A study on the relationship between shame, guilt, self-criticism and compulsive sexual behaviour disorder

Abstract

There is evidence that compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB) and problematic pornography use (PPU) can be associated with selfcriticism, shame and guilt. The aim of the current study was to investigate further these relationships. Study 1-Participants were 121 adults, mean age 26.82 years (18-45), 58 males and 63 females. They filled in a demographic questionnaire, the Hypersexual Behaviour Inventory (HBI), self-criticizing/attacking and self-reassuring scale (FSCRS) and the Test of Self-Conscious Affect, (TOSCA). In a second study participants were 186 male adults, mean age 26.35 years (18-40). They filled in a demographic questionnaire, the Short Internet Addiction Test (s-IAT-sex), adapted for pornography use, FSCRS and TOSCA. The first study showed positive associations between CSB and self-criticism. Multiple regression analysis revealed that self-criticism has contributed to ratings of CSB and it explained 32% of the variance. The second study using a structural equation modelling showed that self-criticism predicted shame-and-guilt, which in turn predicted PPU, thus explaining 20% of PPU variance. CSB entails with self-criticism while PPU adds feelings of shame and guilt that become more dominant and it mediates self-criticism.

A critical period for experience-dependent development of the feelings of safety during early infancy: A polyvagal perspective on anger and psychometric tools to assess perceived safety

“…Internal factors, such as self-disgust, self-criticism (Zahn et al, 2015 ), and shame proneness have been found to be associated with anger suppression and conflict avoidance (Cheung and Park, 2010 ) as well as with subsequent anger outbursts (Alia-Klein et al, 2020 ). In addition, structural equation modeling showed that self-criticism predicted shame and guilt, which, in turn, predicted problematic dysfunctional outcomes such as addiction and problematic behavior (Sassover et al, 2021 ; Snoek et al, 2021 ). It has been proposed that anger may be an emotion supporting goal-directed behavior when an environmental situation prevents the desired goal to be fulfilled, causing frustration (Panksepp, 2005 ).…”

Investigating mental representations of psychoactive substance use and other potentially addictive behaviors using a data driven network-based clustering method

“…Guilt/Shame/Relief (35%): The most frequent MR included associations of diffuse concepts, such as “guilt”, “shame”, “weakness”, “anxiety” and “frustration” which suggests generalized representations not limited to the psychoactive substance or potentially addictive behavior. Guilt has been described previously as a primary affective response in case of alcohol and other substance use disorders [ 41 ], tobacco use [ 42 ], problematic social networking site use [ 43 ] and compulsive sexual behavior and problematic pornography use [ 44 – 48 ]. Both “shame” and “guilt” were frequent associations, suggesting that the suspected view upon the self of others and self-reviewing and self-judgment can be crucial mechanisms [ 49 ], either restricted to the addiction–guilt -, or generalized to self-identity–shame–[ 41 ], but not differentiated strictly among individuals’ MRs.…”

Symptoms of problematic pornography use among help-seeking male adolescents: Latent profile and network analysis

“…In previous study, teenagers scored higher on mood modification than other factors of PPU ( Bőthe, Vaillancourt-Morel, et al., 2021 ), and one of their main motivations for online sexual experience was mood management ( Castro-Calvo, Giménez-García, Gil-Llario, & Ballester-Arnal, 2018 ). Combining with the high score in moral incongruence, the finding may suggest that there could be a cyclical pattern of pornography use: pornography use may decrease the stress and modify the negative mood, but adolescents may encounter shame, regret, and self-accusation ( Sassover et al., 2021 ), which results in more pornography use to escape shame and guilt. However, these potential hypotheses warrant further investigation.…”