Shame Management Research Articles

Evolved Cognition and Cultural Transmission of Honour Concepts

Abstract In many cultures people value the importance of honour and related rules and behaviours. Honour can be seen as concepts and cultural items represented and processed according to evolved cognitive capacities and emotions supported by local social institutional arrangements. Indeed, this article holds that one reasonable way to analyze honour is to model how cognitive processes and transmission biases work in tandem with institutional support and environmental cues to exert selective pressures on the cultural distribution and formation of honour. The scope of this article is theoretical, aiming to address and explain culturally recurrent aspects of widespread honour concepts. What evolved cognitive systems and selection factors underpin the cultural transmission of honour concepts and institutions? It will be argued that the transmission of honour concepts draws upon cognitive systems referring to male formidability, management of reputation, coalitions, costly signals, shame and stigma, concern for protectiveness and parental investments, essentialist understanding and disgust and on the cognition of institutions.

Psychopathy-Related Personality Traits and Shame Management Strategies in Adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine whether there is a correlation between the amount of psychopathy-related personality traits and the type of shame management in adolescents. Two hypotheses were examined; first, that there is a positive correlation between psychopathy-related personality traits and more unconscious and externalized shame management strategies, and second, that there is a negative correlation between psychopathy-related personality traits and more conscious and internalized shame management strategies. Gender differences were also examined. In total, 236 participants were available for the study. All were secondary-level students, aged 16 to 21 years. Of these, 196 were examined: 96 were male and 100 female. The study used two self-assessment forms-the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory (YPI) and the Compass of Shame Scale (CoSS)-to measure the relevant personality characteristics. The results indicated gender differences, which led to all the analyses being conducted separately for males and females. Support was found for the study's first hypothesis, but not for the second, which was true for both males and females. Our results may have implications for the treatment of adolescents with a high percentage of psychopathy-related personality traits; they also indicate the need for more research on the association between psychopathy and shame management.

Learning to Manage Shame in School Bullying: Lessons for Restorative Justice Interventions

Shame management is purported to be part of the healing process that is a goal of restorative justice. However, the development of shame management capacities and how they are engaged in conflict resolution remains a relatively understudied phenomenon. This study examines how shame management (acknowledgment and displacement) is employed by children as they move into and out of cultures of school bullying. The analysis is based on self-reported changes in bullying experiences of 335 Australian children over a three-year period. Children were classified into bully, victim, bully-victim, nonbully-nonvictim, or residual conflict groups. Shame displacement and bullying tolerance accompanied transition into bullying. Shame acknowledgment and control of bullying marked desistence from bullying. Effects of shame management and social control were not uniform across groups. Findings indicate that interventions to change behaviour need to be flexible and responsive to prior bullying experiences so specific risk and protective factors can be targeted. This study demonstrates that responsiveness to context, building socially responsible relationships, and adaptive shame management are all integral to behaviour change, supporting the use of restorative justice as a way of dealing with school bullying as well as other forms of harm.

Managing shame: An interpersonal perspective

Experiences of shame are often difficult to manage, not least because of their interpersonal implications. However, limited research attention has been paid to the management and repair of shame, and in particular to the role that social factors may play in this. We aimed to explore these issues by obtaining 50 written first-person accounts of experiences of managing difficult episodes of shame from a cross section of students and employees at a British university. These participant-generated narrative accounts were supplemented by written answers to open-ended questions. Via a contextual constructionist thematic analysis, three overarching themes were identified: The centrality of others' evaluations of the self; Repositioning the self vis-à-vis others, and Being disabled by shame. Discussion focuses on the first two of these themes which together suggest that because the participants saw their shame as produced in interaction with others, effective management and repair of shame depended not just on a changed view of the self but on a repositioning of the self in relation to others. This analysis therefore suggests that repair of shame may often need to be mutually negotiated and as such provides support for theoretical approaches to shame which emphasize the centrality of others' actual or perceived judgements of the self.

