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Relationship of belief systems to shame and guilt
PERSONALITY INDIVIDUAL
PERGAMON
AND DIFFERENCES
Personality and Individual Differences 25 (1998) 769-783
Relationship
of belief systems to shame and guilt
0. J. Harveya*, Harry Frankb, Edmond J. Gore”, Alfonso R. Batresd ADepartment of Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Campus Box 345, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, U.S.A. b Department of Psychology, University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI 48502-2186, U.S.A. ’ Medical Center Information Systems, University of Washington, Campus Box 359 104, Seattle, WA 98195, U.S.A. d Department qf Veterans Affairs, 810 Vermont Avenue, Washington, DC 20420, U.S.A Received
8 October
1997
Abstract This study examines the relationship of the four belief systems of extrapersonalism, cynicism, egoism and contextualism as treated by Harvey and associates to shame and guilt evoked by five clusters of scenarios: dishonesty, harm to another person, trust violation, social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. Extrapersonalists reported the strongest guilt of the four systems from dishonesty, greater shame than cynics and egoists, but not contextualists, from social impropriety, and greater shame from exposed inadequacy than contextualists, but not cynics or egoists. Cynics reported less guilt from harm to another person than extrapersonalists, egoists or contextualists, and less guilt from trust violation than extrapersonalists or egoists. Of the three belief systems test definers of each system, all definers of extrapersonalism correlated significantly positively with guilt from the cluster dishonesty but nonsignificantly with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation as well as with shame from exposed inadequacy. All definers of cynicism correlated significantly negatively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation, but near zero with shame from social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. All three BST definers of egoism correlated significantly positively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation and with shame from Exposed Inadequacy, but nonsignificantly with guilt from dishonesty and shame from social impropriety. Only one definer of contextualism correlated significantly with feelings from any scenario: constancy of change correlated positively with guilt from harm to another person. 0 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Of the many factors that affect the readiness to experience shame and guilt, the belief system of the respondent would be expected to be among the more influential. Systems in which such beliefs * To whom all correspondence
should be addressed.
0191~8869/98/$19.00 0 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: SO191-8869(98)00120-2
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as the goodness and deservedness of others, sympathy, empathy and reciprocity are positively central, for example, would be expected to dispose toward greater guilt than their counterparts from transgressions that are unfair to or harm others. Similarly, belief systems in which beliefs about authority, status, honor, role compliance, and public presentations of self are highly central should dispose toward greater shame than their counterparts from shortfalls on these behaviors and characteristics. The most basic definers of the four major belief systems treated by Harvey and associates (e.g. Harvey et al., 1961; Harvey, 1996) relate to differences in beliefs about such referents and content as the preceding together with differences in concreteness-abstractness of the beliefs. Investigation of the relationship of these belief systems to shame and guilt is the focus of this study.
2. Dependent variables 2.1. Shame and guilt Both shame and guilt are products of selfreflexivity by which the individual appraises, evaluates negatively and reproaches his or her self because of a public shortfall on or a transgression against a personally important social norm or standard. 2.1.1.
Shame
Shame is the anguish of selfabasement triggered by a fractured and anchorless selfidentity, lost pride and a threatened, often severed, belongingness precipitated by a public shortfall on a role requirement accepted by both the infractor and referent other (a reference group or person) as a prerequisite to the attainment and maintenance of good standing in the eyes of the referent other (Harvey et al., 1997). The resulting collapse in the infractor’s methods of social effectance, or “mechanisms of adequate selfportraiture” (Murphy, 1947, p. 538), nullifies the infractor’s status and varyingly immobilizes him or her through a sense of helpless vulnerability (Murphy, 1947; Lynd, 1958; Kaufman, 1974, 1989; Wurmser, 1981; Morrison, 1989; Lewis, 1992) that disposes to a downgrading of selfidentity to match the perceived or anticipated redefinition by the referent other (Cooley, 1902). A serious shortfall known only to the infractor does not produce shame, but shame anxiety, which often leads to more negative consequences than if the shortfall were public. 2.1.2.
Guilt
Whereas shame is triggered by an unsuccessful selfpresentation conveyed by a publicly inadequate role performance, guilt is elicited by the perception of having violated the deservedness of another being, sentient or even incorporeal, such as an institution or rule considered just by the transgressor. The less the blameworthiness of a being, the greater its perceived deservedness and greater the guilt from transgressing against it. Unlike the compulsion to socially isolate oneself elicited by shame, guilt sparks an urgent desire to correct the perceived inequity by making amends to the wronged party (Lamb, 1983; LindsayHartz, 1984; Morrison, 1989; Harvey et al., 1997). Additionally, while feelings of personal incompetence and unworthiness engendered by shame generalize beyond the precipitating shortfall to a
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downgraded conception of the total self, guilt tends to be more restricted to the unfair act and concern for its rectification (cf. Tangney, 1995, pp. 115-l 19). 2.2. Belief systems A belief is an assumption or hypothesis about the reality the believer expects to be confirmed when tested by whatever standard or method the believer accepts as valid, be it from magic, witchcraft, religion, science, or some other socially consensual or idiosyncratic epistemology. Such confirmation of a belief converts it into knowledge from the perspective of that believer (Harvey, 1996). A belief system is a superordinate configuration of beliefs with a root or core belief (Pepper, 1942) and a number of subordinate beliefs that relate to each other directly or through their shared relationship with the core belief. As a personal paradigm of reality, a belief system predisposes its holder toward a definition, assignment of meaning, and reaction to the world (Harvey, 1996) that fit, reconfirm and strengthen existing beliefs, particularly in the case of a more concrete and intractable system. In their original work on the topic, Harvey et al. (1961) deduced four conceptual systems differing in content (the belief referents of greater centrality or ego-involvement to the believer) and structure (the concreteness-abstractness of the beliefs, i.e. the capacity to make multiple differentiations among them and to integrate them into multiple meanings). These systems have been termed more recently by Harvey as the belief systems or epistemologies of extrapersonalism, cynicism, egoism and contextualism (Harvey, 1986, 1996). The following characterizations center around empirical differences that we consider directly relevant to their relationship to shame and guilt. 2.2.1. Extrapersonalism The core of this, the least abstractly functioning of the four belief systems, is the belief in the oughtness of impersonal rules as well as norms more person related, including those that define status, roles, public conduct and propriety (Gore, 1985; Harvey, 1996). The rule-oughtness of extrapersonalists, seemingly spawned by an inordinate need for structure, is fortified by a strong tendency to ascribe the rules to an extrapersonal source of irrefutable credibility: the natural order, a deistic or theistic god, an inherency, or a person of extrahuman characteristics. For extrapersonalists, these rules constitute the foundation of morality, compliance with them being an assumed necessity for a righteous life, and public compliance with them an assumed prerequisite to a public image as a reputable and worthy person (Gore, 1985). Accordingly, extrapersonalists score highest of the four systems on: the values of morality, honesty, loyalty, honor and public respectability (Harvey, 1966), religious orthodoxy and frequency of church attendance (Harvey and Felknor, 1970; Batres, 1984), conventionality, opinionation right, authoritarianism, and prejudice (Brigham and Severy, 1976; Harvey, 1986), endorsement of severe punishment for violation of impersonal as well as more person-linked rules, and advocacy of capital punishment for the widest range of offenses (Harvey, 1986) and lowest in distinctions between intent and acts and lowest in considering extenuating circumstances as a basis for punishment (Harvey, 1986). At the same time, however, extrapersonalists score higher than cynics and contextualists on selfreport measures of sympathy and nurturance (Gore, 1985).
