that concentrates on an action or inability to act (Tangney, 1994). It involves feelings of regret, remorse, or disappointment over a “bad thing that was done” (pp. 469, Tangney, Wagner, Fletcher & Gramzow, 1992a), but considered by the transgressor to be not as “painful and devastating” (pp. 670, Tangney et al., 1992b) as shame. The anxiety it produces often prompts, or motivates, the individual to rectify the action where there is the possibility of reparation or resolution in order to rebuild the social relationship between themselves and the offended person (Baumeister, Stillwell & Heatherton, 1995). Lutwak et al. (submitted) found that guilt-prone persons were more likely than shame-prone persons to have an information-orientated identity that focused on gaining pro-active responses toward seeking adaptive life-skills. Further, some research suggests that gender differences may exist on both these moral affects (see Harder, 1995; Harder & Zalma, 1990). Harder (199.5) with several samples and using the shame and guilt sub-scales of the ‘Test of Self-Conscious Affect’ (TOSCA) developed by Tangney, Wagner and Gramzow (1989) reported three studies where women registered significantly higher shame and higher guilt scores than men. In one of those studies it was also found that shame, but not guilt, tendencies were related to psychopathologies such as depression, phobic anxiety, and obsessive-
The order of author names was determined Correspondence to either author.
by the flip of a coin: both authors
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contributed
to the content
of this paper.
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Nita Lutwak and Joseph R. Ferrari
compulsive tendencies. Unfortunately, these studies included small sample sizes and there were little data that examined gender differences to ascertain the nature of moral affect by men and women. To the extent that shame and guilt involve different processes, the present study explored possible factors that may differentiate these moral affects among men and women. There is little direct empirical evidence supporting a relationship between moral affective processes and cognitive patterns, such as self-critical cognitions and perfectionism. Self-defeating cognitive patterns may include selective focus on persona1 performance failures, comparison of oneself to unrealistically high performance standards and negative self-expectations about future performance (Carver & Scheier, 1986; Higgens, 1987) and an inability to exit a self-critical cycle concerning one’s performance (Arieti & Bemporad, 1980; Pyszcynski & Greenberg, 1987). Ishiyama and Munson (1993) found that critical self-relevant information processing includes ‘negative self-processing’, where information is internally processed as negative and self-critical, and ‘failure in positive selfprocessing’, where information is failed to be processed in positive constructive patterns. Selfcriticalness was found to have appreciably high correlations with social anxiety, depression, distress, low self-esteem, and fear of negative evaluation. Focusing on unrealistically high standards and being intolerant of any deviations that may reflect self-worth may be indicative of perfectionism. Hewitt and Flett (199 1) reported that perfectionism is a multidimensional construct with three major components. These components included ‘selforiented perfectionism’, a self-related style involving unrealistic standards, compulsive striving, and all-or-nothing thinking that is self-imposed, ‘other-oriented perfectionism’, an interpersonal style involving highly unrealistic standards and expectations imposed onto others, and ‘socially-prescribed perfectionism’, the expectation of one’s ability to meet the standards prescribed by others for oneself. Perfectionism has been related to a wide variety of maladaptive tendencies (Ferrari, 1995; Hewitt & Flett, 1991) such as depression (Saddler & Buckland, 1995), eating disorders (Garner, Garfinkel & Bemis, 1982) obsessivecompulsive tendencies (Ferrari & McCown, 1994), and mental inflexibility (Ferrari & Mautz, in press). In the current study it was hypothesized that shame-proneness compared to guilt-proneness would be more likely related to self-critical cognitions, as well as both self-oriented and socially-prescribed perfectionism. Furthermore, using the TOSCA, potential gender differences in moral affects were examined. It was expected that women compared with men would report significantly more shame and guilt. However, because of the limited research exploring the different characteristics of shame and guilt for men and women, in the present study no a priori hypotheses were proposed for which specific cognitive processes would differentiate between genders.
