THE ASSOCIATIOIIOF PARENT/CHILI) - REARIIIG ‘ PRACTICES WITH cHLDREN's‘RgpoRTS‘o-F. _ .. SHAME ARI) GUILI * Dissertation for the Degree of PhI-D.’ MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY . ' DORIS ELLEN. WEIEEL , 1974'I .- ' ' IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII I/ This is to certify that the thesis entitled U The. Association of Parent/Child- Rearing‘Practices with Children's Reports of Shame and Guilt presented by Doris Ellen Weigel has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph . D. degree in Psychology 6 I? / WW r Q 0’er Walsh Major professor Date Agu/Jj 7¢(qfi~l 0-7639 ‘- bViESI.) RETURNING MATERIALS: Place in book drop to LIBRARIES remove this checkout from Azalzgasin. your record. FINES will I be charged if book is , returned after the date stamped pelow. A381 0 xAAnB; 119' 3.1 l M A IS 5 ’, senhfifiihzzss If} ’78! 4 n ABSTRACT THE ASSOCIATION OF PARENT/CHILD-REARING PRACTICES WITH CHILDREN'S REPORTS OF SHAME AND GUILT By Doris Ellen Weigel This study explored the differential associations between parent discipline practices and children's reports of shame and guilt. A review of the literature on parent discipline and moral development revealed inconsistencies in the findings which might reflect a failure to distinguish between shame and guilt as experienced in relation to parent discipline. The sample consisted of l07 sixth and seventh grade children and their parents: 31 middle-class boys, 49 middle-class girls, l5 lower-class boys and 12 lower-class girls. The children were admin— istered a test battery consisting of a story-completion projective measure of guilt, an embarrassability questionnaire (from Cattell's O-A Anxiety Battery) and a measure of need for social desirability (Marlowe-Crowne). The effects of order of presentation were con- trolled by counterbalancing. Each parent was asked to complete a Parent Discipline Questionnaire adapted from Hoffman and Saltzstein (l967). The questionnaire asked the parent to imagine three discipline situations and to indicate how often they used a list of 20 practices Doris Ellen Weigel that followed each situation. Practices were categorized as: power assertion, love withdrawal, induction and shaming. Analysis consisted mainly of correlations between the child's measures and each of his parent's discipline scores. The data were analyzed separately for the four subgroups (sex x SES). The child measures and the discipline practices were also analyzed by 2 x 2 analyses of variance for unequal cell frequencies for the effects of sex and SES. The following significant correlations were obtained between the middle-class parent's discipline and the child's measures: (l) the use of induction by mothers was negatively correlated with the daughter's embarrassability index, and (2) the father's use of love withdrawal was negatively correlated with the son's guilt index. All other correlations between middle-class parents' and children's meas- ures failed to reach significance. For lower-class parents and children the following significant relationships were found: (l) the mother's use of power assertion was positively correlated with the daughter's embarrassability index, (2) the use of induction by the mother was positively correlated with the son's embarrassability index, and (3) the mother's use of induc- tion was positively correlated with the son's guilt index. The find- ings for lower-class children were interpreted as suggestive only, since they are based on very small Ns. The results of the analyses of variance of the child measures indicated that: (1) girls had significantly higher embarrassability Doris Ellen Weigel scores than boys, and (2) lower-class children had significantly higher embarrassability scores than middle-class children. The analy- ses of variance of the parent discipline techniques indicated that there were no differences in the amount of each technique parents used with respect to sex. However, lower-class fathers appeared to use significantly more power assertion than middle-class fathers. Patterns of relative usage by each parent were similar for boys and girls. The theory that parental use of love withdrawal would be associated with a child's proneness to greater embarrassability was not supported. While the mother's use of induction may inhibit the development of strong shame feelings in middle-class girls, the parental discipline practices associated with high embarrassability in middle-class children were not isolated. The results suggest that the threat of loss of the father's relationship in love withdrawal may have a negative impact on the middle-class boy's development of guilt feelings. This lends support to the theory that it is the father's affectionate relationship that is important in determining conscience development for middle-class boys. The theory that parental use of induction is associated with high moral development in children was supported for lower-class mothers and their sons. The results also support the notion that women are more prone to shame than men. Not only did girls have significantly higher embarrassability scores, but the only