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In comparison to representatives of other systems, extrapersonalists recall their parents as placing significantly higher emphasis on protection and enhancement of family and personal honor and public image (as a moral and socially responsible person), higher in causing them to respect, want to be like, and to repay their parents, higher than cynics on reliability of family support and higher than all but cynics on parental use of corporal punishment (Harvey and Felknor, 1970; Batres, 1984; Gore and Harvey, 1990). 2.2.2. Cynicism Only slightly more abstract than extrapersonalism, cynicism also revolves around strong beliefs about social norms and institutions. Because of their pervasive distrust and the malevolence they attribute to institutions and their representatives, however, cynics, unlike extrapersonalists particularly, tend to appraise negatively and reject the majority of the more central norms of society (Harvey, 1996). Cynics score significantly higher than extrapersonalists, egoists or contextualists on opinionation left, intransigence, hostility, social manipulation and deceit, distrust, attribution of malevolence, obligation avoidance, expectancy to fail, nihilism and depression (Gore, 1985). In contrast to egoists especially, cynics score significantly lower than representatives of the other systems on selfdisclosure, selfesteem, empathy, perceived personal causation of positive events, and perceived goodness of people (due to society’s negative effects) and significantly lower than extrapersonalists and egoists on sympathy and nurturance (Gore, 1985). Although most distrusting of others while at the same time being perceived by others as the least trustworthy, cynics value trustworthiness of others as a stable anchor in interpreting and coping with their perceptually capricious world. Equally paradoxically, cynics generally are eager for social legitimacy and status while strongly disclaiming and denouncing them, and use power, once they attain it, more autocratically than even extrapersonalists (Kaats, 1969). Cynics recall the rearing practices of their parents as significantly higher than representatives of the other systems on capriciousness, untrustworthiness, unfair punishment, fear induction, belittlement and efforts at obligation induction; higher on emphasis of family honor and reputation than all but extrapersonalists, even higher on corporal punishment than extrapersonalists and lowest on empathy induction and parental support (Batres, 1984; Gore and Harvey, 1990). 2.2.3. Egoism Most central to this, a more abstract system than either extrapersonalism or cynicism, is a concern with people for the establishment and maintenance of social relationships that foster mutual dependency and a social exchange system (Thibaut and Kelley, 1959; Homans, 1961) based on indebtedness and obligatory reciprocity. This kind of symbiosis, treated as reciprocal altruism by sociobiologists (e.g. Trivers, 1971), protects against physical and psychological hurt while ensuring social feedback interpretable by the egoist as confirming his or her selfconception as a special and highly deserving person (Raimy, 1975). Reflective of their narcissistic conception of self, egoists score significantly higher than representatives of the other systems on selfreport measures of hedonism, selfdeservedness, selfesteem, mutual disclosure, interpersonal intimacy, reliance on personal feelings for validation of their assumptions and perceptions (Batres, 1984; Gore, 1985), and selfcausation of positive outcomes while absolving self of undesired outcomes. Though they advocate equality of costs in attaining a goal, they opt for equity as the basis of distributing proceeds from goal attainment as a means of
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securing a larger share of the gain through their claims of more important contributions to the goal. Expressive of their humanism, they score significantly higher than extrapersonalists, cynics and contextualists on perceived goodness and deservedness of other people, sociability and affiliation, empathy, reciprocity, and symbiosis and higher than cynics and contextualists on sympathy and nurturance. Egoists recall their parents as significantly higher than do representatives of the other systems in heir emphasis on the importance of not hurting others, empathy and reciprocity in the creation of special relationships and the fostering of mutual care and protection (Batres, 1984). 2.2.4. Contextualism Representatives of this most abstractly functioning system are less involved with rules than extrapersonalists and cynics and less focused on interpersonal relations than egoists. More than representatives of the other systems, especially extrapersonalists, contextualists evaluate and react to rules on the basis of their rationality and functionality (Gore, 1985) and rely more heavily on empirical information and a task orientation as their dominant mode of effectance. Contextualists, more than extrapersonalists, cynics or egoists, score low on polarity of truth and on both opinionation right and left (Harvey, 1966), view the world, including self, from a thirdperson perspective (Felknor and Harvey, 1965; Miller and Harvey, 1973), are capable of playing a role contradictory to their own beliefs (Harvey, 1966; Miller and Harvey, 1973) synthesize conflicting information and images into harmonious and creative integrations, even under conditions of high ego-involvement and arousal (Harvey and Ware, 1967) and seek information before reaching a conclusion on ego-involving matters (Ware and Harvey, 1967). They score lower than egoists on empathy and lower than both egoists and extrapersonalists on sympathy and nurturance. Contextualists recall their parents as neither highest nor lowest of the four systems on any of six clusters of parenting practices (Gore and Harvey, 1990), lower than extrapersonalists and cynics on emphasis on enhancement of family reputation, lower than extrapersonalists on admonitions to make parents proud of them, to live up to family expectations, and to be concerned with selfpresentation, and lower than egoists on induction of empathy, mutuality and symbiosis (Batres, 1984; Gore and Harvey, 1990). Belief systems were related to responses to five clusters of scenarios depicting dishonesty (e.g. cheating on an exam and not getting caught), harm to another person (e.g. knowingly retaining working conditions harmful to employees’ health), trust violation (e.g. inadvertently violating a confidence), social impropriety (e.g. unconsciously eating with your fingers in an upscale restaurant while other diners stare) and exposed inadequacy (e.g. being proven wrong in a talk on a topic you are supposed to know well by a person in the audience). An earlier factor analysis of the scenarios (Johnson et al., 1989a) found the items comprising dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation, transgressions out of public view, to load heavily on guilt, and the items comprising social impropriety and exposed inadequacy, both public shortfalls, to load heavily on shame. The hypotheses are formulated in terms of these five clusters. We expected that the more central the concern of the individual with the attainment, maintenance and enhancement of status in the eyes of a referent other, the greater would be the shame from a publicly inadequate role performance and social impropriety. Thus, extrapersonalists should be more broadly prone to shame than representatives of the other systems (see hypotheses 1 and 6). In contrast to the pervasive shame-
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proneness of extrapersonalists, the shame sensibilities of egoists would be expected to revolve more focally around shortfalls that threaten their personal claims to special status and entitlement (hypotheses 2 and 8). We anticipated further that the stronger the belief in nurturance, fairness, empathy reciprocity, and deservedness of another person, the stronger would be the guilt from treating or causing that being to be treated undeservedly. Thus, egoists and extrapersonalists were expected generally to show the most guilt (hypotheses 3, 6 and 8) and cynics the least guilt (hypotheses 4, 5 and 7). Hypotheses 3, 6 and 8 gain further plausibility from earlier (Harvey et al., 1997) reported relationships between negative affect aroused by scenarios depicting harm to another person and parenting practices associated with extrapersonalism (esp. empathy induction), hypotheses 4, 5 and 7 by reported relationships between negative affect aroused by these scenarios and parenting practices associated with cynicism (esp. psychological coercion) and hypothesis 9 by relationships between negative affect and parenting practices associated with contextualism (esp. competency interdependence).
3. Hypotheses 3.1. Belief systems as cIass@ed by the TIB
(1) Extrapersonalists will feel stronger shame from social impropriety than will representatives of any other system. (2) Extrapersonalists will feel stronger shame from exposed inadequacy than will cynics or contextualists (but not greater than egoists). (3) Extrapersonalists will feel stronger guilt from dishonesty than will representatives of the other systems. (4) Cynics will feel less guilt from harm to another person than will representatives of the other systems. (5) Extrapersonalists and egoists will feel more guilt from trust violation than will cynics (with no prediction for contextualists). 3.2. Belief systems test dimensions
(6) The BST definers of extrapersonalism will correlate positively with the strength of guilt from dishonesty and the strength of shame from social impropriety. (7) The BST definers of cynicism will correlate negatively with the strength of guilt from dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation. (8) The BST definers of egoism will correlate positively with strength of guilt from harm to another person and trust violation and positively with strength of shame from exposed inadequacy. (9) The BST definers of contextualism will correlate positively with strength of guilt from harm to another person (and possibly but unpredictably with strength of guilt from trust violation). Hypotheses and results concerning the effects of gender are reported in an earlier study (Harvey et al., 1997).
