Compare and contrast the self-conscious emotions of shame and guilt.

Describe each
one and critically evaluate their similarities and differences. Critically evaluate, with
relevant examples and empirical evidence, the causes and consequences of shame
and guilt, and discuss ways to overcome these negative emotions

It has always been issuing for scientist and psychologist to understand the difference on
both emotions, guilt and shame, and to find clear boundaries on the ways we can use
the terms daily, the way we represent them. They both can come from a similar source,
which would be a transgressional behavior, something that is not right or supposed to
do.

The difference may lay on the affective experience that the emotion is trying to
represent, therefore not because they are all considered as “negative” emotions, will
have the same impact in the person, either the same kind of consequences or functions
for. Emotions are not just feelings but adaptive ways to experience the world, so a
feeling can help you realize of different situations, can help you interact with the world
and adapt if the interaction is not enough satisfying. In words of the authors Tangney et
al. (1994), “Emotions serve a variety of functions in daily life, calling our attention to
important events and motivating and directing subsequent behavior.”

Shame can be different if we think in a key aspect: it is related to social expectations

and, more precisely, to public disapproval. In the same way, we can think that shame
has a prototypical non-verbal expression; as long as guilt does not. This emotion,
according to the authors, is a painful negative emotion that carries the feeling of being
small, bad or defective, with the desire to hide or escape of the situation that caused it.
Is a more personal emotion, that does not encourage the person to linked socially with
other people to share this emotion, therefore it can become a taboo or a secret emotion.

Guilt on the other side, according to Tangney et. Al (1994), is an unpleasant emotion
related to have done something wrong and a remorse or regret linked to that, that
causes a desire to apologize, make amends, and feelings of preoccupation that
motivates reparative actions. Is less painful that the experience of shame, because guilt
is not directly affecting the self-concept of the person.

Shamegoes beyond guilt, is also related to a defective behavior but the focus of the
question lays on the self, the person would feel that he could or should have done
things differently and that feeling ends up affecting the self-concept, for example, on the
sense of “being small”, worthlessness and powerlessness, feel exposed. Is not just the
personal experience of being disapproval socially, but is the same person who
observes, judges and disapproves itself, and this feeling usually lads to a desire of
escaping or hiding, in difference clearly with one expected consequence of guilt that
would be related to being productive with the feeling, starts actions to repair or make
amends.

The causes of the emotions can be different: for example, Aakwvaag et al. (2016)
propose that one cause of guilt, as the cause of shame, can be related to trauma and
abuse, so the greatest number of experiences linked to abuse, the most likely will be to
experience this emotion. Quoting the authors, they propose: “The more types of
violence that were reported, the higher levels of shame and guilt were. Clinicians should
be aware of shame and guilt after a variety of violent events, including non-sexual
violence, in both men and women and should particularly be aware of whether
individuals have multiple violent experiences.”

Adding to this thinking, Tangney et al. (1996), propose that the harmful actions or the
absence of an expected action that ends up hurting another person, are proneness to
be another possible cause of the experience of guilt. Finally, according to Tracy and
Robbins (2006) the failure to meet personal standards, for example, academic failure,
would be another way to experience guilt.

About the evidence of the causes of shame particularly, it can be noticed the
contributions of Mahadevan, Gregg, & Sedikides (2022), where they related having a
low self-esteem with higher probabilities of experience greater shame.
According to this, Tracy and Robbins (2006) support the idea of how failing to achieve
personal standards is related to the experience of shame, therefore, shame implies
having in a first-place own standards to judge itself with, and in second place a negative
self-evaluation within this standards. So, this experience will be necessarily referred to
internal attributions that are disposed in a singular for each person. In the evidence they
propose, they say “However, such charges lose their force if, when external sanctions
are at stake, shame is experienced only if one shares the standards of one’s judges and
believes that their evaluations are correct. Shame is not caused, but (often) triggered by
external sanctions.”

About the consequences of both emotions, in guilt we can find some ideas in the work
of Tangney et al. (2007), that the consequence of guilt is, like was said before, a
reparative behavior, thus we can think that it can be a very functional and constructive
emotion, as well as pro-social, moving the person from a no-ideal situation to a better
one.

Otherwise, the authors Nelissen and Zeelenberg (2009), propose that there is a
phenomenon called by them as “The Dobby Effect”, about the self-punishment
experience that comes when there is no opportunities for compensate for the acts that
you feel guilty about. About this, they said “Self-punishment was demonstrated through
self-denied pleasure in a scenario study, and by self-enforced penalties in an
experimental study.”

For the consequences of shame, according to Tangney et. Al (1992) we would find
emotions related to anger, hostility, suspiciousness, resentment or irritability. For the
authors Dearing et al. (2005), this would also be related to different types of addictions,
as alcohol, drugs or gambling.

Discussing this we could think that the causes of guilt are more related to social
experiences, therefore, this emotion can be especially useful to live in society and to
help the human convivence along the history, as well as shame is more a self-kind of
emotion, where the feeling would be helpful for the person to achieve new goals or
modificate no-ideal situation in the present. Shame can be considered more anti-social
than guilt, while this second one also encourages feeling of empathy, while shame does
with avoidance.

So, it can be said that even having in consideration that both emotions are experienced
as unpleasant and can also be linked with “negative” emotions like anger or sadness,
they are functional to the life and learning how to detect them and use it on favor of the
self-improvement life, as well as overcome them, are key aspects in a healthy
psychological life.

There are different kind of interventions, like o Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and
Mindfulness, that proposes that same is malleable and can reduce this feeling post-test,
according to Goffnett et al. (2020).

It can also be taken into consideration the Psychosocial interventions, that increase
social support and emotional expression in order to manage these emotions, following
Norder et. Al. (2022) proposes.

Finally, putting the focus in aspect of the situation that can be changed by the person
and be proactive with the situation that originated the emotions in a first place, is also a
very adaptative way to overcome this kind of emotions.
REFERENCES

“Are shame, guilt, and embarrassment distinct emotions?” Tangney, June Price. George
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Aakvaag HF, Thoresen S, Wentzel-Larsen T, Dyb G, Røysamb E, Olff M. Broken and

guilty since it happened: A population study of trauma-related shame and guilt after
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Mahadevan, N., Gregg, A. P., & Sedikides, C. (2023). Daily fluctuations in social status,
self-esteem, and clinically relevant emotions: Testing hierometer theory and social rank
theory at a within-person level. Journal of Personality, 91, 519–536.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12752

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