significant correlations between parental discipline and the girls' measures were for embarrassability. Doris Ellen Weigel Parent discipline tended to correlate with guilt measures for boys. This raises the possibility of different superego styles in men and women. The sex differences on the child measures did not appear to be related to parents' using different amounts or patterns of particu- lar discipline techniques with boys and girls. THE ASSOCIATION OF PARENT/CHILD-REARING PRACTICES WITH CHILDREN'S REPORTS OF SHAME AND GUILT By Doris Ellen Weigel A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Psychology I974 To Nana, Mom and Dad ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Lucy Ferguson, Chairperson, for her suggestions, criticisms, and careful reviews of this thesis; Dr. Bill Crano for all that I learned about instrumentation and for his encouragement in moments of despair; Dr. Dozier Thornton and Dr. Sam Plyler for their support and cooperation. I am also indebted to the following individuals for their help with various aspects of this dissertation: Dr. Charles Bassos, Ms. Sande Pinches, Dr. Dale Alam, Mr. Roger Halley, and the Mason and Saginaw township public schools. Thanks also to the many friends--especially Thom Negri and Joanne Hamachek--with whom I laughed, bitched and cried. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES Chapter I. INTRODUCTION Parent Discipline Techniques and Moral Development Naturalistic Research . Laboratory Research . Theoretical Implications . Research Implications . . Statement of the Problem . II. METHOD Sample . . . . Socioeconomic Status .(SES) Instruments . . Parent Discipline Questionnaire . Child Guilt Index . . . Child Embarrassability Index . . . Child Need for Social Desirability . Data Analysis . Hypotheses III. RESULTS Middle- Class Parents and Children . Additional Analyses . Lower- Class Parents and Children Additional Analyses . . . . . . . Embarrassability and Guilt Scores: Sex and SES Differences . . . . . Patterns of Discipline: Sex and SES Differences . IV. DISCUSSION Middle-Class Discipline and Children's Reports of Embarrassability . iv Page vi Chapter Page Middle- Class Discipline and Children's Reports of Guilt . . . 47 Lower—Class Discipline and Children' 5 Reports .of Embarrassability . . 48 Lower- Class Discipline and Children' 5 Reports of Guilt . . . 50 Other Determinants of Embarrassability and Guilt . 5l Parent Discipline and Sex of the Child . . . . . 53 Parent Discipline and SES of the Child . . . . . 55 Implications for Future Research . . . . . . . 55 APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Table 10. ll. 12. I3. LIST OF TABLES Correlation Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Middle-Class Girls . Correlation Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Middle-Class Boys Correlation Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Lower—Class Girls Correlation Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Lower-Class Boys Summary TabletrfAnalysis of Variance Comparing Embarrassability Scores with Respect to Sex and SES . Mean Embarrassability Scores for Boys and Girls by SES . Summary Table of Analysis of Variance Comparing the Father's Use of Power Assertion with Respect to Sex and SES . . . . . Father's Mean Power Assertion Scores for Boys and Girls by SES . . . Summary Table of Analysis of Variance Comparing the Father's Use of Power Assertion Combined with Love Withdrawal/Shame with Respect to Sex and SES Father's Mean Scores on Power Assertion Combined with Love Withdrawal/Shame for Boys and Girls by SES Mean Parent Discipline Scores Correlation Matrix of Discipline Techniques for Middle- Class Parents . . . . . . . . . . Correlation Matrix of Discipline Techniques for Lower- Class Parents vi Page 3O 31 35 36 39 39 4O 40 4T 41 42 44 44 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Although the importance of guilt and shame have been recog- nized in mental development, character formation, socialization and emotional pathology, they are usually not clearly differentiated or adequately defined. Recent approaches by Lynd (1958) and Lewis (l97l) have stressed "that the same situation may give rise to both shame and guilt; that shame and guilt may sometimes alternate with and reinforce each other; and that a particular situation may be experienced by an individual as inducing shame or guilt or both according to the nature of the person (and) the axis on which he habitually behaves (Lynd, l958)." Guilt and shame are thus not seen as antitheses or at opposite poles of a dichotomy, but as axes which have different orientations, modes and stresses. While both the guilt and shame axes enter into the attitudes of most people, and often into the same situation, there seem to be different balances and stresses between the two for differ- ent individuals such that we may speak of guilt-orientations and shame-orientations in individuals. What are the factors involved in determining the balance between these axes for different individuals? Let us take a brief look at the developmental conditions under which the acquisition of guilt and shame affect are thought to occur. Freud (l949) described shame as one of the "forces restricting the direction taken by the sexual instincts," along with "disgust, pity and the structures of morality and authority erected by society." He described it as the force opposing scoptophilia and exhibitionism. Fenichel (l945) describes shame in two rather disparate ways. Following Freud's idea, he refers to shame as "a defense mainly against exhibitionism and scoptophilia.