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A factor analysis of a scale of shame and guilt: dimensions of conscience questionnaire
Copyright 01995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0 I9 I-8869/M $9.50 + 0.00
Pergamon
A factor analysis of a scale of shame and guilt: dimensions of conscience questionnaire Edmond J. Gore’ and 0. J. Harvey’ ‘~epurfment of Family Medicine, Ho-30, University ofWa~hingfnn, Seattle. WA 98195 and ‘department of Ps~lcholog~l, ~ni~,ersj~ of Colorado at Bounder, Campus Box 345, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, U.S.A. (Received 26 January 1995)
cluster analysis of a subscale of the Dimensions of Conscience Questionnaire, a measure of shame and guilt, yielded five clusters. Two, Social impropriety and Exposed inadequacy, were reflective of shame: three, Impersonal Transgression, Harm to Another Person, and Trust/Oath Violation, denoted guilt. Theseciusters wereconsistent withaneari~erfactoranaiysisoftheDCQ, and with the~haracte~zations of shame and guilt both by the authors of the DCQ and of the present authors. Summary-A
INTRODUCTION
One of the few measures of shame and guilt that is based on a clear conceptual distinction between these constructs is the Dimensions of Conscience Questionnaire (DCQ) developed by Johnson and his associates (Johnson & Noel, 1970; Kido & Miyasaki, 1972; Winn, 1973; Sousa, 1977; Nagoshi, 1980; Johnson, Danko, Huang, Park, Johnson & Nagoshi, 1987; Johnson, Kim & Danko, 1989). In keeping with its authors’ position ‘that guilt is evoked by failure to fulfill norms of role reciprocity and shame is evoked by status incongruity’ (Johnson etul., 1989, p. 71). the DCQ consists of abbreviated scenarios that depict either a violation of reciprocity or a shortfall on a status-linked role. The S rates each scenario on the degree of good or bad feelings it evokes in him or her. Bad feelings associated with violation of role reciprocity are interpreted as guilt, and bad feelings associated with a shortfall on a status-presc~bed role are interpreted as shame. A factor analysis of the original 121 scenarios of the DCQ by Sousa ( 1977) yielded five factors denoting either shame or guilt. The first three, one of shame and two of guilt, were the more prominent. in a subsequent study, Johnson era/. (1987) employed 27 items from these three factors, and in their most recent study (Johnson er al., 1989) they used 30 items from these three factors, the 27 items used earlier plus three additional items, as a DCQ scale. Both versions appear to provide a measure of both shame and guilt with high construct validity and reliability for both Occidental and Oriental college students (Johnson er al., 1987, 1989). However, since neither set of these items had been factor analyzed as a set, their factor structures are unclear. As a preliminary step in our own use of the 30-item edition of the DCQ, we performed a cluster analysis of its items by use of the BCTRY program (Tryon & Bailey, 1970). Because of the theoretical meaningfulness of the clusters and their apparently high construct validity (Harvey, Bedford & Gore, 1990; Harvey, Gore, Batres & Frank, submitted), we felt that publication of their description could be useful to other researchers.
METHOD
Subjects
Two-hundred and eight students, 108 women and 100 men, from introductory at Boulder served as 5s in fuifiiiment of a course requirement.
Psychology at the University of Colorado
Measures
The edition of the Dimensions of Conscience Questionnaire administered in the present study consisted of the 30 scenarios employed most recently by Johnson et al. (1989) The S rated each scenario on a five-point scale of how good or bad the portrayed event, if enacted by the respondent, would cause him or her to feel. Procedure
The DCQ was administered to Ss in groups of from 12 to 30, along with a second questionnaire on parent-child relations that was unrelated to the present study and was always completed after the DCQ.
RESULTS
The response of each S to each of the 30 scenarios was scored on a scale of l-5: Feel kind of good = I; feel neither good nor bad = 2; feel a little bad = 3; feel pretty bad = 4; and feel very bad = 5. These scores were analyzed by the BCTRY method of cluster analysis (Tryon & Bailey, 1970). Five clusters containing ail 30 scenarios were obtained, with every item a definer in the cluster containing it. These clusters, their defining items (in shortened form), and factor loadings are presented in Table I. The five clusters exhausted 94% of their total communality. The two guilt clusters im~rsonal Transgression and Harm
Notes and Shorter Communications
770 Table
I.
