Motivation and emotion/Book/2022/Cultural influences on shame, guilt, and pride
How does culture influence shame, guilt, and pride?
Overview edit
Consider the last time you felt remorse over something you did wrong, or the time you felt accomplished when you achieved something you worked hard for, or even the time you had become critical when you made a mistake. These are examples of the self-conscious emotions, shame, guilt, and pride. Emotions colour the world around us, influencing what we do, how we think, and what we remember. Throughout our life, our feelings influence the choices that we make. Shame, pride, and guilt are complex emotions that help individuals navigate within their own social environment. These self-conscious emotions typically focus on the self of the individual, with the purpose to monitor our interactions with other people and lead us to correct moral and social transgressions and maintain socially accepted behaviour (Muris, Meesters, 2014). Cultureimpacts the way individuals conceptualise the self, and these particular emotions, whilst universally experienced and acknowledged, have very different meanings in different cultures. So, how does culture influence shame, guilt, and pride? Culture influences psychological processes. Individual thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and actions influence cultural norms and practices as they evolve over time and these cultural norms, in turn, influence the thoughts and actions of individuals within these cultures (Lehman,et al 2003).
Self-conscious emotions are fundamentally important to a wide range of psychological processes, they are cognitively complex and play a central role in the motivation and regulation of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. These self-conscious emotions (guilt, shame, and pride) are universally recognised and experienced, however, the nature of the experiences is thought by many to be profoundly influenced by culture. This chapter explores similarities and differences in shame, guilt, and pride in young children that live in the United States, Japan, China, and Korea and better understand emotion {{awkward{} and how it links to culture. Having a better understanding and knowledge of the relationship between culture and emotion is integral to our own sense of belonging and to optimise positive outcomes.
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Focus questions:
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Self-conscious emotions edit
Emotion is a psychological phenomenon that involves various neural and chemical integrations. Events can trigger emotions which lead to basic emotions (for example, joy, fear, sadness, anger, disgust; think of the movie inside out) whilst others can lead to self-conscious emotions (pride, guilt, shame, humiliation) (Bynum, n.d). Emotions can involve bodily reactions, for example, when you are excited your heart races and you tend to have expressive movements and facial expressions. It can also involve behaviours, for example, when you are angry you might yell at someone.
Shame, pride, and guilt are all self-conscious emotions, this means that these are emotions that relate to our sense of self and out consciousness of other reactions to us. They are often referred to as 'moral emotions' as they play an important role in morality and moral decision making. It has been argued to be highly significant within the social sciences (Gibson, et al, 2018). These emotions are considered to be some of the most painful emotions that we can experience and are often labelled as 'bad emotions' and these emotions can often lead to depression and anxiety . However, research suggests that it also serves as a crucial adaptive function that is important for human survival (Glicksman, 2019).
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Definition 1
 According to the American Psychological Association (APA) (2022), the term emotion is best defined as the "complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioural and physiological elements; emotions are how individuals deal with matters or situations they find personally significant". |
Shame edit
From the moment we are born, we learn what is acceptable and not acceptable in the world; our self-esteem is shaped by our daily experience. Shame is the most studied self-conscious emotion; it is a painful emotion that individuals experience when they fail to meet internalised social standards. Shame describes feelings of inadequacy that are created by internalised negative beliefs about oneself, personal insecurities, mistakes, and perceived flaws can all trigger shame responses. This causes an individual to become self-conscious, self-critical, and embarrassed of themselves (Byars, Shafir, 2022). When faced with the feeling of shame, the brain reacts as if it was facing a dangerous situation, activating the sympathetic nervous system . This generates the fight/flight/freeze response , individuals who face the phenomenological experiences that accompanies shame often have this high intensity to hide or disappear (Davis, 2019). This emotion has been linked to a host of maladaptive psychological, behavioural, and physical outcomes which include:
- Increased depressive symptoms
- Anxiety
- Chronic anger
- Cardiovascular reactivity
- Self-injurious behaviour
Guilt edit
Guilt is often mistaken to be shame, as people tend to use the terms interchangeable. There is research that suggests that these two emotions are distinctively different. Guilt and shame share the same neural networks in the frontal and temporal areas of the brain; however, their patterns are different. Guilt arises when your behaviour conflicts with your conscience and is concerned with one's responsibility for a harmful behaviour or attitude. In a study conducted by Michl, Meindl, Meister, et al, (2012), they found that when women are feeling guilty, they only activate their temporal regions whereas men showed additional frontal and occipital activation as well as a responsive amygdala . They state that guilt and shame share the same neural networks and have the same individual areas activated. Guilt is a negative emotion that involves a sense of tension, remorse, and regret over a ‘bad thing’ done with a focus on a specific behaviour that cause the experience. Individuals often face the fight or flight response and often try to hide away, on the other hand, guilt motivates an act to repair the transgression rather than avoid the situation. Similarly, guilt is also linked to depressive symptoms and anxiety.
