Nature Of Shame Research Articles

Resting Heart Rate Variability Is Positively Associated With Proneness to Guilt but not Shame in Chinese Young Adults

Abstract: A high proneness to experience shame and guilt has been associated with psychopathology. Despite their similarity, shame- and guilt-proneness have different psychological and neurobiological correlates. The present study aims to compare the physiological correlates between shame- and guilt-proneness. Resting heart rate variability (HRV), a peripheral biomarker of emotion dysregulation and psychopathology, was measured in a sample of 60 Chinese young adults with two sessions of electrocardiogram recording. Proneness to shame and guilt were measured by the Test of Self-Conscious Affect – 3. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that guilt-proneness was positively associated with HRV while shame-proneness was not. Our findings implied that shame- and guilt-proneness have different relations with HRV. The distinct physiological relations are discussed with respect to the adaptive/maladaptive nature of shame- and guilt-proneness.

Shame at the Gates of Medicine: A Hermeneutic Exploration of Premedical Students' Experiences of Shame.

Little is known about the nature of shame in students attempting to enter medical school, despite its potential to impact well-being and professional identity formation during training. In this study, the authors used hermeneutic phenomenology to ask: How do premedical students experience shame as they apply to medical school? From September 2020 to March 2021, the authors recruited 12 students from a U.S. Master of Biomedical Sciences program who intended to apply to medical school. Data collection consisted of each participant creating a "rich picture" depicting a shame experience during their premedical training, a semistructured interview that deeply explored this and other shame experiences, and a debriefing session. Data were analyzed using Ajjawi and Higgs's 6 steps of hermeneutic analysis. Self-concept, composed of an individual's identities and contingencies of self-esteem, was central to participants' shame experiences. Through a confluence of past and future self-concepts and under the influence of external factors and the weight of expectations, shame often destabilized participants' present self-concepts. This destabilization occurred because of events related to application processes (repeat Medical College Admission Test attempts), interpersonal interactions (prehealth advisor meetings), and objective performance measures (grades, test scores). Participants' efforts to restabilize their self-concept catalyzed specific identity processes and self-concept formation. Shame provided a window into the emotional experiences, identity processes, and ideologies that shape students' attempts to enter medical school. The authors discuss the central role of contingencies of self-esteem, the potential origins of performance-based self-esteem in trainees, and the identity negotiation and identity work involved in shame reactions. They call for the adoption of contingencies of self-esteem within current conceptualizations of professional identity formation; training for faculty and prehealth advisors about the nature of shame in premedical learners; and consideration of the consequential validity of standardized tests, which may trigger damaging shame.

Shy (Modest, Shame) Feelings and Experiences in Committing Immoral Acts among Malay and Chinese Adolescents

Every race and religion, especially the Malays and Chinese, have been found to make shyness a part of their characteristics as a deterrent from doing wrong and immoral behaviour in their society. However, the statistics of moral problems, including criminal acts among adolescents, which are increasing and terrifying every year, indirectly show that the nature of shame in committing immoral acts in society has been eroded. Thus, this study aims to explore the shame experienced by Malay and Chinese youth in committing immoral acts. This study uses the survey method. According to the mapping done on Malaysian adolescents, this study focuses on Malay and Chinese adolescents from the four districts with the highest percentage of adolescent involvement in deviant behaviour in Selangor. The districts are Petaling, Ulu Langat, Kelang, and Gombak. The study results showed that the adolescents in the above district still feel and experience shame and shyness and the degree of shame in doing a bad, wrong, and immoral act is still high.

Психологизм Н. В. Гоголя

The article first considers the heritage specifics of Nikolai Gogol as a satirist from the point of view of the writer’s psychology. The close connection of psychology and satire in Nikolai Gogol’s creative work is explained by the Christian understanding of the fall of human nature. According to Nikolai Gogol, a spiritual assessment of an imperfect state of the soul inevitably leads the artist to critical pathos — a state of mind far from ideal cannot be the subject of poetic approval under any pretext, but has the right to claim only a satirical image. The guarantee of the realism of the artistic image is the impartial truth about the fallen man. The fundamental property of Nikolai Gogol’s poetics is the creative combination of pastoral conviction with satirical mockery. The artist’s confession about his own shortcomings, the expulsion of vice through laughter, is a means of involving the reader in the process of transformation, the ultimate goal of which is the resurrection of “dead souls”. The paper analyses the role of the diary and confession in the formation of Nikolai Gogol’s satire, the writer’s attitude to the “psychologism” of contemporary literature, his view on the problem of the positive character. The history of the aging of Nikolai Gogol’s views on the healing value of laughter, the artist’s conscious orientation in upbringing of his contemporaries towards the active nature of shame and confession is traced in detail.