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4. Method 4.1. Participants The 108 women and 100 men who participated in this study were the same as those in a study reported earlier by Harvey et al., (1997). Their mean age was 20.8years. Their distribution by primary belief system was: extrapersonalism 61; cynicism 74; egoism 22 and contextualism 5 1. 4.2. Instruments Three scales were administered: the “this I believe” test (TIB) and the belief systems test (BST) to measure belief systems and the dimensions of conscience questionnaire (DCQ) to assess shame and guilt. 4.2.1. TIB This instrument, developed by Harvey in 196 1, was used to classify respondents as representatives of one of the four belief systems. Participants were asked to complete in a minimum of two sentences the phrase “this I believe about”, the blank being replaced successively by one of 10-12 referents of high ego-involvement (e.g. “people”, “ the American way of life”, “religion”, “rules”, “trust”, “friendship” and “revealing intimate things about myself’). To facilitate candid and unrehearsed responses, a mild degree of stress is induced by a two minute time limit, monitored by the experimenter, for response to each referent. System classification is based on patterns of responses and not on the sum of responses to each single referent. Though ordinarily scored for “pure” systems only, the TIB in this instance was scored for “primary”, or most pronounced system, with indications of less dominant systems ignored. While allowing the use of all participants and increased variability in BST scores, this meant including less clearly defined representatives of the systems and the probable dilution of the effect of systems as measured by the TIB on shame and guilt. Extrapersonalism is evidenced by a strongly positive orientation toward major norms and institutions, bipolar evaluations of good and bad, frequent use of “should”, “ought” and other platitudes, and strongly positive statements about or allusions to God or religion. Cynicism is inferred from highly negative evaluations of and derision, distrust, and hostility toward major norms and institutions, and high wariness toward personal obligations and selfexposure. Egoism is denoted by ascription of goodness and deservedness to people, references to the importance of feelings, statements implying high personal causation for positive outcomes and statements favoring selfdisclosure, empathy, interpersonal intimacy and interdependence. Contextualism is indicated by informationally rich and integrated expressions that are both novel and appropriate, low evaluativeness and a paucity of polarized judgments and from statements implying contextuality and mutability of truth. 4.2.2. Belief systems test (BST) The version of the BST used in this study, its fifth and most extensive revision (Gore, 1985) consists of 132 items comprising 32 clusters as determined by the BCTRY Program (Tryon and
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Bailey, 1970). Each item is rated on a five-point Likert-type scale, from “completely agree” to “completely disagree”. The BST was used in two ways: in combination with the TIB to determine the primary system of a participant when the predominant system was not fully clear from the TIB and as a more specific within-system measure of beliefs to correlate with the measures of shame and guilt. Of the 32 BST clusters, only items comprising the 12 clusters found earlier to be most independent and to discriminate most clearly among systems as scored by the TIB were employed in this study. The alpha reliabilities of these 12 clusters, across several studies, range from an average of 0.87 to 0.95. Three different BST clusters were selected as indicative of each of the four belief systems. Higher scores on effectance via God and fastidiousness and lower scores on secular humanism indicate extrapersonalism. Higher scores on intransigence, social manipulation and personal distrust imply cynicism. Higher scores on social engagement, reliance on feelings (in decision making) and empathy are definers of egoism. Higher scores on mutability of truth and constancy of change and lower scores on polarity of truth denote contextualism. 4.2.3. Dimensions of conscience questionnaire (DCQ) Shame and guilt were measured by the latest edition of the DCQ of Johnson et al. (1989a) consisting of 30 brief scenarios, half aimed at evoking shame and half at arousing guilt. Respondents were instructed to imagine themselves behaving as described in each scenario and to rate on a five point scale how good or bad it would make them feel. The version of the DCQ used in this study is comprised of five clusters of scenarios (Gore and Harvey, 1995) (partially described before the hypotheses). Three of the clusters, dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation, describe transgressions found to evoke guilt, and two of the clusters, social impropriety and exposed inadequacy, depict public shortfalls found to arouse shame (Johnson et al., 1989b). The alpha reliabilities of these five clusters ranged from 0.88 to 0.94 (Gore and Harvey, 1995). 4.3. Procedure
All three instruments were administered to groups of from 12 to 30 participants, the TIB first because it is monitored for completion time, and BST and DCQ in reversed order approximately half of the time.
5. Results Although no hypothesis was formulated concerning the comparative intensity of shame and guilt within systems, the means and standard deviations of feelings evoked by each DCQ scenario for each belief system are presented in Table 1 as a baseline for comparing between-group differences. In interpreting the means, it should be noted that the five-point scale on which the strength of feeling evoked by the DCQ scenarios was rated was 1 =feel kind of good, 2=feel neither good nor bad, 3 =feel a little bad, 4=feel pretty bad and 5 =feel very bad. The order of the strength of shame or guilt evoked by each scenario is the same within each
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Table 1 Means and standard deviations of bad feelings (1-5) for each belief system for each DCQ scenario cluster DCQ scenario Cluster
Dishonesty Harm to another person Trust violation Social impropriety Exposed inadequacy
Extrapersonalism
Cynicism
Egoism
Contextualism ___-
mean
S.D.
mean
S.D.
mean
S.D.
mean
S.D.
3.35 4.41 4.45 3.54 3.84
0.77 0.59 0.51 0.67 0.71
2.82 3.99 4.18 3.24 3.62
0.78 0.64 0.14 0.69 0.61
2.81 4.58 4.62 3.11 3.71
0.71 0.46 0.42 0.50 0.53
2.99 4.31 4.24 3.21 3.55
0.75 0.77 0.74 0.73 0.69
system: harm to another person and trust violation highest; dishonesty and social impropriety lowest and next to lowest respectively and exposed inadequacy in the middle. 5.1. Belief systems as measured by TIB
The effects of belief systems as determined by the TIB and their interaction with gender on shame and guilt were determined by five two-way analyses of variance, system x gender for each of the five DCQ clusters of scenarios. Belief systems significantly affected the extent of guilt or shame evoked by each of the DCQ clusters. The F-ratios and p-values (1 tailed) for each DCQ cluster (3,200 dJ) were: dishonesty, F= 5.61, p < 0.001; harm to another person, F= 6.30, p < 0.000; trust violation, F= 4.74, p < 0.002; social impropriety, F= 3.28, p < 0.011; exposed inadequacy, F= 2.38, p < 0.035. 5.1 .I. Between-systems differences
Results of Bonferroni multiple comparisons (least significant difference = 0.05) between feelings for each pair of systems for each DCQ cluster are presented in Table 2. Table entries are DCQ scenario clusters that elicited significantly (p d 0.05) higher bad feelings for the system listed in the column head than for the system listed in the row head. (Italicized entries are clusters that elicited significantly lower bad feelings for the system listed in the column head than for the system listed in the row head, ~~0.05). Because the table is symmetrical, the diagonal entries are meaningless, and the cells above the diagonal are redundant with cells below the diagonal. Though, as noted, the order of arousal of bad feelings by the five clusters of scenarios was the same within each system, systems differed mostly as predicted in the strength of shame or guilt their representatives reported for different scenarios. Extrapersonalists reported significantly greater guilt than cynics, egoists or contextualists from violations described in the DCQ dishonesty cluster, significantly greater shame than cynics and egoists, but not contextualists, from violations depicted in the social impropriety cluster and significantly greater shame from behaviors in exposed inadequacy than contextualists, but not cynics or egoists. Cynics reported significantly less guilt from harm to another person than did.representatives of any of the other systems and less guilt from trust violation than did extrapersonalists or egoists. Thus, hypotheses 3,4 and 5 were wholly confirmed, while Hypothesis 1 was largely supported:
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Table 2 DCQ scenario clusters eliciting differences between systems in bad feelings (l-5) Sys tern
System Extrapersonalist
Cynic
Egoist
extrapersonalist
cynic
egoist
contextualist
-
dishonesty social impropriety harm to another trust violation
dishonesty social impropriety
dishonesty exposed inadequacy trust violation
dishonesty social impropriety harm to another trust violation
harm to another trust violation
harm to another
dishonesty
harm to another trust violation
social impropriety Contextualist
dishonesty exposed inadequacy trust violation
trust violation
harm to another
trust violation
although extrapersonalists felt worse from incidents of social impropriety than did cynics and egoists, they did not feel worse than contextualists. Hypothesis 2 was also only partially supported, with extrapersonalists, as predicted, feeling worse than contextualists on exposed inadequacy but, contrary to our prediction, not worse than cynics. The interactive effects of belief systems x gender was essentially zero. 5.2. Belief systems as measured by the BST 5.2.1.
Correlations of BST with shame and guilt
The generally low shared variance among the 12 BST clusters made its control unnecessary and rendered simple correlation an acceptable measure for the relationship of BST factors with shame and guilt. These correlations are presented in Table 3. The three BST definers of extrapersonalism, knowledge via faith, secular humanism [reflected] and fastidiousness, all correlated positively 0, < 0.01) with guilt from the DCQ cluster dishonesty
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Table 3 Correlations between BST definers and DCQ scenarios DCQ scenario clusters
BST definers
Knowledge via faith Secular humanism (reflected) Fastidiousness Social manipulation Intransigence Distrust of people Reliance on feelings Social engagement Empathy Mutability of truth Constancy of change Polarity of truth (reflected) *p
dishonesty
harm to another person
trust violation
0.31*** 0.26*** 0.18** -0.29*** -0.25*** -0.19** -0.12 0.06 0.13 -0.11 0.00 0.12
0.11 0.13 0.13 -0.24*** -0.23*** -0.23*** 0.23*** 0.25*** 0.34*** 0.06 0.17* 0.11
0.12 0.08 -0.25*** -0.19** -0.19** 0.19** 0.18** 0.22*** 0.03 0.17* 0.08
0.05
social impropriety
exposed inadequacy
0.20*** 0.19** 0.23*** 0.02 0.07 0.03 0.12 0.12 0.13 0.11 0.11 0.11
0.03 0.07 0.09 0.01 0.03 0.05 0.18** 0.19** 0.24*** 0.06 0.13 0.02
**p
and with shame from the cluster social impropriety. None of these definers, however, correlated significantly with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation, nor with shame from exposed inadequacy. Thus, hypothesis 6 is confirmed. All three BST definers of cynicism, social manipulation, intransigence and distrust of people, correlated negatively (pcO.01) with guilt from dishonesty, opposite to the definers of extrapersonalism, correlated negatively (p~O.01) with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation, opposite to the definers of egoism and correlated near zero with shame from social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. These results confirm hypothesis 7. All three definers of egoism, reliance on feelings, social engagement and empathy, correlated positively (p~O.01) with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation and with shame from exposed inadequacy. None of the BST definers of egoism, however, correlated significantly with guilt from dishonesty or with shame from social impropriety. These results confirm hypothesis 8. Of the three definers of contextualism, only constancy of change correlated significantly with feelings evoked by any of the scenarios, only harm to another person and trust violation, thereby only partially confirming hypothesis 9.
