Moral Affects, Empathy, and Integrative Self-Knowledge in Iran

Abstract

In the more individualistic West, guilt promotes and shame interferes with empathic sensitivity. This investigation sought to determine if similar results would appear in the presumably more interdependent cultural context of Iran. Iranian university students ( N = 220) responded to guilt and shame scales along with measures of other-oriented empathy and empathic distress. As in the West, guilt predicted greater other-oriented empathy, shame correlated positively with empathic distress, and relationships with integrative self-knowledge, self-esteem, covert narcissism, depression, and anxiety confirmed guilt and other-oriented empathy as adaptive and shame and empathic distress as maladaptive. Integrative self-knowledge mediated shame but not guilt relationships with other measures. In contrast to Western findings, Iranian women did not score higher on shame, and guilt correlated positively with empathic distress. These data confirmed Iranian parallels with the previously reported dynamics of empathy and moral affects in the West, but Iranian differences also pointed toward the need for additional research.