Shame on Me! Self-Conscious Emotions and Big Five Personality Traits and Their Relations to Anxiety Disorders Symptoms in Young, Non-Clinical Adolescents

Abstract

This study explored the relations between self-conscious emotions, personality traits, and anxiety disorders symptoms in non-clinical youths. One-hundred-and-eighteen adolescents aged 12–15 years completed the brief shame and guilt questionnaire for children (BSGQ-C) and items of the youth self-report (YSR) to measure shame and guilt, the big five personality questionnaire for children, and the youth anxiety measure for DSM-5. Results for shame indicated that this self-conscious emotion—either measured by the BSGQ-C or the YSR—was uniquely and positively associated with a broad range of anxiety disorders symptoms, and correlated positively with neuroticism and negatively with extraversion. Guilt did not show significant associations with anxiety disorders symptoms once controlling for the influence of shame, and links with personality traits varied dependent on the assessment instrument that was used (BSGQ-C or YSR). Finally, when controlling for neuroticism and extraversion, shame consistently remained a significant correlate of anxiety disorders symptoms. Altogether, these results add to the growing body of evidence indicating that high levels of shame are clearly associated with anxiety pathology.

Examining the associations between the Big Five personality traits and body self‐conscious emotions

“…Consequently, these results may not be generalizable either to young adults differing from the considered population in their cultural background and/or ethnic affiliation or to populations especially sensitive to body image concerns, such as adolescents (Knauss et al, ). This limitation may be particularly relevant considering that adolescence is a key period in the development of both personality (McCrae & Costa, ) and self‐conscious emotions (Muris et al, ). Second, the brief nature of the questionnaire employed to assess personality according to the Big Five model in the present study (Gosling et al, ) prevented us from examining associations between lower order personality facets comprising higher order traits and body‐related self‐conscious emotions as well as specifying a full‐latent structural equation model.…”

“…If, as a result of such an evaluation, an individual feels that his or her global self (i.e., what they are) or behavior (i.e., what they do) does not conform (or conforms) with the standards, then the prevalent negatively (or positively) valenced emotions of shame and guilt (or hubristic and authentic pride) will arise. Research considering self‐conscious emotions in the global domain has related shame and guilt to neuroticism (positively) and extraversion (negatively) (Abe, ; Muris, Meesters, & van Asseldonk, ). Despite the evidence being quite limited, authentic pride experienced in the global domain appears to be negatively related to neuroticism while positively related to extraversion and consciousness; these relationships being less clearly defined in the case of hubristic pride (Tracy & Robins, ).…”

“…This study had a twofold purpose: First, to examine the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and body‐related self‐conscious emotions in a mixed‐sex sample of young adults and, second, to investigate whether the aforementioned relationships would be moderated by sex. Based on previous studies conducted both in global (Abe, ; Muris et al, ; Tracy & Robins, ) and specific body domains (Allen & Celestino, ; Allen & Walter, ; Frederick et al, ; MacNeill et al, ), and after controlling for the effects of sex (Alcaraz‐Ibáñez & Sicilia, ; Pila et al, ), age, and weight discrepancy (Castonguay et al, ), the following hypotheses were formulated:…”

The Relationship Between Personality Traits And Anxiousness

“…Students in the combined form of study, who do not take part on a daily basis and their study is to a large extent based on self-study and their own responsibility, were also affected by conscientiousness (as a personality trait associated with self-control, organization and performance of one's own activity), where a worse ability to control one's behaviour (lower conscientiousness) was correlated with greater anxiousness. In other words, a worse ability to control one's self-study in a responsible way, which logically leads to worse academic results and a higher risk of exam failure, supported a great degree of anxiousness as well as the probability of more frequent situational attacks of anxiety during exams (Marchant, Morris, & Gibbs, 2004;Muris, Meesters, & van Asseldonk, 2018). However, according to the authors of the present study, this is a two-way relationship, which means that higher anxiousness has a negative effect on real mental content associated with conscientiousness (Blankstein, Toner, & Flett, 1989).…”

Shame's a Pain: Exploring Links Between Shame-Proneness, Aggression, and Perfectionism

“…Despite empirical evidence providing support for the links between seemingly contradictory responses to shame (i.e., perfectionism and aggression), factors that may modulate these differential responses remain largely unexplored. Numerous studies have examined relations between shame and the Big Five personality traits, many of which providing evidence for positive associations between shame and neuroticism (e.g., Einstein & Lanning, 1998;Muris, Meesters, Asseldonk, 2017;Paulus, Vanwoerden, Norton, & Sharp, 2016). Such personality traits reflect stable individual differences in behaviour, that can be immediately perceived by others (Digman, 1990).…”