6. Discussion While on average representatives of all four belief systems felt worst from harm to another person and trust violation, least bad from dishonesty, and intermediately bad from social impropriety and
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exposed inadequacy, the strength of bad feelings aroused by the DCQ scenarios varied significantly between systems in consistently similar and dissimilar ways, The greater positive influence of impersonal rules and norms on the guilt and shame of extrapersonalists than on representatives of the other systems is evidenced in extrapersonalists feeling significantly worse than cynics, egoists or contextualists from the scenario cluster dishonesty, worse than cynics or egoists from social impropriety and worse than contextualists from exposed inadequacy. Our hypothesis that extrapersonalists would feel no worse than egoists from exposed inadequacy was based on the high level of concern for public image management common to these two systems. Though unpredicted, it is understandable in retrospect that cynics’ fear of selfdisclosure would likewise make them vulnerable to shame from such exposure, despite their claims of public indifference toward acceptance by others. The strong influence of extrapersonalists’ beliefs about impersonal rules on their shame and guilt is even more strongly suggested in the pattern of correlations between the BST definers of extrapersonalism and feelings toward the DCQ clusters. While all three of these definers correlated positively with bad feelings evoked by the impersonal violations in the DCQ clusters dishonesty and social impropriety, none of them correlated with the level of bad feelings aroused by harm to another person, trust violation and exposed inadequacy, all three of which represent violations detrimental to a person, to self or another. Influence of the antinormative beliefs of cynics, as measured by the TIB, on their reactions to the DCQ scenarios is evidenced by their reports of significantly less guilt than extrapersonalists, egoists or contextualists from the behaviors portrayed in harm to another person, significantly weaker bad feelings than extrapersonalists from behaviors on the shame-linked cluster of social impropriety and, like egoists and contextualists, less guilt than extrapersonalists from dishonesty. Moreover, the nine significant correlations between the definers of cynicism and responses to the DCQ scenarios dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation were all negative. This was the reverse of the correlations between the BST definers of extrapersonalism and feelings toward dishonesty and social impropriety, the reverse of the correlations between BST definers of egoism and feelings toward the scenario clusters harm to another person, trust violation and exposed inadequacy and unlike the mostly negligible correlations between BST definers of contextualism and shame and guilt. The negative correlations between the BST definers of cynicism and guilt from dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation do not mean, however, that cynics generally felt good from transgressions depicted in these person-related scenarios. Instead, as shown in an unreported crosstabulation analysis, as scores on the BST definers increased, cynics tended to feel less bad for these violations, but not to the point of feeling good. Egoists, like cynics and contextualists, felt significantly less bad than extrapersonalists from dishonesty and, like cynics, less bad than extrapersonalists from social impropriety. But like extrapersonalists, they reported significantly greater guilt than cynics from the person-linked cluster harm to another person and the person-linked cluster trust violation. Though none of the BST definers of egoism correlated with feelings from the impersonal violations in dishonesty, all three correlated positively with guilt from the personally detrimental behaviors depicted in harm to another person and trust violation, the opposite of extrapersonalism. While both egoists and extrapersonalists as measured by the TIB reported significantly stronger and more widespread guilt than either cynics or contextualists, extrapersonalists felt greater guilt
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than egoists from impersonal transgressions and egoists felt greater guilt than extrapersonalists from personal transgressions. Extrapersonalists as measured by the TIB also reported stronger and more widespread shame than representatives of the other systems, a picture that is clarified by the correlations of the BST measures with shame. While none of the definers of cynicism or contextualism correlated with shame from social impropriety or exposed inadequacy, definers of extrapersonalism correlated with shame from social improprieties and misconduct, and definers of egoism correlated with shame from a publicly inadequate performance of a personal task that presumably threatened their conceptions of themselves as special persons. These results for egoists appear consistent with the position of several prominent psychoanalytical oriented writers (e.g. Piers, 1953; Wurmser, 1987; Morrison, 1989) that narcissism is a predominant predispositional underpinning of shame. The results for Extrapersonalists seem to suggest strongly, however, that narcissism is not the sole dispositional basis of shame, unless the concept of narcissism is expanded to include such orientations as those of Extrapersonalism, an over-stretch in our opinion. Though contextualists and cynics as measured by the TIB responded to the DCQ scenarios more similarly than to either extrapersonalists or egoists, the patterns of correlations of the BST definers of contextualists and cynics with shame and guilt are very different. All three of the BST definers of cynicism correlated negatively with feelings from the three guilt-linked scenarios dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation, while only one BST definer of contextualism, constancy of change, correlated significantly with responses to any DCQ cluster: positively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation. This paucity of correlations between definers of contextualism and responses to the DCQ scenarios suggests that the belief system of contextualism relate to shame and guilt less than do the other systems. Our characterization of the violations that engender guilt for the extrapersonalist as more impersonal than for representatives of the other systems may be at sharp odds with the perspective of the extrapersonalist, who may experience guilt not so much from the violation of a rule per se as from transgression against the ascribed author of the rule, an eminently, and often infinitely, deserving extrapersonal other conceived as personal by the extrapersonalist. We would note further, as we have elsewhere (Harvey et al., 1997), that shame and guilt as measured in this study are not feelings evoked by actual transgressions or shortfalls, but rather are expressions of expectations, possibly hopes, by the respondents of how they would feel should they behave in ways portrayed in the DCQ scenarios. Yet, while these scenarios could be undesirably hypothetical and depict only minor violations, they may provide the advantage of evoking more optimal variance in responses to them than if they represented respondents’ own life experiences or were otherwise more uniformly engaging for all subjects. Lastly, we would suggest it as highly likely that the effects of belief systems as measured by the TIB on both shame and guilt were considerably diluted by including as participants representatives of mixed systems rather than only single or “pure” systems, the more typical practice in the study of belief systems. References Batres, A. R. (1984). Parental methods of control/influence dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder.
as antecedents
to belief systems. Unpublished
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Brigham, J. C., & Severy, L. J. (1976). Personality and attitude determinants
of voting behavior. Social Behavior and
Personality, 4, 127-139. Cooley, C. H. (I 902). Human nature and the social order. New York: Scribner.
Felknor, C. M., & Harvey, 0. J. (1965). Concept formation and attainment as a function of personality characteristics. Technical Report No. 10, Contract No. 1147 (07) University of Colorado. Gore, E. J. (1985). Development of an objective measure of belief systems. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder. Gore, E. J., & Harvey, 0. J. (1990). Parent-child relations and systems of beliefs. Unpublished manuscript. Gore, E. J., & Harvey, 0. J. (1995). A factor analysis of a scale of shame and guilt: dimensions of conscience questionnaire. Personality and Individual Difference, 19, 769-771. Harvey, 0. J. (1966). System structure, flexibility and creativity. In 0. J. Harvey (Ed.). Experience, structure and adaptability. New York: Springer. Harvey, 0. J. (1986). Belief systems and attitudes toward the death penalty. Journal of Personality, 54, 143159.
Harvey, 0. J. (1996). Beliefs, knowledge, and meaning from the perspective of the perceiver. In C. McGarty, & S. A. Haslam (Eds.). The message ofsocialpsychology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Harvey, 0. J., & Felknor, C. M. (1970). Parent-child relations as an antecedent to conceptual functioning. In R. A. Hoppe, G. A. Milton, & E. C. Simmel (Eds.). Early experience and the process of socialization. New York: Academic Press. Harvey, 0. J., Gore, E. J., Frank, H., & Batres, A. R. (1997). Relationship of shame and guilt to gender and parenting practices. Personality and Individual Difference, 23(l), 135-l 46. Harvey, 0. J., Hunt, D. E., & Schroder, H. M. (1961). Conceptual systems and personality organization. New York: Wiley. Harvey, 0. J., & Ware, R. (1967). Personality factors in dissonance resolution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7, 227-230.
