Abstract

BackgroundShame is considered a maladaptive self‐conscious emotion that commonly co‐occurs alongside depression and anxiety. Little is known, however, about the aetiology of shame and its associations with depression and anxiety. We estimated, for the first time, genetic and environmental influences on shame and on its associations with depression and anxiety in adolescence.MethodsThe sample was twin and sibling pairs from the Genesis 1219 Study (Time 1, N = 2,685; males 42.8%, M age = 14.95, SD = 1.67, age range: 12–21; Time 2, N = 1618; males 39.7%, M age = 16.97, SD = 1.64, age range: 14–23). Participants completed validated questionnaires to measure shame (at Time 1), depression and anxiety (at Times 1 and 2).ResultsShame was moderately to strongly associated with concurrent depression and anxiety. Prospectively, shame was significantly associated with an increase in depression, but not anxiety. Genetic analyses revealed that shame was moderately heritable with substantial nonshared environmental influence. The associations between shame and concurrent depression and anxiety were primarily accounted for by overlapping genetic influences. Prospectively, the association between shame and later depression was primarily accounted for by genetic and nonshared environmental influences shared with earlier depression. The unique association between shame and later depression was mostly explained by common nonshared environmental influences.ConclusionsThe findings offer novel evidence regarding aetiology of shame—although moderately heritable, shame in adolescents may also result from nonshared environmental factors. Genetic and nonshared environmental influences contribute to the co‐occurrence of shame with depression and anxiety.

Highlights

  • Shame is a self-conscious emotion that refers to the negative evaluation of the self, typically caused by the violation of social standards (Tangney, 1999)

  • At Time 2, 1,618 adolescents who reported on their anxiety and depression symptoms were included: 373 monozygotic twins, 792 dizygotic twins, 123 twins of unknown zygosity and 330 siblings

  • When accounting for anxiety in the relation between shame and depression at Time 1, as well as when accounting for depression in the relation between shame and anxiety, the correlation decreased to being moderate in strength, but remained significant, suggesting that shame has a unique contribution to depression and a unique contribution to anxiety over and above the influence of the other psychopathological symptoms

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Summary

Introduction

Shame is a self-conscious emotion that refers to the negative evaluation of the self, typically caused by the violation of social standards (Tangney, 1999). We estimated, for the first time, the genetic and environmental influences on shame and on its associations with depression and anxiety using twin and sibling data. Shame is considered a maladaptive self-conscious emotion that commonly co-occurs alongside depression and anxiety. For the first time, genetic and environmental influences on shame and on its associations with depression and anxiety in adolescence. Results: Shame was moderately to strongly associated with concurrent depression and anxiety. The associations between shame and concurrent depression and anxiety were primarily accounted for by overlapping genetic influences. The association between shame and later depression was primarily accounted for by genetic and nonshared environmental influences shared with earlier depression. Genetic and nonshared environmental influences contribute to the co-occurrence of shame with depression and anxiety.

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