Building a Shame-Based Typology to Guide Treatment for Offenders

Rehabilitative treatment of offenders has traditionally aimed at reducing recidivism. Services are adjusted rationally according to the “risk principle.” Restorative justice points to the increasing importance of an emotionally intelligent justice where shame management is highlighted in mediating individual offender behavior. Informed by the success of restorative justice conferencing, notably with violent crimes, a treatment program dealing with violent offenders adapted a “shame transformation” process. Treatment is based on experiencing victims' feelings through differentiating, then activating, shame and guilt. Research and client observations led to elaboration of three specific groupings according to how early shame affected the offender's life. Traits from each of the three types were collected in a screening instrument called the Shame Guilt Reactivity Index (SGRI) whose construct validity is explored in this research. While the results are promising, more work needs to be done to strengthen the SGRI as an assessment tool for separating the three groups specified.

‘Stop it, that's enough’: Bystander intervention and its relationship to school connectedness and shame management

Bystanders are an invaluable source of information about school bullying. Anti-bullying efforts to deliver justice are hampered if bystanders remain reluctant to discourage bullying; but given that bystanders who intervene to prevent bullying may be at increased risk of retaliation, why would they do so? This study aims to answer what promotes bystander intervention in the context of school bullying using a restorative justice approach. Data were collected through the Cross-national School Behaviour Research Project from 1,452 secondary school students (49% girls) in grades 7–10 in Bangladesh. Students who scored higher on school connectedness were more likely to intervene. High shame acknowledgement (accepting responsibility, making amends) and low shame displacement (blaming or hitting out at others) were also significant predictors of intervening in bullying. Regression analysis indicates that school connectedness compensates for the adverse effect of non-adaptive shame management (low acknowledgement and high displacement) on bullying prevention. Under a ‘whole-of-school’ approach, bystanders who can be referred to as ‘soft targets’ are moved more easily by a sense of collective shame/guilt and responsibility than ‘hard targets’ (such as bullies) whose emotional shell protects them from being ashamed/guilty. Establishing an ethical climate within schools that encourages a culture of mutual respect, shared responsibility and social inclusion may be a positive step towards promoting bystander intervention.

Using the Victim Role as Both Sword and Shield

Recently, criminal justice professionals have advocated restorative justice as an alternative to traditional punitive practices. Extant research has not examined the strategic interpersonal dynamics between victims, offenders, supporters, and facilitators during restorative justice sessions. Our ethnographic study addresses this gap. Building on studies of emotion in reintegrative shaming, we explore how shaming emotions are dramaturgically mediated by the rhetorical use of victim roles. We suggest that this micropolitical shame management facilitates apparently meaningful outcomes, undermines them, or results in agreements based more on realpolitik than reintegration. Our data are derived from detailed field notes at 28 youth restorative justice sessions in a mid-sized Canadian city. Our findings reveal a different picture than the frequently idealized images of restorative justice, thus underscoring the need for further analysis in this important area of criminal justice.

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.

Reintegrative Shaming Theory, moral emotions and bullying

This article investigates the usefulness of Reintegrative Shaming Theory (RST) in explaining the bullying of siblings in families and peers in schools. Questionnaires were completed by 182 children aged 11-12 years in ten primary schools in Nicosia, Cyprus, about sibling and peer bullying. A vignette-based methodology was used to investigate children's expectations of the type of shaming their parents would offer in response to their possible wrong doing. Children were also asked questions about the emotions they would have felt (i.e. shame, remorse, guilt or anger) if they were in the position of the child in the vignette. The level of bonding toward each parent was also examined. In agreement with the theory, a path analysis showed that mother bonding influenced children's expectations of the type of shaming offered by parents. Disintegrative shaming (i.e. shaming offered in a stigmatizing or rejecting way) had a direct effect on the way children managed their shame. Shame management directly influenced sibling and peer bullying. Father bonding had no direct or indirect effects in the model. Against the theory, reintegrative shaming (i.e. shaming offered in the context of approving the wrongdoer while rejecting the wrongdoing) did not have a direct effect on shame management. Beyond the postulates of RST, mother bonding-a plausible indicator of family functioning-had a direct effect on sibling and peer bullying. Mother bonding had a stronger effect for boys than for girls. It is concluded that RST is useful in explaining the link between family factors and bullying, and that RST has cross-cultural applicability.