Homans, G. C. (1961). Social behavior: Its elementary forms. New York: Harcourt Brace. Johnson, R. C., Danko, G. P., Darvil, T. J., Bochner, S., Bowers, J. H., & Huang, Y. -H. (1989). Cross-cultural assessment of altruism and its correlates. Personality and Individual Difference, 10(8), 855-868. Johnson, R. C., Kim, R. J., & Danko, G. P. (1989). Guilt, shame and adjustment: a family study. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, I l-74.
Kaats, G. R. (1969). Belief systems and person perception: Analyses in a service academy environment. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder. Kaufman, G. (1974). The meaning of shame: toward a selfaffirming identity. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 21,568574.
Kaufman, G. (1989). The psychology of shame: theory and treatment of shame-based syndromes. New York: Springer. Lamb, R. (1983). Guilt, shame and morality. Philosophy and Phenomenologicaf Research, 43(3), 329-346. Lewis, M. (1992). Shame: the exposed self. New York: Free Press. Lindsay-Hartz, J. (1984). Contrasting experiences of shame and guilt. American Behavioral Scientist, 27(6), 689704.
Lynd, H. M. (1958). On shame and the search for identity. New York: Harcourt Brace and World. Miller, A. G., & Harvey, 0. J. (1973). Effects of concreteness and anxiety on intellectual and motor performance. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 3,444-451.
Morrison, A. P. (1989). Shame, the underside of narcissism. Hillsdale: Analytic Press. Murphy, G. (1947). Personality: a biosocial approach to origins and structure New York: Harper. Pepper, S. C. (1942). World hypotheses. Berkeley: University of California. Piers, G. (1953). Shame and guilt: A psychoanalytic study, In G. Piers, & M. Singer (Eds.). Shame undguilt. New York: Norton. Raimy, V. C. (1975). Misunderstandings of the se[f. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Tangney, J. P. (1995). Shame and guilt in interpersonal relationships. In J. P. Tangney, & K. W. Fischer (Eds.). Selfconscious emotions. New York: The Guilford Press. Thibaut, J. W., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The socialpsychology of groups. New York: Wiley. Trivers, R. (197 1). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-57.
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Tryon, R. C., & Bailey, D. E. (1970). Cluster analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ware, R., & Harvey, 0. J. (1967). A cognitive determinant of impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 3844.
Wurmser, L. (1981). The mask of shame. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wurmser, L. (1987). The veiled companion of narcissism. In L. Nathanson (Ed.). The many,faces qfshame. New York: Guilford.
PERGAMON
AND DIFFERENCES
Personality and Individual Differences 25 (1998) 769-783
Relationship
of belief systems to shame and guilt
0. J. Harveya*, Harry Frankb, Edmond J. Gore”, Alfonso R. Batresd ADepartment of Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Campus Box 345, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, U.S.A. b Department of Psychology, University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI 48502-2186, U.S.A. ’ Medical Center Information Systems, University of Washington, Campus Box 359 104, Seattle, WA 98195, U.S.A. d Department qf Veterans Affairs, 810 Vermont Avenue, Washington, DC 20420, U.S.A Received
8 October
1997
Abstract This study examines the relationship of the four belief systems of extrapersonalism, cynicism, egoism and contextualism as treated by Harvey and associates to shame and guilt evoked by five clusters of scenarios: dishonesty, harm to another person, trust violation, social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. Extrapersonalists reported the strongest guilt of the four systems from dishonesty, greater shame than cynics and egoists, but not contextualists, from social impropriety, and greater shame from exposed inadequacy than contextualists, but not cynics or egoists. Cynics reported less guilt from harm to another person than extrapersonalists, egoists or contextualists, and less guilt from trust violation than extrapersonalists or egoists. Of the three belief systems test definers of each system, all definers of extrapersonalism correlated significantly positively with guilt from the cluster dishonesty but nonsignificantly with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation as well as with shame from exposed inadequacy. All definers of cynicism correlated significantly negatively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation, but near zero with shame from social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. All three BST definers of egoism correlated significantly positively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation and with shame from Exposed Inadequacy, but nonsignificantly with guilt from dishonesty and shame from social impropriety. Only one definer of contextualism correlated significantly with feelings from any scenario: constancy of change correlated positively with guilt from harm to another person. 0 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Of the many factors that affect the readiness to experience shame and guilt, the belief system of the respondent would be expected to be among the more influential. Systems in which such beliefs * To whom all correspondence
should be addressed.
0191~8869/98/$19.00 0 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: SO191-8869(98)00120-2
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as the goodness and deservedness of others, sympathy, empathy and reciprocity are positively central, for example, would be expected to dispose toward greater guilt than their counterparts from transgressions that are unfair to or harm others. Similarly, belief systems in which beliefs about authority, status, honor, role compliance, and public presentations of self are highly central should dispose toward greater shame than their counterparts from shortfalls on these behaviors and characteristics. The most basic definers of the four major belief systems treated by Harvey and associates (e.g. Harvey et al., 1961; Harvey, 1996) relate to differences in beliefs about such referents and content as the preceding together with differences in concreteness-abstractness of the beliefs. Investigation of the relationship of these belief systems to shame and guilt is the focus of this study.
2. Dependent variables 2.1. Shame and guilt Both shame and guilt are products of selfreflexivity by which the individual appraises, evaluates negatively and reproaches his or her self because of a public shortfall on or a transgression against a personally important social norm or standard. 2.1.1.
Shame
Shame is the anguish of selfabasement triggered by a fractured and anchorless selfidentity, lost pride and a threatened, often severed, belongingness precipitated by a public shortfall on a role requirement accepted by both the infractor and referent other (a reference group or person) as a prerequisite to the attainment and maintenance of good standing in the eyes of the referent other (Harvey et al., 1997). The resulting collapse in the infractor’s methods of social effectance, or “mechanisms of adequate selfportraiture” (Murphy, 1947, p. 538), nullifies the infractor’s status and varyingly immobilizes him or her through a sense of helpless vulnerability (Murphy, 1947; Lynd, 1958; Kaufman, 1974, 1989; Wurmser, 1981; Morrison, 1989; Lewis, 1992) that disposes to a downgrading of selfidentity to match the perceived or anticipated redefinition by the referent other (Cooley, 1902). A serious shortfall known only to the infractor does not produce shame, but shame anxiety, which often leads to more negative consequences than if the shortfall were public. 2.1.2.
Guilt
Whereas shame is triggered by an unsuccessful selfpresentation conveyed by a publicly inadequate role performance, guilt is elicited by the perception of having violated the deservedness of another being, sentient or even incorporeal, such as an institution or rule considered just by the transgressor. The less the blameworthiness of a being, the greater its perceived deservedness and greater the guilt from transgressing against it. Unlike the compulsion to socially isolate oneself elicited by shame, guilt sparks an urgent desire to correct the perceived inequity by making amends to the wronged party (Lamb, 1983; LindsayHartz, 1984; Morrison, 1989; Harvey et al., 1997). Additionally, while feelings of personal incompetence and unworthiness engendered by shame generalize beyond the precipitating shortfall to a
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downgraded conception of the total self, guilt tends to be more restricted to the unfair act and concern for its rectification (cf. Tangney, 1995, pp. 115-l 19). 2.2. Belief systems A belief is an assumption or hypothesis about the reality the believer expects to be confirmed when tested by whatever standard or method the believer accepts as valid, be it from magic, witchcraft, religion, science, or some other socially consensual or idiosyncratic epistemology. Such confirmation of a belief converts it into knowledge from the perspective of that believer (Harvey, 1996). A belief system is a superordinate configuration of beliefs with a root or core belief (Pepper, 1942) and a number of subordinate beliefs that relate to each other directly or through their shared relationship with the core belief. As a personal paradigm of reality, a belief system predisposes its holder toward a definition, assignment of meaning, and reaction to the world (Harvey, 1996) that fit, reconfirm and strengthen existing beliefs, particularly in the case of a more concrete and intractable system. In their original work on the topic, Harvey et al. (1961) deduced four conceptual systems differing in content (the belief referents of greater centrality or ego-involvement to the believer) and structure (the concreteness-abstractness of the beliefs, i.e. the capacity to make multiple differentiations among them and to integrate them into multiple meanings). These systems have been termed more recently by Harvey as the belief systems or epistemologies of extrapersonalism, cynicism, egoism and contextualism (Harvey, 1986, 1996). The following characterizations center around empirical differences that we consider directly relevant to their relationship to shame and guilt. 2.2.1. Extrapersonalism The core of this, the least abstractly functioning of the four belief systems, is the belief in the oughtness of impersonal rules as well as norms more person related, including those that define status, roles, public conduct and propriety (Gore, 1985; Harvey, 1996). The rule-oughtness of extrapersonalists, seemingly spawned by an inordinate need for structure, is fortified by a strong tendency to ascribe the rules to an extrapersonal source of irrefutable credibility: the natural order, a deistic or theistic god, an inherency, or a person of extrahuman characteristics. For extrapersonalists, these rules constitute the foundation of morality, compliance with them being an assumed necessity for a righteous life, and public compliance with them an assumed prerequisite to a public image as a reputable and worthy person (Gore, 1985). Accordingly, extrapersonalists score highest of the four systems on: the values of morality, honesty, loyalty, honor and public respectability (Harvey, 1966), religious orthodoxy and frequency of church attendance (Harvey and Felknor, 1970; Batres, 1984), conventionality, opinionation right, authoritarianism, and prejudice (Brigham and Severy, 1976; Harvey, 1986), endorsement of severe punishment for violation of impersonal as well as more person-linked rules, and advocacy of capital punishment for the widest range of offenses (Harvey, 1986) and lowest in distinctions between intent and acts and lowest in considering extenuating circumstances as a basis for punishment (Harvey, 1986). At the same time, however, extrapersonalists score higher than cynics and contextualists on selfreport measures of sympathy and nurturance (Gore, 1985).