Dimensions of conscience questionnaire clusters Oblique factor loadings
Clusters: defining Items Guilt I. Impersonal transgression (reliability = 0.88) Cheating on exam and not getting caught Receiving to” much change and keeping it Secretly taking oftice supplies home for personal use Successfully exaggerating your damage/loss in settling a dispute Successfully lying about your qualifications to get a job Stealing something from a store without anyone else finding out
0.79 0.70 0.70 0.68 0.65 0.65
Guilt 2. Harm to another person (reliability = 0.88) As manager, retaining working conditions known to be harmful to employees’ health Allowing someone else to be blamed for something you did Repeating damaging gossip about someone that you know is untrue Being unintenttonally rude to a person you don’t know, later realizing how hurt he/she was Failing to help someone you know who is in trouble when you could have been of help Pretending more affection for someone than you really feel in order to exploit him/her
0.74 0.73 0.72 0.72 0.67 0.62
Guilt 3. Trust/oath violation (reliability = 0.73) Inadvertently revealing something about a person that he/she told you confidentially Giving false testimony in a trial, though you are not caught Continually making promises to B close friend, but failing to keep them
0.73 0.65 0.65
Shame I. Social-impropriety (reltability = 0.77) Unconsciously eatmg with your fingers at an upscale restaurant, as other diners stare Making a scene ilt the corner of il busy bwiness district Gomg to a party in casual clothes and finding that everyone else is dressed up Calling someone to whom you have just been introduced by the wrong name After having dmner at an elegant restaurant, you burp quite loudly At a party, you tell a new acquaintance a risque/dirty joke and many are offended by it Getting drunk and making il fool of yourself in public Getting so bored listening to someone talk that you tell the person to shut up Spillmg a plate full of food at a buffet dinner Having your home very messy and you get unexpected guests
0.65 0.65 0.61 0.59 0.59 0.58 0.53 0.53 0.50 0.47
Shame 2. Exposed inadequacy (reliability = 0.70) Giving a talk on a topic you’re supposed to know well and having someone in the audience demonstrate that you arc factually wrong Stumbling and stuttering in an oral presentation and the instructor openly uses yours as an example of a poor presentation Finding out that your clothes have become disarranged, exposing part of you that is usually covered Unwittingly maktng a remark disparaging to a minority group in front of a member of that group Strongly defending a point of view in a discussion to learn later you were incorrect
0.78 0.67 0.49 0.49 0.39
to Another Person were the strongest, having the highest reliabilities, the highest mean factor loadings, and exhausting 70% of the communality, 39 and 318, respectively. The third guilt cluster of Trust Violation accounted for only 7% of the communality, and the two shame clusters, Social Impropriety and Exposed Inadequacy, accounted for 13 and 47c, respectively. The intercluster correlations were: Impersonal Transgression with Harm to Another Person, Trust Violation, Social Impropriety, and Exposed Inadequacy = 0.43.0.35,0.38 and 0.20, respectively; Harm to Another Person with Trust Violation. Social Impropriety, and Exposed Inadequacy = 0.63, 0.41, and 0.56, respectively; Trust Violation with Social Impropriety and Exposed Inadequacy = 0.39 and 0.43, respectively; and Social Impropriety with Exposed Inadequacy = 0.57. With the exceptions of the correlations of Harm to Another Person with Trust Violation and Exposed Inadequacy, the clusters were thus fairly independent.
