Background
Shame, as a self-conscious, complex, and universal emotion, plays an important role in mental health. In adolescents, given their greater vulnerability to the development of psychological ...difficulties, the assessment of shame, in its various dimensions, is especially relevant.
Objective
To adapt and validate the External and Internal Shame Scale for adolescents (EISS-A). Specifically, the EISS-A factor structure, reliability, and validity were analysed.
Methods
The studies were conducted in two Portuguese independent samples aged 12 to 18 years old (
N
= 497; 58.2% female). Participants voluntarily completed a set of self-report questionnaires in the classroom. Forty-one adolescents completed the EISS-A 4-weeks after the first administration.
Results
The second-order confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the EISS-A model of two related factors (external and internal shame). This model was replicated in a second independent sample. The EISS-A showed measure invariance across sex. It revealed adequate internal consistency (α = .85), test–retest reliability (
r
= .81), and concurrent validity with different measures of positive and negative affect. Girls showed higher shame (internal and external) scores. Age and education showed a weak positive association with shame. The EISS-A presented significant positive correlations with indicators of psychopathology (symptoms of anxiety and depression), with self-criticism and external shame (assessed by another instrument). Inversely, it showed negative associations with self-reassurance and with favourable social comparison.
Conclusions
The EISS-A is a short, reliable, and useful measure for research, educational and clinical contexts with school-aged adolescents. Measuring shame may contribute to a broader understanding of its role during the most formative years of an individual’s life.
Shame is considered an important factor in the development and maintenance of many psychological disorders, e.g., social anxiety disorder, and an interesting target point for therapeutic ...intervention.
In the present experimental study, we used an online-adopted Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task (AEMT) to induce shame and tested different micro-interventions (self-compassion, cognitive reappraisal, and a control intervention) with respect to their potential to reduce shame intensity. One-hundred-and-fifteen healthy subjects participated in the study and completed a series of self-report questionnaires on self-compassion, shame, and social anxiety.
The experimental shame induction was well accepted and successful (with significantly heightened feelings of shame); there were no study drop-outs. There was a significant time*condition interaction, which was due the self-compassion-based intervention resulting in a significantly larger reduction of shame than the control condition (counting fishes). In addition, the main effect of the factor experimental condition was further moderated (enhanced) by trait social anxiety and trait self-compassion.
The findings demonstrate the usefulness of online-adopted AEMT for the experimental induction of shame. They suggest that especially self-compassion interventions can be beneficial in alleviating intense shame experiences, which is in accordance with self-compassion theory. Overall, the results are promising in the context of experimental shame research and its potential clinical impacts call for further replication.
The concept of shame in Arab societies displays multiple differences when compared to Western societies in terms of nature, sources, types, and correlates. Surprisingly, we could not find any study ...investigating this increasingly important construct in Arab countries or the broad Arabic-speaking communities. This may likely be due to the lack of valid instruments assessing shame in the Arabic language. To address this major gap and contribute to the international literature, we sought to examine the psychometric properties of an Arabic translation of the External and Internal Shame Scale (EISS) among a community sample of Arabic-speaking adults from Lebanon.
An online survey was conducted among Lebanese adults between July and August 2022. A total of 570 Lebanese adults completed the EISS, as well as Depression Anxiety Stress Scales, Other as shamer scale, and the Standardized Stigmatization Questionnaire. Exploratory-to-confirmatory (EFA-CFA) factor analyses were conducted.
Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a unidimensional model of EISS scores, with all eight items retained. Scores achieved scalar invariance across gender, with no significant difference reported between females and males. EISS scores were found to have adequate composite reliability (McDonald's ω = 0.88 for the total score); as well as adequate patterns of correlations with depression, anxiety and stress symptoms, as well as stigmatization scores. Finally, our analyses provide support to the concurrent validity of the Arabic version of the scale, by showing that the EISS total scores strongly correlated with the external shame measure "other as shamer".
Although further validations are necessary before our findings could be generalized, we preliminarily suggest that this is a short, easy-to-use, self-report scale that enables a reliable and valid measure of the shame construct among Arabic-speaking people.
Shame, Guilt, and Secrets on the Mind Slepian, Michael L.; Kirby, James N.; Kalokerinos, Elise K.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.),
03/2020, Volume:
20, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Recent work suggests that what is harmful about secrecy is not active concealment within social interactions but rather mind wandering to a secret outside of concealment contexts. However, it is not ...yet clear what predicts mind wandering to and concealing secrets. We proposed that emotional appraisals of shame and guilt for secrecy would predict how secrecy is experienced. Four studies with 1,000 participants keeping more than 6,000 secrets demonstrated that shame was linked with increased mind wandering to the secret. Guilt, in contrast, was linked with reduced mind wandering to the secret. The current work represents the first test of how emotions from secrecy determine how that secrecy is experienced.
