The Effect of Self-Regulation of Shame on Teenagers’ Aggression

Liusheng Wang,Biao Sang

doi:10.31577/sp.2020.01.791

Abstract

Studies have found that shame and aggression are closely connected, and self-blaming and re-planning strategies can regulate an individual’s shame. This study conducted two experiments to investigate the effects of self-regulation of shame on explicit and implicit aggressiveness of adolescents. Shame was induced in both experiments by audio recordings describing different shameful situations that adolescents may experience in daily life. The participants of 7th Grade were required to self-regulate their shame by self-blaming strategy, re-planning strategy, or non-regulation, and rated their explicit aggressiveness in study 1 and did implicit association test (IAT) in study 2, respectively. The current studies found that the regulation of shame with self-blaming strategy enhanced explicit aggression, but could not affect the bias of implicit aggression.

Highlights

Shame is a painful experience that involves a negative evaluation of one’s entire self
Previous studies on the relationship between shame and aggression have found that shameful experiences can increase adolescent hostility (Heaven et al, 2009), that shameful experiences are strongly related to aggressive behavior (Åslund et al, 2009), and that shame can lead to more aggressive behavior (Schoenleber, Sippel, Jakupcak, & Tull, 2015)
Self-blaming strategy has been found to be a partial mediator of the association between shame and aggression (Zhang et al, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

Shame is a painful experience that involves a negative evaluation of one’s entire self. This evaluation and self-censorship changes an individual’s self-perception, and is accompanied by feelings of fright, and a sense of insignificance, powerlessness, and worthlessness, as well as public exposure (Lewis, 1971). As a negative self-consciousness emotion, shame has a detrimental effect on an individual’s psychology and behavior, such as enhanced aggression. There have been theories and empirical studies that focused on the relationship between shame and aggression (Elison, Garofalo, & Velotti, 2014). Attacking others is one of the four typical ways that individuals deal with shame. Individuals are often unwilling to accept shame when they experience it, so they externalize shame by directing anger at others or the external environment, which in some way enables selves to feel the diminished shame

Methods

Results

Conclusion