13.2 An emotional disposition
Tangney and Dearing (2002) argue
that a lot of research has been carried out to increase the number of
dispositional measures. The notion underlying these measures, they argue, is
that not only do most people have the capacity to experience both shame and
guilt, but that
There are individual differences in the degree to which people are prone
to experience shame and/or guilt across a range of situations involving
failures or transgressions (Tangney and Dearing 2002: 27-28).
Since the research carried out by
Lewis (1971), most dispositional measures have distinguished between shame and
guilt. Some of these studies have developed measurement scales using shame or
guilt inducing situations. The objective here is to give respondents a list of
shame and/or guilt inducing situations and to have them rate how they would
react on a given scale. This approach was first introduced by Pearlman (1958).
Others who have contributed to measuring shame and guilt in distinct shame or
guilt inducing situations are Beall (1972); Johnson, Danko, Huang, Park, Johnson &
Nagoshi (1987); and
Cheek & Hogan (1983). Elison, Lennon and Pulos (2006) have developed a
scale for assessing the use of the four styles of coping with shame described
by Nathanson (1992): Attack Self, Withdrawal, Attack Other, and Avoidance. The
assumption in all these dispositional measurement scales is that some
situations induce shame while others induce guilt and that this can be
measured. The second method of measuring the disposition for shame and guilt is
by using the Global Adjective Checklists. Here respondents are asked to rate
how well different adjectives describe them.
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