METHOD
Participants College students (n = 286; 183 women, 103 men) from a public, urban university volunteered in this study to fulfill a lower-division psychology course requirement. The mean age for participants was 19.9 (sd = 0.34). Psychometric measures The Test of Self-Conscious Affects (TOSCA) (Tangney et al., 1989) was used to assess shame and guilt moral affect. The TOSCA consists of a series of brief scenarios (10 negative, five positive) and associated responses that yield separate proneness to shame and guilt indices. Scenarios and responses were created from affective, behavioral, and cognitive alternatives provided by college students and older adults. The TOSCA has several advantages over other shame and guilt measures in that it contains items generated by participants and not by an experimenter (enhancing its validity), its psychometric properties are rather strong (e.g. retest reliability of 0.85 and 0.74 for shame and guilt, respectively: Tangney et al., 1992b), and its simple vocabulary may make it a more useful measure with less educated samples (Harder, 1995). The TOSCA also has acceptable internal consistency (alpha = 0.76 and 0.66 for shame and guilt, respectively: Tangney et al., 1992a). The TOSCA shame-proneness scores, but not guilt-proneness scores, were related to a range of psychopathologies (Tangney, 1994), including depression (Rayner, Singer & O’Conner, 1995). Guilt-
Moral affect and psychological processes
893
proneness scores have been related to optimistic appraisals of stressful situations (Burggraf, 1995) and an information-oriented identity (Lutwak, rt al., submitted). The TOSCA shame and guilt scales were substantially correlated in previous studies (I. = 0.44: Tangney, 1994). The Self-critical Cognition Scale, developed by Ishiyama and Munson (1993) was used to examine maladaptive, negative self-statements. This self-report inventory is a 13-item, five-point scale that assesses a person’s tendencies toward selective focus on negative self-information. failure to handle negative information constructively, over-generalization of negative self-information, loss of objective perspective, and a quickness to draw self-critical conclusions. High scores reflect more selfcritical thoughts toward self-relevant information. The authors obtained two sub-scale scores that measure ‘negative self-processing’ (eight items: “I tend to blow my weaknesses, limitations and mistakes out of proportion in my thinking.“) and ‘a failure in positive self-processing’ (five items: I’m good at looking at myself critically while still remaining positive toward myself.“) The authors found that Cronbach alpha reliabilities for the negative self-processing scale was 0.86 and for the failure in positive self-processing scales was 0.77. Validity studies on this scale are scarce. but Ishiyama and Munson (1993) found that each sub-scale score was related to low self-esteem, depression, social avoidance, shyness, fear of negative evaluation, and public self-consciousness, suggesting that self-critical cognitions have a strong social component. Harriott. Ferrari and Dovido (in press) found that chronic indecision loaded with both sub-scale scores, indicating that both these cognitive processes may relate to a similar maladaptive process. Finally, the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS: Hewitt & Flett, 1991) was used to assess each of the three perfectionism dimensions cited above with 15-items per sub-scale. Respondents were asked to indicate along-seven points scales (1 = “strongly disagree”; 7 = “strongly agree”) the extent to which each statement reflected their tendency towards self-oriented (e.g. “I strive to be the best at everything I do”); other-oriented (“I can’t be bothered with people who won’t strive to better themselves”); and socially-prescribed (“I find it difficult to meet others’ expectations of me”) perfectionism. Although this inventory is not the only multidimensional scale of perfectionism (see Frost, Marten. Lahart & Rosenblate, 1990) we chose to use Hewitt and Flett’s (199 I) MPS measure because it has strong reliabilities for a short inventory (> 0.70 per subscale) and it has a substantial number of validity studies supporting its use (see Hewitt. Flett, Turnbull-Donovan & Mikail, 1991). Procedure
Participants completed the TOSCA, Self-critical Cognition Scales, and MPS in a single testing session of approximately 20 respondents. Scales were administered in random order by a female research associate. After all participants had completed the inventories, they were debriefed, told the nature of the hypothesis, and were given relevant references for follow-up interest. It took participants approximately 60 minutes to complete all items. RESULTS Gender comparisons
on self-reported
uariubles
T-tests for independent samples were performed comparing men and women in each of the seven self-reported variables to ascertain gender differences in moral affect, self-critical cognitions, and perfectionism. Table 1 presents the coefficient alpha for each of these variables, as well as the mean scores (and standard deviations) for each of these variables. As noted from the table, coefficient alphas indicated that the scales were fairly reliable with the present sample. There were significant gender differences on both shame and guilt. Women claimed more shame and more guilt than men, consistent with other studies using TOSCA (see Harder, 1995). However, there was no significant gender difference on either of the self-critical cognitions. In contrast, there were significant gender differences in other-oriented and socially-prescribed perfectionism, but not self-oriented perfectionism. Men reported they engage in more other-oriented and socially-prescribed perfectionism. Factor analysis of moral affect and cognitice-behaGiora1
processes
Because there were significant gender differences on both shame and guilt sub-scales, and to permit inquiry into the cognitive processes that differentiate moral affects within genders, all further
894
Nita Lutwak and Joseph R. Ferrari Table
I. Coefficient
alpha,
and mean critical
scores for men and women cognitions,
Men Variables Moral
on self-reporkd
moral
affect.
self-
and perfectionism women
Alpha
(I1 = 103)
(?I = 183)
0.66
40.12
43.51
-29
0.004
0.64
(7 36) 54 6Y
(8 17) 57 I4
-3.6
0.001
(7.29)
(6.77)
14.84
14.44
I
P-value
atfects:
Shame
Self-crmcal Failure
cognitiona:
in positive
(3.08)
(3.32)
24.11
25.20
(6.72)
(7 14)
0.84
self-processing Negative
0.83
self-processing Perfectionism: Self-oriented
0.80 0.66
Other-onented Socially-prescribed
0.68 Values
Table
in parenthesis
2. Rotated
are standard
(Varlmax)
factor
73.68
71.6X
(13.41)
(14.42)
62.38
58.40
(10.46)
(11.59)
5Y.50
56.57
(10.59)
(12.16)
3.0
0.003
2.2
0.03
deviation.
loadmgs
for moral
affect. aelf-critlcal
cogmuons.