| Guilt | Shame |
|---|---|
| Feeling remorse or responsible for something you've done wrong | Feeling that you are bad worthy of contempt or inadequate as a person |
| Relating to a specific action like making a mistake, committing a crime or hurting someone | Relating to our behaviour or self, this is often in relation to other people’s opinions |
| Motivates an act to repair the problem | Often tries to hide away or disappear, this activates the fight/flight/freeze response. |
Pride edit
Pride is the least studied emotions, it has been associated with various positive social consequences, however, there are also a vast amount of adverse social consequences as well. How is this emotion any different from joy or happiness? In these emotions, there is no need for approval of others to experience happiness or joy. There are two types of pride, and they represent two unique emotions, it is comprised of a pleasant valence (authentic pride) and an unpleasant valance (hubristic pride). The two facets of pride are distinguished by their personality correlates, individuals with a high self-esteem, extraverted and conscientious tend to experience authentic pride whereas narcissistic, disagreeable and non-conscientious experienced hubristic pride.
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Definition 2
According to the American Psychological Association (APA) (2022), pride is defined as “the emotion that occurs when a goal has been attained and one's achievement has been approved and recognised by others”. |
| Hubristic pride | Authentic pride |
|---|---|
| A personality trait that describes
an individual who has a tendency to experience pride across situations and other time |
State of emotion that occurs in response to a specific eliciting event |
| Arrogant, conceited, cocky, boastful, righteous | Accomplished, confident, achieving, triumph |
| Viewed as unauthentic, we experience an inflated sense of self | Viewed as a positive emotion, experience accurate feelings of self worth and a boost in self-esteem |
| Maladaptive - it is associated with aggression and relationship dissatisfaction | Adaptive - the pride emotion encourages us to continue to approach tasks and succeed |
 Review Quiz 1
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What is culture? edit
When you think about different cultures, you most likely picture their most visible features such as differences in the way people dress, different types of food, religious practices, and communication. Culture is the distinctive customs, values, knowledge, art, beliefs, literature and language of a society or a community. The values and concepts of cultures are passed on from generation to generation, creating the basis for everyday behaviours and practices. Furthermore, culture plays an integral part in the characteristic behaviours and attitudes that a particular group has within society (Biswas-Diener, Thin, Sanders, n.d). Culture can also be seen in mortality, identity, social roles and gender roles and it is a highly psychological phenomenon. Cultural psychology primarily focuses on understanding the ways in which cultural processes and human psychological functioning interplay and shape one another. It focuses on the interaction between culture and the human psyche.
Culture defines not only the organisation of social institutions but also dominant values, beliefs and ideologies. It is construed as shaping peoples thoughts, feelings and behaviours; as well as endorsing culture-specific socialisation practices. Self-conscious emotions are evoked by self-reflection and self-evaluation and are founded in social relationships whereby people interact, judge, and evaluate themselves and others. It has been argued that self-conscious emotions are central to motivating and regulating most of individuals thoughts, behaviours, and feelings. Motivating people to persist in achievement and task domains, behave in moral and socially responsible ways in interactions and relationships with others, and fostering motivation and health behaviours. Culture differentiates individuals from others in the world, but also provides a sense of belonging (Tsai, Knutson & Fung, 2006).