Drawing on various studies, we provide a holistic view incorporating different nested cultural contexts, organizational shame, and health outcomes. We introduce the concept of organizational shame ...and explain its two key domains: conformity and status/competition. Then, we comprehensively review prior studies on cultural approaches to shame and propose our cultural variance model of organizational shame. Our model illustrates an equilibrium, exhibiting dominant and stable patterns of shame domains formed by reinforcing relationships among three key nested contextual layers: individuals (workers), organizations (firms), and the labor market. We apply our model to discuss general and occupational implications and outline future research directions. Thus, we hope to conceptualize organizational shame within the dynamic contexts of organizations and cultures.
On any given day in America's news cycle, stories and images of disgraced politicians and celebrities solicit our moral indignation, their misdeeds fueling a lucrative economy of shame and scandal. ...Shame is one of the most coercive, painful, and intriguing of human emotions. Only in recent years has interest in shame extended beyond a focus on the subjective experience of this emotion and its psychological effects. The essays collected here consider the role of shame as cultural practice and examine ways that public shaming practices enforce conformity and group coherence. Addressing abortion, mental illness, suicide, immigration, and body image among other issues, this volume calls attention to the ways shaming practices create and police social boundaries; how shaming speech is endorsed, judged, or challenged by various groups; and the distinct ways that shame is encoded and embodied in a nation that prides itself on individualism, diversity, and exceptionalism. Examining shame through a prism of race, sexuality, ethnicity, and gender, these provocative essays offer a broader understanding of how America's discourse of shame helps to define its people as citizens, spectators, consumers, and moral actors.
The conflict in Northern Ireland Hyslop, Jon; Jackson, Jonathan
Journal of global faultlines,
05/2024, Volume:
11, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
War is the most destructive of human actions, leaving a legacy of hatred, violence, and destruction which can often take decades to rebuild. The victims of war are endless, from those directly ...involved in the chaos, to the generations that follow and attempt to rebuild their shattered lives. Many experiences of the victims of war remain largely undiagnosed or even recognized, producing feelings of shame and fear that create the conditions for new conflicts to emerge. Academia is more than just analyzing data; it is the creation of a space in which to allow the recording of stories and reflections of those involved in major historical episodes. The piece hopes to provide an opportunity for just one military voice from the complex and chaotic period of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland to speak and share their reflections to help understand the human cost of war.
Invited to contribute some thoughts on recent developments in psychoanalytic thinking about shame, the author starts off with Aristotle's prescient analysis of shame and then focuses on accumulating ...experiences in the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with severe neuroses, in particular the close relationship of severe traumatization and chronic states of shame, and how this is reflected in shelfdestructive repetitions. Reminiscent of what we know from tragedy and the tragic dimension of human existence, this repetition compulsion shows a built-in circularity. These circular dynamics have at their core struggles with deep woundedness that can variably be conceived of as primary pain, primary shame and primary anxiety.
Consequently, throughout the experiences with these patients goes the absoluteness both of their conscience and of their ideal, what we know as the "archaic superego:"
Abstract
British South Asian male child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors face a twofold problem: lack of research on this phenomenon and limited service provision. First, male CSA survivors have ...traditionally been marginalized in favour of female CSA survivors, a group that forms the basis of most academic research and to whom the majority of counselling and support services in the UK cater (Rapsey et al. 2020). The centrality of these female experiences, although crucial to understanding CSA survivor experiences in general, has eclipsed the specific narratives of male survivors. Second, despite the UK’s incredibly multicultural population, people from minoritized backgrounds still experience institutional forms of racism that are entrenched in service provision and research and that lead to racialized and Eurocentric perspectives and practices (Singh 2019). This article thus seeks to expand on the existing body of literature on male CSA in minoritized groups. It illuminates the experiences of male survivors from British South Asian communities, creating space for the much-needed voices of a critically under-researched group.
With the developing acceptance of gay equality in the west, it is assumed that we live in a post-shame era, with 'the world we have won'. However, this is a chimeric cliché of neoliberalism (rather ...like the idea that we are all postfeminist now). The 'proud' homosexual of the west is discursively constructed against the 'shamed' homosexual of the east, a typecasting resonant with postcolonial clichés of the primal, religious, and homophobic savagery of the global south in contrast with the civilising, liberal evolution of the secular global north. Shame displacement is of course a dynamic of shame itself. The perceived failure in achieving the 'proud iconic gay' of media cultures in the global North results in a traumatic double bind of being ashamed of being ashamed. This article will reconsider the cultural politics and temporality of shame for primarily white gay identities after the 'War on Terror'. As Islamophobia has exponentially increased, some western gays translocate their unacknowledged shame onto a misconceived 'brown threat' in a complex, aggressive, and racist shame loop Lewis, H.B., 1971. Shame and guilt in neurosis. New York: International Universities Press; Scheff, T.J., and Retzinger, S.M., 1991. Emotions and violence: shame and rage in destructive conflict. New York: Lexington Books.
PDF