Self-Conscious Emotions Assignment

Self-Conscious Emotions Assignment

Self-Conscious Emotions Assignment

While she got a baking pan. But Sammy reached over to feel the dough, and the bowl tumbled off the table. When Leslie returned, Sammy looked at her, then covered his eyes with his hands and said, “I did something bad.” He felt ashamed and guilty.

As their self-concepts develop, preschoolers become increasingly sensitive to praise and blame or to the possibility of such feedback. They more often experience self-conscious emotions—feelings that involve injury to or enhancement of their sense of self (see Chapter 6 ). By age 3, self-conscious emotions are clearly linked to self-evaluation (Lewis, 1995 ; Thompson, Meyer, & McGinley, 2006 ). But because preschoolers are still developing standards of excellence and conduct, they depend on the messages of parents, teachers, and others who matter to them to know when to feel proud, ashamed, or guilty, often viewing adult expectations as obligatory rules (“Dad said you’re ’posed to take turns”) (Thompson, Meyer, & McGinley, 2006 ).

When parents repeatedly comment on the worth of the child and her performance (“That’s a bad job! I thought you were a good girl!”), children experience self-conscious emotions intensely—more shame after failure, more pride after success. In contrast, parents who focus on how to improve performance (“You did it this way; now try doing it that way”) induce moderate, more adaptive levels of shame and pride and greater persistence on difficult tasks (Kelley, Brownell, & Campbell, 2000 ; Lewis, 1998 ). Self-Conscious Emotions Assignment.

Among Western children, intense shame is associated with feelings of personal inadequacy (“I’m stupid”; “I’m a terrible person”) and with maladjustment—withdrawal and depression as well as intense anger and aggression toward those who participated in the shame-evoking situation (Lindsay-Hartz, de Rivera, & Mascolo, 1995 ; Mills, 2005 ). In contrast, guilt—when it occurs in appropriate circumstances and is neither excessive nor accompanied by shame—is related to good adjustment. Guilt helps children resist harmful impulses, and it motivates a misbehaving child to repair the damage and behave more considerately (Mascolo & Fischer, 2007 ; Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007 ). But overwhelming guilt—involving such high emotional distress that the child cannot make amends—is linked to depressive symptoms as early as age 3 (Luby et al., 2009 ).

Finally, the consequences of shame for children’s adjustment may vary across cultures. As illustrated in the Cultural Influences box on page 267 and on page 189 in Chapter 6 , people in Asian collectivist societies, who define themselves in relation to their social group, view shame as an adaptive reminder of an interdependent self and of the importance of others’ judgments (Bedford, 2004 ). Self-Conscious Emotions Assignment.