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Definition 3
Individualistic culture is defined as fostering values of independence, self-sufficient and self- determination. Collectivist culture emphases values of interdependence, conformity with group norms and group identity (Hoftede, et al, 2009). |
Cultural influence on our emotions edit
Researchers have developed several theories of how human emotions arise and are represented in the brain. To this day, it remains a central topic of research and debate. Various studies have associated shame with collectivism and guilt with individualism. Individuals from collectivistic cultures (East Asian cultures) typically conceptualise the self as being interdependent with others in a larger social context. On the other hand, individuals from individualistic cultures (Western cultures) typically view the self as separate from others (Sabiston, C.M, Castonguay, A.L, 2014). Research has indicated that self-conscious emotions that focus on others such as shame are more commonly experienced in individuals from a collectivistic culture, such emotions tend to be valued and even viewed as an appropriate emotion as they reaffirm the individuals place and sense of belonging in a social group. In contrast, those in individualistic cultures more commonly experience authentic pride. To date, cultural samples have been primarily restricted to America and East Asia, with the focus generalised on shame and guilt, which limits cross-cultural comparisons across a wide range of self-conscious emotions as well as other cultures around the world. Research suggests that pride, guilt, and shame are experienced with different intensity within different societies. The experience of these emotions are not experienced in the same way.
Appraisal theory of emotion: edit
The appraisal theory of emotion proposes that emotions are extracted from our ‘appraisals’ (i.e. our interpretations and evaluations) of events, this often lead to different specific reactions in different people. The theory states that emotions are caused and differentiated by appraisal, which is a process where values are determined for a number of appraisal factors. This could include goal relevance, control, and agency (Moors, 2017). Richard Lazarus was the original pioneer of this theory with Magda Arnold being another prominent researcher. The main question that the appraisal theory attempts to answer is why different people have different perceptions and emotional reactions to the same situations.
| Example:
Sarah goes on a romantic date, she had a fantastic time and perceives the date as positive. She feels giddy and excited to plan the next date. However, her date, Thomas, perceived the date negatively and feels dejected.
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Self-conscious emotions are cognitively complex compared to basic emotions. For example, to experience fear, an individual needs few cognitive capacities, they must appraise an event/situation as threatening. However, to experience shame, the individual must have the capacity to form a stable self-representation and reflect on the discrepancy between their behaviour, external evaluations of that behaviour and various self-representations. In other words, the individual must consider goals far beyond survival, goals related to identity and ideal self-representations. In addition, self-conscious emotions require additional appraisal beyond goal relevance and congruence; they require complex casual attributions. Self-conscious emotions cannot occur unless the eliciting event is attributed to internal causes – the self. All self conscious emotions are caused by internal attributions (Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W., 2007).
| Example:
Shame: Lydia had a massive test coming up, she didn't study enough for it and she ended up failing her class. When her mother asked her about the result of the class, Lydia lied and told her she passed. Lydia see's herself as a bad person because she lied to her mother about something important. Shame is caused by a 'bad self' attribution. Guilt: Guilt is caused when we acknowledged a specific transgression, but we don't perceive the self as global, horrible person. So in Lydia's case, she might think 'I'm not a bad person because I lied, I lied to make her feel good. See Table 1. for more information on shame and guilt
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Case study 1.1: Pride and Shame in China edit
Shame and guilt get a bad reputation within western society as it is perceived to be the emotional response to failure and there is a vast number of negative connotations that come with these emotions. Guilt is seen as an emotion that we would be better off without (Extebarria, 2000). However, the emotions of both guilt and shame play a significant part in socialisation, maintenance of an individual's sense of personal identity and serves as a function of social control in Chinese culture (Bedford, et al, 2004).