URGENSI PENDIDIKAN SIFAT MALU DALAM HADITS (Telaah Hadits Imran Ibn Husain tentang Sifat Malu dalam Kitab Musnad Ahmad Ibn Hanbal)

In the hadith of the Prophet explained one of the attributes called the term al-haya '. The nature of al-haya �is translated in Indonesian with the meaning of shame. Most people assume the nature of shame is a bad trait that should be kept away from someone's personal. But the shame is actually recommended by the Prophet because it is a good quality as stipulated in the hadith of Imran Ibn Husain, narrated by Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. This study aims to provide an explanation of the nature of shame mentioned by the Prophet as one of the good qualities. The conclusion of this study is the answer for people who still have the notion that shame is a bad trait that must be abandoned. The nature of shame is very urgent in Islamic education that should be fostered by all Muslims. That is due to the nature of shame can contribute to education, among others: 1) Education in shame can foster human ability to maintain the mind; 2) Keeping away actions that consume things that are prohibited; 3) Always remember death; 4) Become a person who is zuhud; 5) Contribute to the education of faith; 6) Education to decorate and beautify yourself with commendable qualities namely shame; 7) Human education to achieve the love of Allah.�Keywords: Hadith, Prophet, Imran, Embarrassed, Education

Shame and shamelessness in contexts of care and caregiving in Philip Roth’s Patrimony (1991) and Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles (2012)

ABSTRACTThis essay argues that the ambivalent nature of shame – a feeling that oscillates between the personal and the public, between hiding and uncovering – is meaningfully illuminated in narratives of care. Via drawing on two very different somatographies, Philip Roth’s Patrimony (1991) and Sarah Leavitt’s graphic narrative Tangles: Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me (2012), shame is explored from the perspective of adult children who care for their ill and dying parents. While Roth concentrates on the experiences of weakness, dependency and mortality and what it does to the virility and power associated with manhood, Leavitt focuses on shame within the context of spoilt or damaged identity and thus interconnects her mother’s mental illness and her own lesbianism. While closely analysing the intricate mechanisms of shame in contexts of caregiving and care-receiving, it is demonstrated that shame is not merely a personal affliction or an interior quality, but that shame always feeds itself on previous stigmatisations that subconsciously influence present experiences. Both works focus on shame’s capacity to destroy identity; simultaneously however, they draw the reader’s attention to the ways in which shame constitutes fragile, non-essentialist new identities that counter and question the social imperatives that originally caused the feeling of shame.

Reading the Garden(ing) Trope in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light

This article examines how gardening in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light is symbolic of efforts to cultivate white identity. It argues that gardening is a significant trope in the novel where the Campbells’ meticulous tending of their garden echoes their efforts to cultivate and nurture white identities by repressing their coloured past. The article employs Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of “the gardening state” to appreciate the Campbells’ attempts to cultivate whiteness in an apartheid environment that encouraged the cultivation and maintenance of whiteness as a superior racial category. The article also refers to Hellen Lynd and Gershen Kaufman’s postulations about the visual/public nature of shame as well as Freudian idea of the uncanny to explain a sense of shame and fear of the repressed that underlies the Campbells’ passing for white.

Above and beyond emotional valence: The unique contribution of central and traumatic shame memories to psychopathology vulnerability

This paper explores whether shame memories have a distinct impact on emotional difficulties and psychopathology that goes beyond their negative emotional valence. Study 1 (N=292) investigates the contribution of centrality of shame memory, in comparison to the centrality of fear and sadness memories, to explain the memory's traumatic impact, shame, depression, anxiety, stress, paranoid, and dissociative symptoms. Study 2 (N=192) explores the impact of shame traumatic memory on shame and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, in comparison to fear and sadness traumatic memories. Both studies used undergraduate student samples. Results show that shame memories' centrality and traumatic features made an independent contribution to current external and internal shame and distinct psychopathological symptoms, after controlling for the effect of fear and sadness, centrality, and traumatic qualities. Moreover, shame memories' centrality and traumatic features were the best global predictors of external and internal shame and depressive symptoms. Centrality of shame memories was also the only significant predictor of paranoid ideation and dissociation. These results offer novel perspectives on the nature of shame and its relation to psychopathology, emphasising the distinct role of shame memories in human functioning and suffering, which goes above and beyond its negative emotional valence.

Tracking shame and humiliation in Accident and Emergency

In this paper, we reflect upon shame and humiliation as threats to personal and professional integrity and moral agency within contemporary health care. A personal narrative, written by a nurse about a particular shift in a British National Health Service Accident and Emergency Department, is provided as a case study. This is critically reflected and commented upon in dialogue with insights into the nature of shame and humiliation. It is suggested that Accident and Emergency is a locus that is latently prone to dynamics of shame and humiliation, a potential exacerbated within a culture subject to externally-determined time targets that are enforced by a top-down system of surveillance and management. The result is that nurses may lose their sense of professional competence and responsibility, moral agency, and integrity, to their own personal detriment, as well as to the detriment of patients with whom they work. Insofar as examining a small part of a whole may suggest insights into the operation and ethos of a very large system, this very particular case study narrative/reflection has some important implications and lessons for the wider organization and provision of health care in Britain and beyond.