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In comparison to representatives of other systems, extrapersonalists recall their parents as placing significantly higher emphasis on protection and enhancement of family and personal honor and public image (as a moral and socially responsible person), higher in causing them to respect, want to be like, and to repay their parents, higher than cynics on reliability of family support and higher than all but cynics on parental use of corporal punishment (Harvey and Felknor, 1970; Batres, 1984; Gore and Harvey, 1990). 2.2.2. Cynicism Only slightly more abstract than extrapersonalism, cynicism also revolves around strong beliefs about social norms and institutions. Because of their pervasive distrust and the malevolence they attribute to institutions and their representatives, however, cynics, unlike extrapersonalists particularly, tend to appraise negatively and reject the majority of the more central norms of society (Harvey, 1996). Cynics score significantly higher than extrapersonalists, egoists or contextualists on opinionation left, intransigence, hostility, social manipulation and deceit, distrust, attribution of malevolence, obligation avoidance, expectancy to fail, nihilism and depression (Gore, 1985). In contrast to egoists especially, cynics score significantly lower than representatives of the other systems on selfdisclosure, selfesteem, empathy, perceived personal causation of positive events, and perceived goodness of people (due to society’s negative effects) and significantly lower than extrapersonalists and egoists on sympathy and nurturance (Gore, 1985). Although most distrusting of others while at the same time being perceived by others as the least trustworthy, cynics value trustworthiness of others as a stable anchor in interpreting and coping with their perceptually capricious world. Equally paradoxically, cynics generally are eager for social legitimacy and status while strongly disclaiming and denouncing them, and use power, once they attain it, more autocratically than even extrapersonalists (Kaats, 1969). Cynics recall the rearing practices of their parents as significantly higher than representatives of the other systems on capriciousness, untrustworthiness, unfair punishment, fear induction, belittlement and efforts at obligation induction; higher on emphasis of family honor and reputation than all but extrapersonalists, even higher on corporal punishment than extrapersonalists and lowest on empathy induction and parental support (Batres, 1984; Gore and Harvey, 1990). 2.2.3. Egoism Most central to this, a more abstract system than either extrapersonalism or cynicism, is a concern with people for the establishment and maintenance of social relationships that foster mutual dependency and a social exchange system (Thibaut and Kelley, 1959; Homans, 1961) based on indebtedness and obligatory reciprocity. This kind of symbiosis, treated as reciprocal altruism by sociobiologists (e.g. Trivers, 1971), protects against physical and psychological hurt while ensuring social feedback interpretable by the egoist as confirming his or her selfconception as a special and highly deserving person (Raimy, 1975). Reflective of their narcissistic conception of self, egoists score significantly higher than representatives of the other systems on selfreport measures of hedonism, selfdeservedness, selfesteem, mutual disclosure, interpersonal intimacy, reliance on personal feelings for validation of their assumptions and perceptions (Batres, 1984; Gore, 1985), and selfcausation of positive outcomes while absolving self of undesired outcomes. Though they advocate equality of costs in attaining a goal, they opt for equity as the basis of distributing proceeds from goal attainment as a means of
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securing a larger share of the gain through their claims of more important contributions to the goal. Expressive of their humanism, they score significantly higher than extrapersonalists, cynics and contextualists on perceived goodness and deservedness of other people, sociability and affiliation, empathy, reciprocity, and symbiosis and higher than cynics and contextualists on sympathy and nurturance. Egoists recall their parents as significantly higher than do representatives of the other systems in heir emphasis on the importance of not hurting others, empathy and reciprocity in the creation of special relationships and the fostering of mutual care and protection (Batres, 1984). 2.2.4. Contextualism Representatives of this most abstractly functioning system are less involved with rules than extrapersonalists and cynics and less focused on interpersonal relations than egoists. More than representatives of the other systems, especially extrapersonalists, contextualists evaluate and react to rules on the basis of their rationality and functionality (Gore, 1985) and rely more heavily on empirical information and a task orientation as their dominant mode of effectance. Contextualists, more than extrapersonalists, cynics or egoists, score low on polarity of truth and on both opinionation right and left (Harvey, 1966), view the world, including self, from a thirdperson perspective (Felknor and Harvey, 1965; Miller and Harvey, 1973), are capable of playing a role contradictory to their own beliefs (Harvey, 1966; Miller and Harvey, 1973) synthesize conflicting information and images into harmonious and creative integrations, even under conditions of high ego-involvement and arousal (Harvey and Ware, 1967) and seek information before reaching a conclusion on ego-involving matters (Ware and Harvey, 1967). They score lower than egoists on empathy and lower than both egoists and extrapersonalists on sympathy and nurturance. Contextualists recall their parents as neither highest nor lowest of the four systems on any of six clusters of parenting practices (Gore and Harvey, 1990), lower than extrapersonalists and cynics on emphasis on enhancement of family reputation, lower than extrapersonalists on admonitions to make parents proud of them, to live up to family expectations, and to be concerned with selfpresentation, and lower than egoists on induction of empathy, mutuality and symbiosis (Batres, 1984; Gore and Harvey, 1990). Belief systems were related to responses to five clusters of scenarios depicting dishonesty (e.g. cheating on an exam and not getting caught), harm to another person (e.g. knowingly retaining working conditions harmful to employees’ health), trust violation (e.g. inadvertently violating a confidence), social impropriety (e.g. unconsciously eating with your fingers in an upscale restaurant while other diners stare) and exposed inadequacy (e.g. being proven wrong in a talk on a topic you are supposed to know well by a person in the audience). An earlier factor analysis of the scenarios (Johnson et al., 1989a) found the items comprising dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation, transgressions out of public view, to load heavily on guilt, and the items comprising social impropriety and exposed inadequacy, both public shortfalls, to load heavily on shame. The hypotheses are formulated in terms of these five clusters. We expected that the more central the concern of the individual with the attainment, maintenance and enhancement of status in the eyes of a referent other, the greater would be the shame from a publicly inadequate role performance and social impropriety. Thus, extrapersonalists should be more broadly prone to shame than representatives of the other systems (see hypotheses 1 and 6). In contrast to the pervasive shame-
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proneness of extrapersonalists, the shame sensibilities of egoists would be expected to revolve more focally around shortfalls that threaten their personal claims to special status and entitlement (hypotheses 2 and 8). We anticipated further that the stronger the belief in nurturance, fairness, empathy reciprocity, and deservedness of another person, the stronger would be the guilt from treating or causing that being to be treated undeservedly. Thus, egoists and extrapersonalists were expected generally to show the most guilt (hypotheses 3, 6 and 8) and cynics the least guilt (hypotheses 4, 5 and 7). Hypotheses 3, 6 and 8 gain further plausibility from earlier (Harvey et al., 1997) reported relationships between negative affect aroused by scenarios depicting harm to another person and parenting practices associated with extrapersonalism (esp. empathy induction), hypotheses 4, 5 and 7 by reported relationships between negative affect aroused by these scenarios and parenting practices associated with cynicism (esp. psychological coercion) and hypothesis 9 by relationships between negative affect and parenting practices associated with contextualism (esp. competency interdependence).
3. Hypotheses 3.1. Belief systems as cIass@ed by the TIB
(1) Extrapersonalists will feel stronger shame from social impropriety than will representatives of any other system. (2) Extrapersonalists will feel stronger shame from exposed inadequacy than will cynics or contextualists (but not greater than egoists). (3) Extrapersonalists will feel stronger guilt from dishonesty than will representatives of the other systems. (4) Cynics will feel less guilt from harm to another person than will representatives of the other systems. (5) Extrapersonalists and egoists will feel more guilt from trust violation than will cynics (with no prediction for contextualists). 3.2. Belief systems test dimensions
(6) The BST definers of extrapersonalism will correlate positively with the strength of guilt from dishonesty and the strength of shame from social impropriety. (7) The BST definers of cynicism will correlate negatively with the strength of guilt from dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation. (8) The BST definers of egoism will correlate positively with strength of guilt from harm to another person and trust violation and positively with strength of shame from exposed inadequacy. (9) The BST definers of contextualism will correlate positively with strength of guilt from harm to another person (and possibly but unpredictably with strength of guilt from trust violation). Hypotheses and results concerning the effects of gender are reported in an earlier study (Harvey et al., 1997).