and perfccuonism
for
men (n = 103) Factor SCC:
Negatwe
self-processing
O.W58
Shame SCC:
I
0 636 7 Failure
in positive
self-processing
0.6222
Factor
II
-0.041
I
0.1524 -0.1930
Communality 0 561 I 0.4286 0.4244
Perfectiomsm:
self-orlented
PO.1730
0.7797
0 6378
Perfectionlam:
other-orxnted
~0.2919
0.6769
0 5435
Perfectionism:
socially-prescribed
0.3393
0.5536
0.4216
0.3636
0.4974
0.3797
Guilt Eigenvalues Percentage SCC. Values
I 8075 of var,ance
Self-crltical in &kc
explamed
25.X
I.6791 24.0
cogniuons. represent
factor
loadmgs
20.40.
analyses were performed separately for men and women. For men only, principal component analysis produced a three-factor solution with eigenvalues greater than one explaining 66.4% of the common variance. Rotated (Varimax) factor loadings for men produced a two-factor solution in which shame and guilt loaded (3 0.40) on separate factors. As noted from Table 2, shame loaded on Factor 1 with negative self-processing and failure in positive self-processing, both components of self-critical cognitions. In contrast, guilt loaded on Factor 2 with all three multi-dimensions of perfectionism. For men, rotated Factor 1 was negatively related (-0.499) with rotated Factor 2. It seems that, for men, shame may be associated with neurotic self-denigration whilst guilt may be related to tendencies toward perfectionistic behaviors. For women only, principal, component analyses also produced a three-factor solution, with eigenvalues greater than one explaining 66.8% of the common variance. Rotated (Varimax) factor loadings for women produced a two-factor solution in which, in contrast to men, shame and guilt loaded (30.35) on the sample factor. Table 3 shows that shame and guilt loaded together on Factor 1 with both components of self-critical cognitions (i.e. negative self-processing and failure in positive self-processing) and with socially-prescribed perfectionism. Other-oriented perfectionism loaded together on Factor 2. Rotated Factor 1 was negatively related (-0.415) to rotated Factor 2 for women. DISCUSSION
The results of this study suggest that shame and guilt may involve different processes for men and women. Consistent with previous studies (see Harder, 1995), women reported significantly greater shame and guilt tendencies than men. In the present study separate factor analyses for men
Moral affect and psychological processes
895
Table 3. Rotated (Varimax) factor loadings for moral affect, self-critical cognitions. women (n = 183)
Shame SCC: Negative self-processing Perfectionism: socially-prescribed Guilt SCC Failure m positive self-processing Perfectionism. self-oriented Perfectmmsm: other-oriented
FactorI
FactorII
0.7755 0.7352 0.6072 0.4378 0.3639 -0.0039 0.1356
-0.1967 0.1799 0.2578 -0.3372 0. I795 0 7789 0.7084
2.0061 28.7
1.382 19.7
Elyenvalues Percentage of variance explained
and perfectionism
for
Communality 0.6401 0.5729 0.5782 0.3054 0.1646 0.6067 0.5729
SK. self-critical cognitlons. Values m italic represent factor loadings>O.35.
and women found that self-critical cognitions (i.e. negative self-processing and failure in positive self-processing) were important components of shame for both genders. This fact is consistent with Lewis (197 1, 1987) and Tangney and Fischer (1995) in their position that shame is a moral affective bi-product from evaluations of one’s self-worth. In contrast, the present study found that multi-dimensions of perfectionism loaded differently with shame and guilt for men and women. For men alone, all three dimensions of perfectionism loaded with guilt; for women alone, socially-prescribed perfectionism loaded with shame and with guilt. The reasons for this pattern may be complex, and only speculative interpretations are offered. It is possible, for instance, that for men, guilt may arise from attempts to demonstrate perfectionistic behaviors. Transgressions against others may occur when a man tries competitively to achieve high levels of performance (i.e. demonstrate perfectionism that may be either self or other-imposed). Consequently, men may experience guilt from transgressions and may try to repair the tainted relationship (Carver & Ganellen, 1983). Men may see their future attempts for success and outstanding achievement as hindered if they do not repair relationships with those persons they offended (see Baumeister et al., 1995). A woman in her attempts for outstanding performance (i.e. perfectionism) within achievement situations may also experience negative affect (i.e. guilt) that will prompt her to rectify damage to an interpersonal relationship. However, for women high standards for performance may be perceived to be imposed by others. Consequently, she attempts to reach those standards to ‘please’ those people and ‘be liked’ (Lutwak et al., submitted). Failure to meet those socially-prescribed perfectionistic standards may result in her engaging in self-denigration and, in turn, experiencing negative affect (i.e. shame) about herself (Carver & Ganellen 1983). Therefore, a woman (unlike a man) may report both guilt and shame relating to self-critical cognitions and socially-prescribed perfectionism. Because these interpretations are speculative, more research is needed. Nevertheless, it is clear that future studies should determine whether gender differences exist in shame and guilt moral affects. Researchers may seek to explore closely variables that account for the gender differences.
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