DISCUSSION
All items in the three guilt-linked clusters and the two shame-related clusters obtained in our analysis were also included, respectively, in the larger shame and guilt factors obtained by Sousa (1977), an indication of the general reliability of the earlier obtained factors. Though more differentiated than the three larger factors obtained by Sousa (1977), from which the items in this study were selected, the five clusters obtained by us are consistent with the factors obtained by Sousa (1977), with the definitions of guilt and shame by Johnson et al. (1989), and with our own recent depictions of guilt and shame which, though somewhat more elaborated than those of Johnson et al. (I 989), are in agreement with them. The three guilt clusters we obtained, Impersonal Transgression, Harm to Another Person, and Trust/Oath Violation, are in accord with our characterization of guilt as “. .the affect evoked by the judgment of oneself as having violated the deservedness of a personal or impersonal other. Deservedness, in turn, is the judgment by the transgressor of the unpaid balance earned by the violated other according to the norm of reciprocity, the social rule of giving on the basis of what is received and receiving on the basis of what is given” (Harvey et al., submitted, p. 8). The two shame-linked clusters, Social Impropriety and Exposed Inadequacy, agree with our description of shame as a “suffusive feeling of self-abnegation precipitated by the sudden loss of status in the eyes of a reference group or person from a public failure to live up to role expectations held by both self and the referent other, the specific role prescriptions being always status dependent” (Harvey et al., submitted, p. 4). Our analyses indicate that different clusters of scenarios or situations comprising the 30-item version of the DCQ employed
Notes and Shorter Communications
771
in this study elicit different variants of shame and guilt. The mean correlations of the guilt evoking clusters with each other (r = 0.43) and the shame educing clusters with each other (r = 0.57) were higher than the mean correlation between the guilt inducing and shame evoking clusters (r = 0.33). The intercluster correlations among the five clusters of scenarios, both within the shame and guift clusters and between them, were higher than the ideal for statistical independence. However, this level of shared variance is probably due not only to method error but to the same event or scenario simultaneously eliciting multiple affects or feelings in some Ss, such as two or more variants of guilt or admixtures of guilt and shame. REFERENCES
Harvey, 0. J., Bedford, 0. & Gore, E. J. (1990).Relationship of parental discipline, belief systems and proneness toward guilt and shame to religious orientation. Paper presented at the Annual Meering ofthe Saciefyfor rhe Seienfijic Study of Religion, Virginia Beach, VA. Harvey, 0. J., Gore, E. J., Batres, A. R. & Frank, H. (submitted). Relationship of shame and guilt to gender and parenting practices. Johnson, R. C., Danko, J. P., Huang, Y.-H., Park, J. Y., Johnson, S. B. & Nagoshi, C. T. (1987). Guilt, shame and adjustment in three cultures. Personality and Individual Differences, 8, 357-364. Johnson, R. C.. Kim, R. J. & Danko, G. P. (1989). Guilt, shame and adjustment. A family study. Persanaljf~ and ZIzdi~liduai Difirences, IO, 71-74. Johnson, R. C. & Noel, R. (1970). Dimensions of conscience. Unpublished manuscript. University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. Kido. R. & Mivasaki. M. (1972). Revisions of the DCO. Unuublished manuscriot. Universitv of Hawaii. Honolulu. HI. Nag&hi, C. T. <1980). Association of empathy and measures of morality. Unpubli’shed M. A. thesis, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI. Sousa, S. P. (1977). Elements of conscience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI. Tryon, R. C. & Bailey, D. E. (1970). CIusfer analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill. Winn, J. S. (1973). Dimensions of conscience. Unpublished M.A. thesis. University of Hawaii. Honolulu, HI.
Pergamon
A factor analysis of a scale of shame and guilt: dimensions of conscience questionnaire Edmond J. Gore’ and 0. J. Harvey’ ‘~epurfment of Family Medicine, Ho-30, University ofWa~hingfnn, Seattle. WA 98195 and ‘department of Ps~lcholog~l, ~ni~,ersj~ of Colorado at Bounder, Campus Box 345, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, U.S.A. (Received 26 January 1995)
cluster analysis of a subscale of the Dimensions of Conscience Questionnaire, a measure of shame and guilt, yielded five clusters. Two, Social impropriety and Exposed inadequacy, were reflective of shame: three, Impersonal Transgression, Harm to Another Person, and Trust/Oath Violation, denoted guilt. Theseciusters wereconsistent withaneari~erfactoranaiysisoftheDCQ, and with the~haracte~zations of shame and guilt both by the authors of the DCQ and of the present authors. Summary-A
INTRODUCTION
One of the few measures of shame and guilt that is based on a clear conceptual distinction between these constructs is the Dimensions of Conscience Questionnaire (DCQ) developed by Johnson and his associates (Johnson & Noel, 1970; Kido & Miyasaki, 1972; Winn, 1973; Sousa, 1977; Nagoshi, 1980; Johnson, Danko, Huang, Park, Johnson & Nagoshi, 1987; Johnson, Kim & Danko, 1989). In keeping with its authors’ position ‘that guilt is evoked by failure to fulfill norms of role reciprocity and shame is evoked by status incongruity’ (Johnson etul., 1989, p. 71). the DCQ consists of abbreviated scenarios that depict either a violation of reciprocity or a shortfall on a status-linked role. The S rates each scenario on the degree of good or bad feelings it evokes in him or her. Bad feelings associated with violation of role reciprocity are interpreted as guilt, and bad feelings associated with a shortfall on a status-presc~bed role are interpreted as shame. A factor analysis of the original 121 scenarios of the DCQ by Sousa ( 1977) yielded five factors denoting either shame or guilt. The first three, one of shame and two of guilt, were the more prominent. in a subsequent study, Johnson era/. (1987) employed 27 items from these three factors, and in their most recent study (Johnson er al., 1989) they used 30 items from these three factors, the 27 items used earlier plus three additional items, as a DCQ scale. Both versions appear to provide a measure of both shame and guilt with high construct validity and reliability for both Occidental and Oriental college students (Johnson er al., 1987, 1989). However, since neither set of these items had been factor analyzed as a set, their factor structures are unclear. As a preliminary step in our own use of the 30-item edition of the DCQ, we performed a cluster analysis of its items by use of the BCTRY program (Tryon & Bailey, 1970). Because of the theoretical meaningfulness of the clusters and their apparently high construct validity (Harvey, Bedford & Gore, 1990; Harvey, Gore, Batres & Frank, submitted), we felt that publication of their description could be useful to other researchers.