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4. Method 4.1. Participants The 108 women and 100 men who participated in this study were the same as those in a study reported earlier by Harvey et al., (1997). Their mean age was 20.8years. Their distribution by primary belief system was: extrapersonalism 61; cynicism 74; egoism 22 and contextualism 5 1. 4.2. Instruments Three scales were administered: the “this I believe” test (TIB) and the belief systems test (BST) to measure belief systems and the dimensions of conscience questionnaire (DCQ) to assess shame and guilt. 4.2.1. TIB This instrument, developed by Harvey in 196 1, was used to classify respondents as representatives of one of the four belief systems. Participants were asked to complete in a minimum of two sentences the phrase “this I believe about”, the blank being replaced successively by one of 10-12 referents of high ego-involvement (e.g. “people”, “ the American way of life”, “religion”, “rules”, “trust”, “friendship” and “revealing intimate things about myself’). To facilitate candid and unrehearsed responses, a mild degree of stress is induced by a two minute time limit, monitored by the experimenter, for response to each referent. System classification is based on patterns of responses and not on the sum of responses to each single referent. Though ordinarily scored for “pure” systems only, the TIB in this instance was scored for “primary”, or most pronounced system, with indications of less dominant systems ignored. While allowing the use of all participants and increased variability in BST scores, this meant including less clearly defined representatives of the systems and the probable dilution of the effect of systems as measured by the TIB on shame and guilt. Extrapersonalism is evidenced by a strongly positive orientation toward major norms and institutions, bipolar evaluations of good and bad, frequent use of “should”, “ought” and other platitudes, and strongly positive statements about or allusions to God or religion. Cynicism is inferred from highly negative evaluations of and derision, distrust, and hostility toward major norms and institutions, and high wariness toward personal obligations and selfexposure. Egoism is denoted by ascription of goodness and deservedness to people, references to the importance of feelings, statements implying high personal causation for positive outcomes and statements favoring selfdisclosure, empathy, interpersonal intimacy and interdependence. Contextualism is indicated by informationally rich and integrated expressions that are both novel and appropriate, low evaluativeness and a paucity of polarized judgments and from statements implying contextuality and mutability of truth. 4.2.2. Belief systems test (BST) The version of the BST used in this study, its fifth and most extensive revision (Gore, 1985) consists of 132 items comprising 32 clusters as determined by the BCTRY Program (Tryon and
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Bailey, 1970). Each item is rated on a five-point Likert-type scale, from “completely agree” to “completely disagree”. The BST was used in two ways: in combination with the TIB to determine the primary system of a participant when the predominant system was not fully clear from the TIB and as a more specific within-system measure of beliefs to correlate with the measures of shame and guilt. Of the 32 BST clusters, only items comprising the 12 clusters found earlier to be most independent and to discriminate most clearly among systems as scored by the TIB were employed in this study. The alpha reliabilities of these 12 clusters, across several studies, range from an average of 0.87 to 0.95. Three different BST clusters were selected as indicative of each of the four belief systems. Higher scores on effectance via God and fastidiousness and lower scores on secular humanism indicate extrapersonalism. Higher scores on intransigence, social manipulation and personal distrust imply cynicism. Higher scores on social engagement, reliance on feelings (in decision making) and empathy are definers of egoism. Higher scores on mutability of truth and constancy of change and lower scores on polarity of truth denote contextualism. 4.2.3. Dimensions of conscience questionnaire (DCQ) Shame and guilt were measured by the latest edition of the DCQ of Johnson et al. (1989a) consisting of 30 brief scenarios, half aimed at evoking shame and half at arousing guilt. Respondents were instructed to imagine themselves behaving as described in each scenario and to rate on a five point scale how good or bad it would make them feel. The version of the DCQ used in this study is comprised of five clusters of scenarios (Gore and Harvey, 1995) (partially described before the hypotheses). Three of the clusters, dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation, describe transgressions found to evoke guilt, and two of the clusters, social impropriety and exposed inadequacy, depict public shortfalls found to arouse shame (Johnson et al., 1989b). The alpha reliabilities of these five clusters ranged from 0.88 to 0.94 (Gore and Harvey, 1995). 4.3. Procedure
All three instruments were administered to groups of from 12 to 30 participants, the TIB first because it is monitored for completion time, and BST and DCQ in reversed order approximately half of the time.
5. Results Although no hypothesis was formulated concerning the comparative intensity of shame and guilt within systems, the means and standard deviations of feelings evoked by each DCQ scenario for each belief system are presented in Table 1 as a baseline for comparing between-group differences. In interpreting the means, it should be noted that the five-point scale on which the strength of feeling evoked by the DCQ scenarios was rated was 1 =feel kind of good, 2=feel neither good nor bad, 3 =feel a little bad, 4=feel pretty bad and 5 =feel very bad. The order of the strength of shame or guilt evoked by each scenario is the same within each
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Table 1 Means and standard deviations of bad feelings (1-5) for each belief system for each DCQ scenario cluster DCQ scenario Cluster
Dishonesty Harm to another person Trust violation Social impropriety Exposed inadequacy
Extrapersonalism
Cynicism
Egoism
Contextualism ___-
mean
S.D.
mean
S.D.
mean
S.D.
mean
S.D.
3.35 4.41 4.45 3.54 3.84
0.77 0.59 0.51 0.67 0.71
2.82 3.99 4.18 3.24 3.62
0.78 0.64 0.14 0.69 0.61
2.81 4.58 4.62 3.11 3.71
0.71 0.46 0.42 0.50 0.53
2.99 4.31 4.24 3.21 3.55
0.75 0.77 0.74 0.73 0.69
system: harm to another person and trust violation highest; dishonesty and social impropriety lowest and next to lowest respectively and exposed inadequacy in the middle. 5.1. Belief systems as measured by TIB
The effects of belief systems as determined by the TIB and their interaction with gender on shame and guilt were determined by five two-way analyses of variance, system x gender for each of the five DCQ clusters of scenarios. Belief systems significantly affected the extent of guilt or shame evoked by each of the DCQ clusters. The F-ratios and p-values (1 tailed) for each DCQ cluster (3,200 dJ) were: dishonesty, F= 5.61, p < 0.001; harm to another person, F= 6.30, p < 0.000; trust violation, F= 4.74, p < 0.002; social impropriety, F= 3.28, p < 0.011; exposed inadequacy, F= 2.38, p < 0.035. 5.1 .I. Between-systems differences
Results of Bonferroni multiple comparisons (least significant difference = 0.05) between feelings for each pair of systems for each DCQ cluster are presented in Table 2. Table entries are DCQ scenario clusters that elicited significantly (p d 0.05) higher bad feelings for the system listed in the column head than for the system listed in the row head. (Italicized entries are clusters that elicited significantly lower bad feelings for the system listed in the column head than for the system listed in the row head, ~~0.05). Because the table is symmetrical, the diagonal entries are meaningless, and the cells above the diagonal are redundant with cells below the diagonal. Though, as noted, the order of arousal of bad feelings by the five clusters of scenarios was the same within each system, systems differed mostly as predicted in the strength of shame or guilt their representatives reported for different scenarios. Extrapersonalists reported significantly greater guilt than cynics, egoists or contextualists from violations described in the DCQ dishonesty cluster, significantly greater shame than cynics and egoists, but not contextualists, from violations depicted in the social impropriety cluster and significantly greater shame from behaviors in exposed inadequacy than contextualists, but not cynics or egoists. Cynics reported significantly less guilt from harm to another person than did.representatives of any of the other systems and less guilt from trust violation than did extrapersonalists or egoists. Thus, hypotheses 3,4 and 5 were wholly confirmed, while Hypothesis 1 was largely supported:
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Table 2 DCQ scenario clusters eliciting differences between systems in bad feelings (l-5) Sys tern
System Extrapersonalist
Cynic
Egoist
extrapersonalist
cynic
egoist
contextualist
-
dishonesty social impropriety harm to another trust violation
dishonesty social impropriety
dishonesty exposed inadequacy trust violation
dishonesty social impropriety harm to another trust violation
harm to another trust violation
harm to another
dishonesty
harm to another trust violation
social impropriety Contextualist
dishonesty exposed inadequacy trust violation
trust violation
harm to another
trust violation
although extrapersonalists felt worse from incidents of social impropriety than did cynics and egoists, they did not feel worse than contextualists. Hypothesis 2 was also only partially supported, with extrapersonalists, as predicted, feeling worse than contextualists on exposed inadequacy but, contrary to our prediction, not worse than cynics. The interactive effects of belief systems x gender was essentially zero. 5.2. Belief systems as measured by the BST 5.2.1.