Shame as a traumatic memory

This study explores the premise that shame episodes can have the properties of traumatic memories, involving intrusions, flashbacks, strong emotional avoidance, hyper arousal, fragmented states of mind and dissociation. A battery of self-report questionnaires was used to assess shame, shame traumatic memory and depression in 811 participants from general population (481 undergraduate students and 330 subjects from normal population). Results show that early shame experiences do indeed reveal traumatic memory characteristics. Moreover, these experiences are associated with current feelings of internal and external shame in adulthood. We also found that current shame and depression are significantly related. Key to our findings is that those individuals whose shame memories display more traumatic characteristics show more depressive symptoms. A moderator analysis suggested an effect of shame traumatic memory on the relationship between shame and depression. The transversal nature of our study design, the use of self-reports questionnaires, the possibility of selective memories in participants' retrospective reports and the use of a general community sample, are some methodological limitations that should be considered in our investigation. Our study presents novel perspectives on the nature of shame and its relation to psychopathology, empirically supporting the proposal that shame memories have traumatic memory characteristics, that not only affect shame in adulthood but also seem to moderate the impact of shame on depression. Therefore, these considerations emphasize the importance of assessing and intervening on shame memories in a therapeutic context.

Shame and guilt in restorative justice.

In this article, I examine the relevance and desirability of shame and guilt to restorative justice conferences. I argue that a careful study of the psychology of shame and guilt reveals that both emotions possess traits that can be desirable and traits that can be undesirable for restoration. More in particular, having presented the aims of restorative justice, the importance of face-to-face conferences in reaching these aims, the emotional dynamics that take place within such conferences, and the relevant parts of the empirical psychology of shame and guilt, I argue that restorative justice practitioners have to take account of a rather more complex picture than it had hitherto been thought. Restorative conferences are not simply about “shame management,” though practitioners must certainly avoid shaming and humiliation. Given the nature of shame, guilt, and restorative conferences, it is not possible to provide a single concrete precept applicable to all restorative conferences. The successful holding of conferences depends in large part on the cultural and situational specificities at hand. The latter include among others knowledge of the perceived relations standing between victim and offender as well as the affective specificities of the individuals involved.

The Body and Mind (Including of the Analyst) in the Treatment of a Psychotic State: Some Reflections: Commentary on Paper by Riccardo Lombardi

Riccardo Lombardi's paper is considered from a British (Independent) object relations perspective. Although the paper deals with the experience of shame and its relationship to fantasies about sex and death and how these are experienced (including in the body), shame is also a profoundly object related mental state, perhaps one of the most damaging when suffered in infancy, leading to reflexive functioning. The nature of shame is touched upon and its impact on personality development, and how this is handled in the transference and countertransference by Riccardo Lombardi with his particular patient. Although the patient's struggle to own his own hate is Lombardi's principal focus in the clinical account, this author suggests that Lombardi was attuned primarily to the patient's developmental failings due to the impact of shame and, by working primarily in the countertransference, was able to facilitate growth of certain personality functions for the first time.

Everyday shame

This article explores aspects of the everyday through a consideration of shame. Drawing on and extending Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus, notably in relationship to Silvan Tomkins’ affect theory, and to Bourdieu’s predecessor Marcel Mauss, the paper argues for the positivity of everyday shame. The very different although complementary privileging of the physiological in Tomkins and in Mauss allows for a radical rearticulation and understanding of the habitus and of everyday life. In this article, their understandings serve to provide a model that more fully comprehends the productive nature of shame within postcolonial societies.

Assuming identities: Kafka's Curse and the unsilenced voice

Summary As Zoë Wicomb observes in “Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South Africa” (1998), the country's history of miscegenation has been silenced by the very people whom the practice has created: “it is after all the very nature of shame to stifle its own discourse” (Wicomb quoted by Attridge & Jolly 1998:92). In chronicling the ways in which the color bar was constantly and continually being subverted through interracial couplings, Kafka's Curse (Dangor 1997) works to challenge the silence surrounding miscegenation as well as the idea that pure categories of race could even exist. But the categories must not be ignored altogether. Kafka's Curse cautions against a total rejection of attachment to origins, obscure, distant or elusive as those origins may be. It must be the project of the new South African literature to examine the role of ethnic identification in nation‐building, and to consider how “remembrance” can be harnessed toward it.