In this Template:Which? study, interviews were conducted with the intent to identify Mandarin words related to the emotions of guilt and shame, acquiring an understanding of the basic constructs that are related to these emotions and gaining knowledges about the experience individuals have based on these emotions. They conducted an ethnographic study which identified the Mandarin terms for guilt and shame and the experience participants have when faced with these terms. They wanted to establish the experiences of guilt and shame, study patterns of behaviour, the transformation of self and the highlight the emotional experience for Chinese people.
34 female participants were interviewed (aged between 24-31 years of age) from middle class families. Each individual was unmarried, still lived at home and had never travelled abroad. Women in Chinese societies have traditionally been relegated to positions of inferiority; thus, it was hypothesised that experiencing shame would be more common in women then in men. The study was conducted in a quiet room were two main questions were asked
- What do you think of when I say the word shame/guilt?
According to this study, guilt and shame shape behaviour which causes people to behave so they can avoid experiencing the emotion. The results showed the guilt of not fulfilling their obligations and duties within society, fulfilment is highly valued as it is believed to maintain harmony between individuals and support the stability of society. Most results shared similar experiences of feeling that when they have failed or faced adversity, their reputation and identity within society is threatened. For example, guilt is aroused over the lack of capability to fulfil the sense of duty and obligation to their family or social group.
This study indicated that the effects of guilt and shame differ when in a different cultural context. Cultural context is necessary in order to understand the role each emotion is likely to have and how its reality to identity and morality.
Case study 2.1: Pride, guilt and shame in Japan, Korea, and the US edit
In a study conducted by Emi Furukawa., et al (2011), they investigated the cross-cultural differences in mean levels of self-conscious emotions and the psychosocial correlation among individuals residing in Japan, USA and Korea. 144 Japanese, 688 US and 180 Korean children (between grade 3-6) participated in the study. They used differential item functioning analysis to empirically evaluate whether the test of self-conscious affect for children measure of shame, guilt and pride functions equivalently across these cultures, or whether particular items behave different owing to culture-specific meanings. They drew on the DIF analyses to draw more substantive conclusions about cross-cultural continuities and discontinuities in the nature of shame guilt and pride experiences. They hypothesised that Japanese and Korean children would demonstrate higher levels of shame and guilt and a lower pride in comparison to US children.
The results showed that Japanese children were more shame-prone in comparison to children in the US and Korea, they were more prone to self-evaluative emotion that focused on the self whilst Korean children were more prone to emotion that focused on specific behaviours (guilt).US children demonstrated the highest level of pride whilst Japanese children had the lowest. This reflects current research that in US culture (or western culture in general) that there is self-enhancement in comparison to Eastern cultures were they tend to be more self-critical.
Influence on pride
Pride has various positive connotations compared to shame and guilt, with this particular emotion viewed as the desirable emotion. Pride occurs in every known culture. Previous research has indicated that members of collectivist cultures experience less pride than members of individualistic cultures do. Individualistic cultures primarily focus on intrinsic accomplishments rather than accomplishments of a group and therefore experience it more. Different cultures have substantially different values in regard to pride, it has been argued that in collectivist cultures, the self is construed as an interdependent entity, individuals within these cultures don't strive to maintain a positive view of oneself (in other words they don't self-enhance). Rather, individuals strive to be modest and improve themselves to harmoniously fit in the group (Neumann, et al, 2009). Unfournately, there is not a vast amount of research on pride in cultural context.
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Review Quiz 1
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Limitations and strengths of the appraisal theory: edit
In accordance to the appraisal theory, the theory states that emotions are based on our evaluations (appraisal) of an event or situation which creates a specific reaction in different people. A strength to this theory is that it is not confined to discrete categorial emotions, rather it can help to explain a vast range of emotional experiences (Yarwood, n.d). It can help explain why individuals experience the same event but have different emotions. With this in mind, both these studies show that within a different cultural context, there is a very different experience to shame and guilt. Whilst the definition remains the same, the experience differs. In both cases, there is a higher level of shame and guilt experienced in China, Japan and Korea in comparison to the US. Self criticism and negative evaluations of self is a normative in Eastern Asian countries whereas US culture tends to value positive evaluations of self. Maintenance of harmony is a key aspect in Chinese culture, and guilt and shame are the key to maintaining social harmony. Whereas, in the the US guilt and shame are individualistic emotions that one faces by themself.