“ He also describes shame as "the spe- cific force directed against the urethral-erotic temptation.” Further- more, he suggests that the tendency to suppress the symptoms of enuresis may, in a twofold way, influence character development. First, "it may turn the unspecific fear of 'one's own dangerous impulses' into the specific fear of 'losing control'." And second, "the general fear of one's own dangerous instincts might acquire the special quality of shame." In Erikson's (l950) ego development scheme, visual shame precedes auditory guilt, which is a sense of bad- ness to be had all by oneself when nobody watches and when everything is quiet--except the voice of the superego. . shaming exploits an increasing sense of being small, which can develop only as the child stands up and as his aware- ness permits him to note the relative measures of size and power. Erikson views the crucial point for the formation of shame as occurring in the developmental stage of anal-muscular integration (approximately the second year of life). Shame linked with doubt is the specific obstacle which must be overcome in the task of first establishing ”autonomy:“ Guilt occurs at a later stage of ego development, in the " conflict between initiative and guilt. While the struggle for autonomy concentrates on keeping the rivals out, the development of initiative brings with it a contest for a favored position with one of the parents: the inevitable failure leads to guilt and anxiety. Piers (l953), like Erikson, feels that comparison with others and awareness of “inferiority” must occur quite early, probably earlier than any guilt feelings can have developed. "Whereas guilt requires another object, the dynamic requirement for shame is only that the process of ego development be under way." He states, (l) Shame arises out of a tension between the Ego and the Ego- Ideal, not between Ego and Superego as in guilt. (2) Whereas guilt is generated whenever a boundary (set by the Superego) is touched or transgressed, shame occurs when a goal (presented by the Ego-Ideal) is not being reached. It thus indicates a real 'shortcoming.‘ Guilt anxiety accompanies transgression; shame failure. (3) The unconscious, irrational threat implied in shame anxiety is abandonment and not mutilation (castration) as in guilt. (4) The Law of Talion does not obtain in the development of shame as it generally does in guilt. Lynd (l958) states that a basic trust in the personal and physical world is crucial to the child's developing sense of identity. As (the child) gradually differentiates the world of in here from the world of out there he is constantly testing the coher- ence, continuity and dependability of both. Expectations and having expectations met are crucial in developing a sense of coherence in the world and in oneself. Sudden experience of a violation of an expectation, of incongruity between expecta- tion and outcome, results in a shattering of trust in oneself, even in one's own body and skill and identity, and in the trusted boundaries one has known. . . . The greater the expec- tation, the more acute the shame. . . . As trust in oneself and in the outer world develop together, so doubt of oneself and of the outer world develop together. And from another viewpoint, Wallace (l963) suggests that shame is related to the oral stage of psychosexual development. He states that the difference between shame and guilt is that "the superego is the source of narcissistic supplies in guilt while shame demands these supplies from external objects in situations where the introjections are not adequate." Wallace suggests, If the Ego function or ego ideal is adequately internalized and the object relationship is abandoned in this respect, the ego and the ego ideal appear to become fused. If the introjection is not completed, an object-need remains, and the individual continues to seek substitutes for the original parental nar- cissistic supplies. . . . If there is a major deficiency of introjects during infancy, there is no possibility of ego development, and psychosis is the result. If the deficiency is less intense, shame develops as a compensatory mechanism to the fear of abandonment. Only when the introjections are more complete and when the parental attitudes are satisfactorily internalized, can the infant approach a level where he attempts to satisfy himself. When he fails to fulfill these goals he feels bad within himself and suffers from a loss of self-esteem and feelings of guilt. Most of these theories acknowledge, at least by implication, the importance of the parental attitudes, standards and interventions in helping the young child develop a sense of identity and learn to control his