The role of the shame (isin) moral value in Javanese culture and its impact on personality traits, and shame and guilt emotions of the young Javanese generation

Abstract

Shame and guilt are moral emotions that motivate ethical social behaviour and encourage normal abiding behaviours. Considering the fundamental Javanese values involved in the concept of isin (shame), that the Javanese tend to have a high degree of the five traits that make up a personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. This study aimed to explore the relationship between the personality trait, and shame and guilt emotions. The study’s participants were 165 university students whose parents were Javanese and who had been raised and lived in Yogyakarta and its surroundings, an area which is central to their culture. The NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) was used to capture the personality profile, and the Guilt And Shame Proneness (GASP) Scale was used to measure the shame and guilt proneness action tendency. The result of this study showed that the conscientiousness trait merely correlated with the emotion of guilt, neuroticism only correlated with the emotion of shame, whereas agreeableness correlated with both shame and guilt emotions. Furthermore, the results also revealed that the response shown by the Javanese people when they felt guilt was mostly reparative behaviour. Only people with high agreeableness and extraversion traits showed withdrawal behaviour.