1 A Comparison of the Social - Adaptive Perspective and 2 Functionalist Perspective on Guilt and Shame 3

Within the field of guilt and shame, two competing perspectives have been advanced. 7 The first, the social-adaptive perspective, proposes that guilt is an inherently adaptive emotion and 8 shame is an inherently maladaptive emotion; thus, those interested in moral character development 9 and psychopathology should work to increase an individual’s guilt-proneness and decrease an 10 individual’s shame-proneness. The functionalist perspective, in contrast, argues that both guilt and 11 shame can serve a person adaptively or maladaptively—depending on the situational appropriateness, 12 duration, intensity, and so forth. This paper reviews the research conducted supporting both 13 positions, critiques some issues with the most widely used guiltand shame-proneness measure in 14 the social-adaptive research (the TOSCA), and discusses the differences in results found when 15 assessing guilt and shame at the state versus trait level. The conclusion drawn is that although 16 there is broad support for the functionalist perspective across a wide variety of state and trait 17 guilt/shame studies, the functionalist perspective does not yet have the wealth of data supporting it 18 that has been generated by the social-adaptive perspective using the TOSCA. Thus, before a 19 dominant perspective can be identified, researchers need to (1) do more research assessing how the 20 social-adaptive perspective compares to the functionalist perspective at the state level, and (2) do 21 more trait research within the functionalist perspective to compare functionalist guiltand shame22 proneness measures with the TOSCA. 23