Relationship of belief systems to shame and guilt

This study examines the relationship of the four belief systems of extrapersonalism, cynicism, egoism and contextualism as treated by Harvey and associates to shame and guilt evoked by five clusters of scenarios: dishonesty, harm to another person, trust violation, social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. Extrapersonalists reported the strongest guilt of the four systems from dishonesty, greater shame than cynics and egoists, but not contextualists, from social impropriety, and greater shame from exposed inadequacy than contextualists, but not cynics or egoists. Cynics reported less guilt from harm to another person than extrapersonalists, egoists or contextualists, and less guilt from trust violation than extrapersonalists or egoists. Of the three belief systems test definers of each system, all definers of extrapersonalism correlated significantly positively with guilt from the cluster dishonesty but nonsignificantly with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation as well as with shame from exposed inadequacy. All definers of cynicism correlated significantly negatively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation, but near zero with shame from social impropriety and exposed inadequacy. All three BST definers of egoism correlated significantly positively with guilt from harm to another person and trust violation and with shame from Exposed Inadequacy, but nonsignificantly with guilt from dishonesty and shame from social impropriety. Only one definer of contextualism correlated significantly with feelings from any scenario: constancy of change correlated positively with guilt from harm to another person. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.