Interactionist Utilizers in Criminology

Interactionist Utilizers in Criminology

Rape, Shame and Pride

A proposition of the theory of reintegrative shaming is that a reason some societies have lower rates of rape is that rape is unthinkable to most men in those societies. This presentation shows how war interrupts the unthinkableness of rape. Bougainville society seems to have had a low level of rape until its war of the 1980s and 1990s. A single rape was one of the important sparks that lit its civil war. It caused perhaps over 5% of the population to lose their lives and perhaps over a third to be displaced from their homes. As in most wars, rape became common in Bougainville. A theory of why war causes epidemics of rape helps criminologists understand rape better. It can also help international relations scholars to see that the bigger problem caused by armed conflict today may be crime rather than battle deaths. Rape in peace and in war is interpreted according to Eliza Ahmed's theory of shame management and pride management. Ahmed's work is seen as an important advance in evidence‐based criminological theory. A deficiency of reintegrative shaming theory is that it neglects pride as the flip side of shame as an emotion. Shame displacement may be important to the explanation of rape; yet narcissistic pride may be more important. In war we see more vividly the social dynamics of how shame displacement and narcissistic pride allow both rape and the onset of war itself. Bougainville helps us to ponder how historically sustained, deep and broad restorative justice processes may be part of what is needed to return a society to peace and to low levels of rape.

Why God Is Often Found Behind Bars: Prison Conversions and the Crisis of Self-Narrative

The jail cell conversion from "sinner" to true believer may be one of the best examples of a "second chance" in modern life, yet the process receives far more attention from the popular media than from social science research. In this article, we explore prisoner conversions from the perspective of narrative psychology. Drawing on 75 original, life story interviews with prisoner "converts," we argue that the conversion narrative "works" as a shame management and coping strategy in the following ways. The narrative creates a new social identity to replace the label of prisoner or criminal, imbues the experience of imprisonment with purpose and meaning, empowers the largely powerless prisoner by turning him into an agent of God, provides the prisoner with a language and framework for forgiveness, and allows a sense of control over an unknown future.

Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Shame: Three Key Variables in Reducing School Bullying

This study examined the relationships between forgiveness, reconciliation, shame and school bullying. The sample consisted of 1,875 Bangladeshi adolescents (60% girls) in grades 7 to 10 (M= 8.28). In a structural equation model, both forgiveness and reconciliation directly predicted less bullying. In addition to the direct effect, an indirect pathway showed reconciliation reduced bullying via adaptive shame management. Shame acknowledgment predicted less bullying whereas shame displacement predicted more in accord with the shame management theory. An alternative model was also tested, which demonstrated that parental forgiveness eroded when children displaced their shame. The nature of the intersection between these two theoretically viable psychological models has implications for both restorative justice theory and practice.

School Bullying and Restorative Justice: Toward a Theoretical Understanding of the Role of Respect, Pride, and Shame

The adverse effects of school bullying and victimization have been well documented; yet, there has been little theoretical development in understanding these heterogeneous behavior patterns. This study integrates three theories that support the practice of restorative justice in responding to school bullying: Scheff's theory of unacknowledged shame, Braithwaite's reintegrative shaming theory; and Tyler's procedural justice theory. Specifically, the aim is to test the constructs of shame management (shame acknowledgment and shame displacement) and group value (pride, respect, and emotional group value) in explaining differences across four bullying status groups: nonbully/nonvictim, victim, bully, bully/victim. The results reveal different, but predictable, patterns of social and emotional disconnection from school across these groups. The importance of being emotionally intelligent when addressing bullying behaviors is discussed.

Understanding bullying from a shame management perspective: Findings from a three-year follow-up study

This study investigates bullies, victims and bully/victims who moved out of these roles over a three-year period in terms of their socially adaptive shame management skills and examines how such skills differ from those who remained stable in their bullying status. Data were collected from 32 schools in the Australian Capital Territory (1996 and 1999). The sample consisted of 365 students (48 per cent boys) who participated at two time points. Occupying a bully role in primary school was the most significant risk for continuing in the role in secondary school (51 per cent). Of the participants in 1996, 46 per cent of the non-bullies/non-victims, 40 per cent of the bullies/victims and 31 per cent of the victims remained stable in 1999. To test the importance of shame management in relation to the stability and variability in bullying roles, a modified version of the MOSS-SASD (Management of Shame State: Shame Acknowledgement and Shame Displacement) instrument was used. As expected, desisted bullies showed a significant inclination toward shame acknowledgement – the most adaptive form of managing shame. In support of shame management theory, non-bullies/non-victims who maintained their bullying-free status three years later also continued to manage shame adaptively (high shame acknowledgement and less shame displacement). The implications of these results for the future development of bullying interventions are discussed.

