The Regulation Of Shame Emotion In Adolescence

With the progression of basic emotion research,self conscious emotion has being paid attention to.As one kind of self conscious emotion,shame had someone feel powerless,inferior,and depressed when one outlawed the social norms.Shame represented one's socialization,promoting individual well development,while shame was social controlled emotion,being good for social morality.Nowadays,people came to realize two faces of shame function.Excessive shame was relative to body or mental illness,and scanty of shame would lead to individual's behavior anomie.Therefore,regulation of shame is worth investigating in reality and theory.Theorical and empirical studies on shame emotion and its regulation in the literature have focused on self shame emotion in which one did and felt shame.Previously studies focused on consequences to individual behavior and mind,indicating the destruction function of shame,such as aggression in Compass of Shame with "four-pole with single face" plane.Recently,research has turned to construction of shame.Though a litter research explored the relationship between self shame and positive behavior(i.e.prosocial behavior),negative behavior(i.e.aggression),it is yet unclear whether self regulation could affect the relationship between the two.Namely,in the perspective of deconstruction and construction,no evidences supports the part"one-pole with two-face"in the proposed extended compass of shame with "four-pole with two-face" 3D model.As speciality of self structure including I and mother in oriental culture,Transferred shame,in which one experienced shame emotion when mother did something shameful,represented cultural factor in self conscious emotion,and entended the shame emotion research scope.Based on four studies with the open survey,questionnaire,behavior experiments with explicit or implicit tasks,the current research investigated the profile of shame regulation for adolescents graded 7 to 12,effects of shame regulation for adolescents in grade 7,and effects of shame regulation on positive behavior,i.e.prosocial behavior,negative behavior,i.e.aggression,and make a comparison between the two kind of shames,to confirm the part "one-pole with two-face"in extended compass of shame regulation.In study 1,five hundred adolescents were required to do open survey,and 2238 adolescents graded 7 to 12 were participated in shame situation survey,cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire.The profile of shame regulation for adolescents was that shame regulation was relative to gender,grade and scholar achievement.(1)The scores of girls were higher than those of boys in refocus on planning,positive reappraisal,positive refocusing,acceptance,rumination,self blame,while the score of boys were higher than that of girls in blaming others.(2)The score profile was an inverted U shape in refocus on planning,positive reappraisal,positive refocusing,putting into perspective,acceptance,self blame,rumination,while the score profile was an step shape in blaming others,the peak was located in the transitional zone between junior and high school.(3)The students with higher achievement more likely used adaptive strategies.Study 2 aimed to analyze the effects of shame regulation.Adolescents of grade 7 were required to regulate their shame emotion by refocus on planning strategy and self blame strategy through induce-regulation method.The results showed,(1)The refocus on planning strategy and self blame strategy could enhance adolescents' intensity of self shame in the identical situation,these strategies could strengthen girls' intensity of transferred shame,and the effect sizes of regulation were up to medium level.(2)After regulation by self blame,the intensity and effect size of self shame were bigger than those of transferred shame regarding to behavior shame of girls and family shame of boys.The purpose of Study 3 was to investigate the effects of shame regulation on prosocial tendencies.Adolescents of grade 7 participated in explicit task with refocus on planning and self blame strategy,or implicit task with self blame strategy.The results showed,(1)Self shame regulation could affect neither explicit prosocial tendencies,nor implicit prosocial tendencies.(2)Transferred shame regulation could affect explicit prosocial tendencies by gender,shame situation.Transferred shame regulation could enhance girls' explicit prosocial tendencies in coward situation and litter situation,the score of girls' explicit prosocial tendencies was higher than that of boys' tendencies in coward,family discord,litter situation.However,the transferred shame regulation could influence implicit prosocial tendencies.(3)Self blame regulation of transferred shame could strengthen more explicit prosocial tendencies than that of self shame,while there no existed the difference of implicit prosocial tendencies between self shame and transferred shame by self blame strategy.The aim of Study 4 was to investigate the effects of shame regulation on aggression.Adolescents of grade 7 participated in explicit task with refocus on planning and self blame strategy,or implicit task with self blame strategy.The results showed,(1)The effect of self shame regulation by self blame strategy varied depending on processing task of explicit or implicit tasks.Self shame regulation by self blame strategy could strengthen explicit aggression in special and general situations,and in implicit task of aggression,adolescents self-evaluated themselves as less aggression.(2)Transferred shame regulation could enhance both explicit aggression in general situation and implicit aggression,adolescents evaluated themselves more aggression.(3)No difference of explicit aggression existed between self shame regulation and transferred shame regulation,however,effect size of inverted implicit aggression of self shame regulation was smaller than that of transferred shame regulation,namely,adolescents assessed themselves more aggression in self shame situation.In short,shame regulation strategies of adolescents were relative to gender,grade and scholar achievement,adaptive strategies predominated.Regulation effects of specific strategies were relative to shame situation and shame types.The effects of self regulation on prosocial tendencies and aggression depended on task processing and shame types.The regulation of self shame and transferred shame had common,and discrepancy.Therefore,the part "one-pole with two-face"in extended compass of shame regulation proposed in the current study could be supported,applying to regulation of self and transferred shame,including two faces with aggression and prosocial tendencies.The findings of study could provide scientific suggestion for adolescents' development of self conscious emotion,and promote adolecents' self development.