Correlations of BST with shame and guilt
The generally low shared variance among the 12 BST clusters made its control unnecessary and rendered simple correlation an acceptable measure for the relationship of BST factors with shame and guilt. These correlations are presented in Table 3. The three BST definers of extrapersonalism, knowledge via faith, secular humanism [reflected] and fastidiousness, all correlated positively 0, < 0.01) with guilt from the DCQ cluster dishonesty
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Table 3 Correlations between BST definers and DCQ scenarios DCQ scenario clusters
BST definers
Knowledge via faith Secular humanism (reflected) Fastidiousness Social manipulation Intransigence Distrust of people Reliance on feelings Social engagement Empathy Mutability of truth Constancy of change Polarity of truth (reflected) *p
dishonesty
harm to another person
trust violation
0.31*** 0.26*** 0.18** -0.29*** -0.25*** -0.19** -0.12 0.06 0.13 -0.11 0.00 0.12
0.11 0.13 0.13 -0.24*** -0.23*** -0.23*** 0.23*** 0.25*** 0.34*** 0.06 0.17* 0.11
0.12 0.08 -0.25*** -0.19** -0.19** 0.19** 0.18** 0.22*** 0.03 0.17* 0.08
0.05
social impropriety
exposed inadequacy
0.20*** 0.19** 0.23*** 0.02 0.07 0.03 0.12 0.12 0.13 0.11 0.11 0.11
0.03 0.07 0.09 0.01 0.03 0.05 0.18** 0.19** 0.24*** 0.06 0.13 0.02
**p
and with shame from the cluster social impropriety. None of these definers, however, correlated significantly with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation, nor with shame from exposed inadequacy. Thus, hypothesis 6 is confirmed. All three BST definers of cynicism, social manipulation, intransigence and distrust of people, correlated negatively (pcO.01) with guilt from dishonesty, opposite to the definers of extrapersonalism, correlated negatively (p~O.01) with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation, opposite to the definers of egoism and correlated near zero with shame from social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. These results confirm hypothesis 7. All three definers of egoism, reliance on feelings, social engagement and empathy, correlated positively (p~O.01) with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation and with shame from exposed inadequacy. None of the BST definers of egoism, however, correlated significantly with guilt from dishonesty or with shame from social impropriety. These results confirm hypothesis 8. Of the three definers of contextualism, only constancy of change correlated significantly with feelings evoked by any of the scenarios, only harm to another person and trust violation, thereby only partially confirming hypothesis 9.
6. Discussion While on average representatives of all four belief systems felt worst from harm to another person and trust violation, least bad from dishonesty, and intermediately bad from social impropriety and
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exposed inadequacy, the strength of bad feelings aroused by the DCQ scenarios varied significantly between systems in consistently similar and dissimilar ways, The greater positive influence of impersonal rules and norms on the guilt and shame of extrapersonalists than on representatives of the other systems is evidenced in extrapersonalists feeling significantly worse than cynics, egoists or contextualists from the scenario cluster dishonesty, worse than cynics or egoists from social impropriety and worse than contextualists from exposed inadequacy. Our hypothesis that extrapersonalists would feel no worse than egoists from exposed inadequacy was based on the high level of concern for public image management common to these two systems. Though unpredicted, it is understandable in retrospect that cynics’ fear of selfdisclosure would likewise make them vulnerable to shame from such exposure, despite their claims of public indifference toward acceptance by others. The strong influence of extrapersonalists’ beliefs about impersonal rules on their shame and guilt is even more strongly suggested in the pattern of correlations between the BST definers of extrapersonalism and feelings toward the DCQ clusters. While all three of these definers correlated positively with bad feelings evoked by the impersonal violations in the DCQ clusters dishonesty and social impropriety, none of them correlated with the level of bad feelings aroused by harm to another person, trust violation and exposed inadequacy, all three of which represent violations detrimental to a person, to self or another. Influence of the antinormative beliefs of cynics, as measured by the TIB, on their reactions to the DCQ scenarios is evidenced by their reports of significantly less guilt than extrapersonalists, egoists or contextualists from the behaviors portrayed in harm to another person, significantly weaker bad feelings than extrapersonalists from behaviors on the shame-linked cluster of social impropriety and, like egoists and contextualists, less guilt than extrapersonalists from dishonesty. Moreover, the nine significant correlations between the definers of cynicism and responses to the DCQ scenarios dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation were all negative. This was the reverse of the correlations between the BST definers of extrapersonalism and feelings toward dishonesty and social impropriety, the reverse of the correlations between BST definers of egoism and feelings toward the scenario clusters harm to another person, trust violation and exposed inadequacy and unlike the mostly negligible correlations between BST definers of contextualism and shame and guilt. The negative correlations between the BST definers of cynicism and guilt from dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation do not mean, however, that cynics generally felt good from transgressions depicted in these person-related scenarios. Instead, as shown in an unreported crosstabulation analysis, as scores on the BST definers increased, cynics tended to feel less bad for these violations, but not to the point of feeling good. Egoists, like cynics and contextualists, felt significantly less bad than extrapersonalists from dishonesty and, like cynics, less bad than extrapersonalists from social impropriety. But like extrapersonalists, they reported significantly greater guilt than cynics from the person-linked cluster harm to another person and the person-linked cluster trust violation. Though none of the BST definers of egoism correlated with feelings from the impersonal violations in dishonesty, all three correlated positively with guilt from the personally detrimental behaviors depicted in harm to another person and trust violation, the opposite of extrapersonalism. While both egoists and extrapersonalists as measured by the TIB reported significantly stronger and more widespread guilt than either cynics or contextualists, extrapersonalists felt greater guilt
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than egoists from impersonal transgressions and egoists felt greater guilt than extrapersonalists from personal transgressions. Extrapersonalists as measured by the TIB also reported stronger and more widespread shame than representatives of the other systems, a picture that is clarified by the correlations of the BST measures with shame. While none of the definers of cynicism or contextualism correlated with shame from social impropriety or exposed inadequacy, definers of extrapersonalism correlated with shame from social improprieties and misconduct, and definers of egoism correlated with shame from a publicly inadequate performance of a personal task that presumably threatened their conceptions of themselves as special persons. These results for egoists appear consistent with the position of several prominent psychoanalytical oriented writers (e.g. Piers, 1953; Wurmser, 1987; Morrison, 1989) that narcissism is a predominant predispositional underpinning of shame. The results for Extrapersonalists seem to suggest strongly, however, that narcissism is not the sole dispositional basis of shame, unless the concept of narcissism is expanded to include such orientations as those of Extrapersonalism, an over-stretch in our opinion. Though contextualists and cynics as measured by the TIB responded to the DCQ scenarios more similarly than to either extrapersonalists or egoists, the patterns of correlations of the BST definers of contextualists and cynics with shame and guilt are very different. All three of the BST definers of cynicism correlated negatively with feelings from the three guilt-linked scenarios dishonesty, harm to another person and trust violation, while only one BST definer of contextualism, constancy of change, correlated significantly with responses to any DCQ cluster: positively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation. This paucity of correlations between definers of contextualism and responses to the DCQ scenarios suggests that the belief system of contextualism relate to shame and guilt less than do the other systems. Our characterization of the violations that engender guilt for the extrapersonalist as more impersonal than for representatives of the other systems may be at sharp odds with the perspective of the extrapersonalist, who may experience guilt not so much from the violation of a rule per se as from transgression against the ascribed author of the rule, an eminently, and often infinitely, deserving extrapersonal other conceived as personal by the extrapersonalist. We would note further, as we have elsewhere (Harvey et al., 1997), that shame and guilt as measured in this study are not feelings evoked by actual transgressions or shortfalls, but rather are expressions of expectations, possibly hopes, by the respondents of how they would feel should they behave in ways portrayed in the DCQ scenarios. Yet, while these scenarios could be undesirably hypothetical and depict only minor violations, they may provide the advantage of evoking more optimal variance in responses to them than if they represented respondents’ own life experiences or were otherwise more uniformly engaging for all subjects. Lastly, we would suggest it as highly likely that the effects of belief systems as measured by the TIB on both shame and guilt were considerably diluted by including as participants representatives of mixed systems rather than only single or “pure” systems, the more typical practice in the study of belief systems. References Batres, A. R. (1984). Parental methods of control/influence dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder.
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