METHOD
Subjects
Two-hundred and eight students, 108 women and 100 men, from introductory at Boulder served as 5s in fuifiiiment of a course requirement.
Psychology at the University of Colorado
Measures
The edition of the Dimensions of Conscience Questionnaire administered in the present study consisted of the 30 scenarios employed most recently by Johnson et al. (1989) The S rated each scenario on a five-point scale of how good or bad the portrayed event, if enacted by the respondent, would cause him or her to feel. Procedure
The DCQ was administered to Ss in groups of from 12 to 30, along with a second questionnaire on parent-child relations that was unrelated to the present study and was always completed after the DCQ.
RESULTS
The response of each S to each of the 30 scenarios was scored on a scale of l-5: Feel kind of good = I; feel neither good nor bad = 2; feel a little bad = 3; feel pretty bad = 4; and feel very bad = 5. These scores were analyzed by the BCTRY method of cluster analysis (Tryon & Bailey, 1970). Five clusters containing ail 30 scenarios were obtained, with every item a definer in the cluster containing it. These clusters, their defining items (in shortened form), and factor loadings are presented in Table I. The five clusters exhausted 94% of their total communality. The two guilt clusters im~rsonal Transgression and Harm
Notes and Shorter Communications
770 Table
I.
Dimensions of conscience questionnaire clusters Oblique factor loadings
Clusters: defining Items Guilt I. Impersonal transgression (reliability = 0.88) Cheating on exam and not getting caught Receiving to” much change and keeping it Secretly taking oftice supplies home for personal use Successfully exaggerating your damage/loss in settling a dispute Successfully lying about your qualifications to get a job Stealing something from a store without anyone else finding out
0.79 0.70 0.70 0.68 0.65 0.65
Guilt 2. Harm to another person (reliability = 0.88) As manager, retaining working conditions known to be harmful to employees’ health Allowing someone else to be blamed for something you did Repeating damaging gossip about someone that you know is untrue Being unintenttonally rude to a person you don’t know, later realizing how hurt he/she was Failing to help someone you know who is in trouble when you could have been of help Pretending more affection for someone than you really feel in order to exploit him/her
0.74 0.73 0.72 0.72 0.67 0.62
Guilt 3. Trust/oath violation (reliability = 0.73) Inadvertently revealing something about a person that he/she told you confidentially Giving false testimony in a trial, though you are not caught Continually making promises to B close friend, but failing to keep them
0.73 0.65 0.65
Shame I. Social-impropriety (reltability = 0.77) Unconsciously eatmg with your fingers at an upscale restaurant, as other diners stare Making a scene ilt the corner of il busy bwiness district Gomg to a party in casual clothes and finding that everyone else is dressed up Calling someone to whom you have just been introduced by the wrong name After having dmner at an elegant restaurant, you burp quite loudly At a party, you tell a new acquaintance a risque/dirty joke and many are offended by it Getting drunk and making il fool of yourself in public Getting so bored listening to someone talk that you tell the person to shut up Spillmg a plate full of food at a buffet dinner Having your home very messy and you get unexpected guests
0.65 0.65 0.61 0.59 0.59 0.58 0.53 0.53 0.50 0.47
Shame 2. Exposed inadequacy (reliability = 0.70) Giving a talk on a topic you’re supposed to know well and having someone in the audience demonstrate that you arc factually wrong Stumbling and stuttering in an oral presentation and the instructor openly uses yours as an example of a poor presentation Finding out that your clothes have become disarranged, exposing part of you that is usually covered Unwittingly maktng a remark disparaging to a minority group in front of a member of that group Strongly defending a point of view in a discussion to learn later you were incorrect
0.78 0.67 0.49 0.49 0.39
to Another Person were the strongest, having the highest reliabilities, the highest mean factor loadings, and exhausting 70% of the communality, 39 and 318, respectively. The third guilt cluster of Trust Violation accounted for only 7% of the communality, and the two shame clusters, Social Impropriety and Exposed Inadequacy, accounted for 13 and 47c, respectively. The intercluster correlations were: Impersonal Transgression with Harm to Another Person, Trust Violation, Social Impropriety, and Exposed Inadequacy = 0.43.0.35,0.38 and 0.20, respectively; Harm to Another Person with Trust Violation. Social Impropriety, and Exposed Inadequacy = 0.63, 0.41, and 0.56, respectively; Trust Violation with Social Impropriety and Exposed Inadequacy = 0.39 and 0.43, respectively; and Social Impropriety with Exposed Inadequacy = 0.57. With the exceptions of the correlations of Harm to Another Person with Trust Violation and Exposed Inadequacy, the clusters were thus fairly independent.
