Development of Instruments to Assess Shame and Guilt in Adolescents: Empirical Differences Between the Constructs

Abstract

Shame and guilt are terms easily mixed in everyday life and often used as synonyms. Although they are words of similar use, they represent theoretically different moral emotions. The aims of this study were to develop and validate instruments to assess shame and guilt and to test the empirical independence of the constructs. Five hundred and eighty high school students from three Brazilian states participated in this study, 55% of them female, with an average age of 16.0 years. The participants answered a questionnaire containing socio demographic questions and scales designed for this study in order to assess shame and guilt. The scales developed gave appropriate evidence of validity and reliability. A single factor was extracted to assess shame and two factors to assess guilt (recognition of mistake and regret). The constructs revealed to be correlated, but independent. It is considered that there is sufficient evidence to affirm that shame and guilt are emotions with distinctive peculiarities and can be measured using the instruments developed in this research.