THE EFFECT OF SHAME AND GUILT TYPES ON HELPING BEHAVIORS

Abstract

Shame and guilt are often considered to be the same emotion; this is partially because the nuanced differences are overlooked in favor of a focus on fixing the negative outcome of these emotions. Shame and guilt also have several positive outcomes such as a desire to help others. The purpose of the current study was to determine the relationship between shame (Negative Self Evaluation and shame-withdraw) and guilt (Negative Behavior Evaluation and guilt-repair) proneness as they relate to helping behaviors in an imagined workplace setting as displayed through vignettes. Additional measures were used to explore whether the relationship between shame and guilt differs between sexes. Results indicate that NBE, guilt-repair, and NSE all have a significant positive relationship with helping across sexes, and these characteristics differ by sex.