DISCUSSION
All items in the three guilt-linked clusters and the two shame-related clusters obtained in our analysis were also included, respectively, in the larger shame and guilt factors obtained by Sousa (1977), an indication of the general reliability of the earlier obtained factors. Though more differentiated than the three larger factors obtained by Sousa (1977), from which the items in this study were selected, the five clusters obtained by us are consistent with the factors obtained by Sousa (1977), with the definitions of guilt and shame by Johnson et al. (1989), and with our own recent depictions of guilt and shame which, though somewhat more elaborated than those of Johnson et al. (I 989), are in agreement with them. The three guilt clusters we obtained, Impersonal Transgression, Harm to Another Person, and Trust/Oath Violation, are in accord with our characterization of guilt as “. .the affect evoked by the judgment of oneself as having violated the deservedness of a personal or impersonal other. Deservedness, in turn, is the judgment by the transgressor of the unpaid balance earned by the violated other according to the norm of reciprocity, the social rule of giving on the basis of what is received and receiving on the basis of what is given” (Harvey et al., submitted, p. 8). The two shame-linked clusters, Social Impropriety and Exposed Inadequacy, agree with our description of shame as a “suffusive feeling of self-abnegation precipitated by the sudden loss of status in the eyes of a reference group or person from a public failure to live up to role expectations held by both self and the referent other, the specific role prescriptions being always status dependent” (Harvey et al., submitted, p. 4). Our analyses indicate that different clusters of scenarios or situations comprising the 30-item version of the DCQ employed
Notes and Shorter Communications
771
in this study elicit different variants of shame and guilt. The mean correlations of the guilt evoking clusters with each other (r = 0.43) and the shame educing clusters with each other (r = 0.57) were higher than the mean correlation between the guilt inducing and shame evoking clusters (r = 0.33). The intercluster correlations among the five clusters of scenarios, both within the shame and guift clusters and between them, were higher than the ideal for statistical independence. However, this level of shared variance is probably due not only to method error but to the same event or scenario simultaneously eliciting multiple affects or feelings in some Ss, such as two or more variants of guilt or admixtures of guilt and shame. REFERENCES
Harvey, 0. J., Bedford, 0. & Gore, E. J. (1990).Relationship of parental discipline, belief systems and proneness toward guilt and shame to religious orientation. Paper presented at the Annual Meering ofthe Saciefyfor rhe Seienfijic Study of Religion, Virginia Beach, VA. Harvey, 0. J., Gore, E. J., Batres, A. R. & Frank, H. (submitted). Relationship of shame and guilt to gender and parenting practices. Johnson, R. C., Danko, J. P., Huang, Y.-H., Park, J. Y., Johnson, S. B. & Nagoshi, C. T. (1987). Guilt, shame and adjustment in three cultures. Personality and Individual Differences, 8, 357-364. Johnson, R. C.. Kim, R. J. & Danko, G. P. (1989). Guilt, shame and adjustment. A family study. Persanaljf~ and ZIzdi~liduai Difirences, IO, 71-74. Johnson, R. C. & Noel, R. (1970). Dimensions of conscience. Unpublished manuscript. University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. Kido. R. & Mivasaki. M. (1972). Revisions of the DCO. Unuublished manuscriot. Universitv of Hawaii. Honolulu. HI. Nag&hi, C. T. <1980). Association of empathy and measures of morality. Unpubli’shed M. A. thesis, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI. Sousa, S. P. (1977). Elements of conscience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI. Tryon, R. C. & Bailey, D. E. (1970). CIusfer analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill. Winn, J. S. (1973). Dimensions of conscience. Unpublished M.A. thesis. University of Hawaii. Honolulu, HI.