Shame and guilt are closely related emotions of negative affect that give rise to considerably divergent motivational and self-regulatory behaviors. While shame-proneness has demonstrated replicable relationships with increased alcohol use disorder symptomatology, guilt-proneness appears to protect an individual against development of problematic alcohol use. One prominent but untested hypothes...

Although scholars agree that moral emotions are critical for deterring unethical and antisocial behavior, there is disagreement about how 2 prototypical moral emotions--guilt and shame--should be defined, differentiated, and measured. We addressed these issues by developing a new assessment--the Guilt and Shame Proneness scale (GASP)--that measures individual differences in the propensity to ex...

Self-compassion has demonstrated many psychological benefits (Neff, 2009). In an effort to explore self-compassion as a potential resource for young women athletes, we explored relations among self-compassion, proneness to self-conscious emotions (i.e., shame, guilt-free shame, guilt, shame-free guilt, authentic pride, and hubristic pride), and potentially unhealthy self-evaluative thoughts and...

This study examines the relationships between shame, guilt, narcissism, and depression and the gender differences connected with these states. We hypothesize that shame would be a more powerful contributor to narcissism and depression than guilt and that women would score higher in shame, higher in depression, and lower in narcissism than men. The Adapted Shame/Guilt Scale, the Narcissistic Per...

BACKGROUND People with drug and/or alcohol problems often experience feelings of shame and guilt, which have been associated with poorer recovery. Self-forgiveness has the potential to reduce these negative experiences. METHODS The current study tested theorized mediators (acceptance, conciliatory behavior, empathy) of the relationships between shame and guilt with self-forgiveness. A cross-s...

In Study 1, participants completed five extant shame and guilt proneness inventories based on different theoretical conceptions of the difference between shame and guilt. Factor analyses revealed that despite very different theoretical distinctions, the shame proneness subscales loaded on one factor, and the guilt proneness subscales loaded on one factor. In Study 2, we altered scale items so t...

A correlational study (N == 701) examined three measures of narcissism, a measure of shame, two measures of masochism, a measure of object relations, and a measure of social desirability. Moderate correlations were found for a core of constructs which have been described in the clinical and theoretical literature. These are narcissism, shame, object relations, and masochism. Narcissism seemed t...

Guided by an overarching body-related shame regulation framework, the present investigation examined the associations between caregiver eating messages and dimensions of objectified body consciousness and further explored whether self-compassion moderated these links in a sample of 322 U.S. college women. Correlational findings indicated that retrospective accounts of restrictive/critical careg...

This study examined the experiences of shame and guilt in adult males sexually abused as children. Seven participants attending a service for male sexual abuse completed measures of shame, guilt, dissociation, and childhood trauma history and subsequently participated in a focus group. All participants experienced childhood sexual abuse in the "severe" range and showed elevated scores for shame...