A need for emotionally intelligent policy: Linking tax evasion with higher education funding

Purpose. The current study addresses the issue of discontent at a personal and policy level with higher education and its funding, and its relation to tax compliance among a graduate population. It examines the thesis that discontent with the provision and funding of higher education plays a significant role in lowering tax compliance through the mediational role of shame management and dissociation from authority.Method. Data are taken from the graduates' hopes, visions, and actions survey based on a sample of 447 Australian graduates who recently received their tertiary degrees.Results. Path analysis provides support for the central thesis but also shows additional direct links between (1) dissatisfaction (with university studies) and tax evasion, and (2) having an income‐contingent university debt to repay and tax evasion.Conclusions. This study demonstrates the ways in which the legitimacy of the tax system and the legitimacy of higher education policy are interconnected. Criticisms of government departments acting in tunnel‐visioned ways with regard to the consequences of their actions are magnified in light of the findings of this paper. People take out their frustrations with one part of the government system (higher education funding and service provision) on other parts of the government system (taxation). Communication between these different parts is imperative for effective policy development and implementation.

Pastoral Care to Regulate School Bullying: Shame Management among Bystanders

Bystanders can reveal valuable information about bullying to school personnel to take action on it. If they remain reluctant, of course, they frustrate our efforts to stop bullying. But then, why would they get involved if doing so might make them victims of aggression too? This paper investigates the importance of adaptive shame management in encouraging bystanders to prevent bullying. Data were collected through the Cross-national School Behaviour Research Project from 1452 secondary school students (49% girls) in grades 7–10 (mean=8.42) in Bangladesh. As predicted, students who scored higher on shame acknowledgement (admitting shame, accepting responsibility, making amends) were more likely to intervene to prevent bullying. Those with low shame displacement (blaming or hitting out at others) were also likely to intervene to stop bullying. Implications of these findings pertaining to pastoral staff, counsellors and school teachers working with students to encourage coming forward against bullying are discussed.

Reflections on Varieties of Shame Induction, Shame Management, and Shame Avoidance in Some Works of Erving Goffman

Reflections on Varieties of Shame Induction, Shame Management, and Shame Avoidance in Some Works of Erving Goffman

Looking-Glass Self: Goffman as Symbolic Interactionist

My thesis is that for most of his career, Erving Goffman was a symbolic interactionist in the Cooley line. The only sustained theoretical structure in Goffman's work before 1974 follows Cooley's conjecture of the looking-glass self. Cooley assumed shared awareness, that we “live in the minds of others.” He also realized that shared awareness is virtually invisible in modern societies and proposed pride or shame as the emotions that resulted. Goffman emphasized embarrassment over shame and implied a fourth step beyond Cooley's three: the management of embarrassment or shame. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is dense with these emotions. Goffman proposed conceptual definitions of the embarrassment and shared awareness that are central to Cooley's idea. The conjunction of shared awareness and emotion in Goffman's examples may be the main feature that arouses reader sympathy. Two hypotheses are formulated here, along with techniques that might be used to test or apply them.

The Computer as an Object of Play in Child Treatment

In a new technological age and with the ubiquity of computers and the Internet in the lives of children and adolescents, a therapist's computer can become a useful tool in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This article explores the relational implications of allowing the therapist's computer to be used by children and adolescents as another object of play in the treatment room. It is argued that computer play resembles in many respects more conventional play objects and methods, while also representing significant differences. Clinical issues of the management of shame, shifting self-states, and use of the therapist's countertransference are discussed through the examples of the author's work with three patients and their use of the therapist's computer during sessions.