Although scholars agree that moral emotions are critical for deterring unethical and antisocial behavior, there is disagreement about how two prototypical moral emotions-guilt and shameshould be defined, differentiated, and measured. We addressed these issues by developing a new assessment-the Guilt And Shame Proneness scale (GASP)-that measures individual differences in the propensity to experience guilt and shame across a range of personal transgressions. The GASP contains two guilt subscales that assess negative behavior-evaluations (NBEs) and repair action tendencies following private transgressions and two shame subscales that assess negative self-evaluations (NSEs) and withdrawal action tendencies following publically-exposed transgressions. Both guilt subscales were highly correlated with one another and negatively correlated with unethical decision making. Although both shame subscales were associated with relatively poor psychological functioning (e.g., neuroticism, personal distress, low self-esteem), they were only weakly correlated with one another and their relationships with unethical decision making diverged. Whereas shame-NSE constrained unethical decision making, shame-withdraw did not. Our findings suggest that differentiating the tendency to make negative self-evaluations following publically-exposed transgressions from the tendency to hide or withdraw from public is critically important for understanding and measuring dispositional shame proneness. The GASP's ability to distinguish these two classes of responses represents an important advantage of the scale over existing assessments. Although further validation research is required, the present studies are promising in that they suggest the GASP has the potential to be an important measurement tool for detecting individuals susceptible to corruption and unethical behavior.

Using two 3-month diary studies and a large cross-sectional survey, we identified distinguishing features of adults with low versus high levels of moral character. Adults with high levels of moral character tend to: consider the needs and interests of others and how their actions affect other people (e.g., they have high levels of Honesty-Humility, empathic concern, guilt proneness); regulate their behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences (e.g., they have high levels of Conscientiousness, self-control, consideration of future consequences); and value being moral (e.g., they have high levels of moral identity-internalization). Cognitive moral development, Emotionality, and social value orientation were found to be relatively undiagnostic of moral character. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that employees with low moral character committed harmful work behaviors more frequently and helpful work behaviors less frequently than did employees with high moral character, according to their own admissions and coworkers' observations. Study 3 revealed that adults with low moral character committed more delinquent behavior and had more lenient attitudes toward unethical negotiation tactics than did adults with high moral character. By showing that individual differences have consistent, meaningful effects on employees' behaviors, after controlling for demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, income) and basic attributes of the work setting (e.g., enforcement of an ethics code), our results contest situationist perspectives that deemphasize the importance of personality. Moral people can be identified by self-reports in surveys, and these self-reports predict consequential behaviors months after the initial assessment.

Guilt proneness is a personality trait indicative of a predisposition to experience negative feelings about personal wrongdoing, even when the wrongdoing is private. It is characterized by the anticipation of feeling bad about committing transgressions rather than by guilty feelings in a particular moment or generalized guilty feelings that occur without an eliciting event. Our research has revealed that guilt proneness is an important character trait because knowing a person's level of guilt proneness helps us to predict the likelihood that they will behave unethically. For example, online studies of adults across the U.S. have shown that people who score high in guilt proneness (compared to low scorers) make fewer unethical business decisions, commit fewer delinquent behaviors, and behave more honestly when they make economic decisions. In the workplace, guilt-prone employees are less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviors that harm their organization.

In Study 1, participants completed five extant shame and guilt proneness inventories based on different theoretical conceptions of the difference between shame and guilt. Factor analyses revealed that despite very different theoretical distinctions, the shame proneness subscales loaded on one factor, and the guilt proneness subscales loaded on one factor. In Study 2, we altered scale items so that hypothetical transgressions were committed in either public or private, and likelihood response options were either typical of a "shame-prone response" (negative selfevaluation; avoidance behavior) or a "guilt-prone response" (negative behavior-evaluation; approach behavior). Our findings indicate that shame and guilt proneness can be measured both by responses to transgressions (e.g., negative self-evaluation and avoidance responses vs.negative behavior-evaluation and approach responses) and the situational context in which the transgression occurs (e.g., public vs. private). We provide recommendations regarding optimal measurement of shame and guilt proneness. What are shame and guilt, and how do they differ? Within psychology, as well as everyday conversation, the terms shame and guilt are often used interchangeably. There is a general confusion about the distinctiveness of these emotions, possibly because of their many similarities. Both are negatively valenced, morality-based, self-conscious, and self-referential emotions (Tangney & Dearing, 2002), and both are associated with the desire to undo one's actions (Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989). In addition, both shame and guilt are experienced when one makes internal attributions about a personal transgression, and both are characterized by feelings of distress. Moreover, shame and guilt frequently co-occur: After committing a moral transgression, individuals often experience a heightened level of both emotions. KeywordsAdding to the confusion, people who are dispositionally prone to feeling shame are often prone to feeling guilt, and vice versa. Shame proneness and guilt proneness are traits that reflect individual differences in cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to personal transgressions (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). In a widely-used scale of dispositional proneness to shame and guilt, the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA; Tangney, Wagner, & Gramzow, 1989), shame and guilt proneness are correlated between .40-.50 (e.g., Tangney, Wagner, Hill-Barlow, Marschall, & Gramzow, 1996).Despite the similarities between shame and guilt, there are also a number of phenomenological differences. Individuals report that shame is associated with not living up to personal standards while guilt is associated with actions that harmed others or the violation of personal duties (Keltner & Buswell, 1997). In recalled experiences of shame, individuals report blushing, higher distress levels, and feeling self-conscious and small. In recalled experiences of Shame Proneness and Guilt Proneness 4 guilt, individuals report having done something wrong, wishing the ...

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