Based on the cases, guilt and shame are caused by appraisal; for case study 1.1 guilt and shame was experienced due to lack of fulfilment and accomplishment in life due to the way females within this specific culture were perceived to behave socially. Case 2.1 showed that in children, shame is something that is reinforced to create motivation to do better and to fulfil certain obligations in Japan, in Korea, children were more focused on specific behaviours and experienced feelings of guilt more. In contrast, in the US, children experienced more feelings of pride as they would be praised more for achievements/accomplishments individually.
Limitations on current research: edit
Self-conscious emotions are fundamentally crucial to a vast range of psychological processes, yet these emotions have less research (in regard to influence of culture) compared to the basic emotions. Research that is provided don't have many of measures to conduct the research. The main weakness across all three cases is the lack of psychological theory that is used to support the research, this has been made difficult due to the lack of research in certain areas. Another huge disadvantage is that are various articles and studies that have been conducted but due to language barriers or lack of translation it is difficult to find a consensus on research on this particular topic.
Self-conscious emotions are cognitively complex emotions that have not been studied much over recent years. As mentioned in the definition of pride, pride is the least studied self-conscious emotion, there needs to be more research on this emotion in regard to its influence in cultural contexts. There are various studies on shame and guilt in western society, with a few studies conducted in Asian cultures but there is not much research in other parts of the world.
Moving forward: future research edit
The current literature on shame and guilt primarily focus on western countries, with few comparing it between eastern Asian countries, having a more diverse range of studies with different cultures can provide an array of different results and provide more empirical evidence to continue research. It should also be noted that results observed in recent research should not be interpreted as the representative phenomena in western and non-western cultures.
Future research could include learning about the phenomenology of self-conscious emotions, the implications of these emotions for behaviour and motivation and the types of situations that elicit these emotions. Another suggestion for future research is to explore other cultural backgrounds in order to compare and further answer the question. Most research is also done with specific age groups or genders in mind, being more diverse in the participant groups can allow more observation for conscious emotion in other points of the lifespan.
Revision: edit
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Review Quiz 4
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Conclusion edit
Shame, guilt and pride are complex self-conscious emotions that help to regulate an individuals emotion of self. Culture defines not only the organisation of social institutions but also dominant values, beliefs and ideologies. It is construed as shaping peoples thoughts, feelings and behaviours; as well as endorsing culture-specific socialisation practices.The appraisal theory helps to answer why individuals feel different things given the same situation. Different cultural contexts share different ideologies and values, so even if everyone in the world experienced the same situation, individuals in different cultural groups would react and behave differently to situations.
The studies exemplified contrasting cultural orientations, reflecting different ideological beliefs about self-conscious emotions. Shame and guilt is an emotion that western society views as a negative emotion whilst for others it plays a significant role in individuals socialisation and shaping their identity. On the other hand, pride is seen as having an array of positive outcomes. It is evident that there still needs to be further studies that need to be conducted in order to discuss the influence of culture on self-conscious emotions, future research should aim to find more qualitative methods of study to specific targeted domains. As stated in future research, there needs to be more research conducted on pride within other cultures.
What we do know from the research we do have is that different cultures influence the way individuals think and feel, with emotions such as guilt, shame and pride having various connotations. For example, in some Asian cultures, shame is seen as a motivational influencer and an emotion that is positive for individual growth whereas in western culture shame is perceived to be a negative emotion that is best being removed. Culture constrains how emotions are felt and express, it shapes the way individuals feel in certain situation and the ways they express their emotions.
See also edit
- Cultural influences on shame, guilt, and pride (Book chapter, 2021)
- [Self conscious emotions (Wikipedia)
- Pride (Book chapter, 2017)
- Social emotions (Wikipedia)
- Group Emotion (Wikipedia)
References edit
https://dictionary.apa.org/emotion
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