behavior. Moreover, the particular form of adult inter- vention would seem to be crucial in determining the child's early experiences of shame and guilt. Ruth Benedict (l946) states that ”in any culture traditional moral sanctions are transmitted to each new generation, not merely in words, but in the elders' attitudes toward their children and in their child-rearing practices.” In an anthropological study of Japan, a culture which relies heavily on shame, Benedict describes the parental practices which are primarily focused on teaching the child “to know shame." Until the child is six or seven, ”he has been taught physical control, and when he was obstreperous, his naughtiness has been 'cured' and his attention distracted. He has been allowed to be willful . . ." Although the children's games are very free in hurling criticisms and in boasting --occasions for deep shame in later life--the Japanese say "children know no shame." During the first years of school more emphasis is gradually laid on the dangers of getting into 'embarrassing' situa- tions. "Children are too young for 'shame,’ but they must be taught to avoid being embarrassed." While the elders do not themselves use ridicule on the children at this point, they do try to integrate the fact of ridicule with the moral lesson of living up to obligations to the world. They gradually teach a whole series of restraints of the nature, “If you do this, if you do that, the world will laugh at you. A great many of the rules concern what we call etiquette. Then, ”after six or seven, responsibility for circumspection and 'knowing shame' is put on (the children) and upheld by the most dras- tic of sanctions: that their own family will turn against them if they default.” Abandonment through ostracism is more dreaded than violence. In contrast, the culture of the United States relies more on individuals developing a conscience by adopting absolute standards of morality; it is a more guilt-oriented culture. While individuals may suffer from shame, most of the attention in the moral development and child-rearing literature has been focused on the acquisition of guilt feelings. Let us briefly review this literature. Parent Discipline Techniques and Moral Development In a recent review of the literature on moral development in relation to parental discipline techniques, Hoffman (l970) distinguished three child-rearing concepts: (l) Power Assertion (PA) includes physical punishment, depriva- tion of material objects or privileges, the direct applications of force, or the threat of any of these. The term 'power asser- tion' is used to highlight the fact that in using these techniques the parent seeks to control the child by capitalizing on his physical power or control over material resources. Rather than rely on the child's inner resources (e.g. guilt, shame, dependency, love, or respect) or provide him with information necessary for the development of such resources, the parent punishes the child physically or materially or relies on his fear of punishment. (2) Love Withdrawal (LW) techniques are those in which the parent simply gives direct but nonphysical expression to his anger or disapproval of the child for engaging in some undesirable behavior. Examples are ignoring the child, and isolating or threatening to leave him. Like power assertion, love withdrawal has a highly punitive quality. Although it poses no immediate threat to the child, it may be more devastating emotionally than power assertion because it poses the ultimate threat of abandonment or separation. Whereas power assertion ordinarily consists of discrete aversive acts that are quickly over and done with, love withdrawal is typically more prolonged--lasting minutes, hours, or even days-- and its duration may be variable and unpredictable. While the parent may know when it will end, the very young child may not since he is totally dependent on the parent and moreover lacks the experience and time perspective needed to recognize the temporary nature of the parent's attitude. (3) Induction (IND) includes techniques in which the parent gives explanations or reasons for requiring the child to change his behavior. Examples are pointing out the physical requirements of the situation or the harmful consequences of the child's behavior for himself or others. This may be done by directly pointing out or explaining the nature of the consequence (e.g. If you throw snow on their walk, they will have to clean it up all over again; Pulling the leash like that can hurt the dog's neck; That hurts my feelings); or explaining the motives under- lying the other person's behavior toward the child (e.g. Don't yell at him. He was only trying to help.) These techniques are less punitive then power assertion or love withdrawal, and more of an attempt to persuade or convince the child that he should change his behavior in the prescribed manner. Also included are techniques which appeal to conformity-inducing agents that already exist, or potentially exist, within the child. Examples are appeals to the child's pride, strivings for mastery and to be 'grown up', and concern for others. Naturalistic Research Using these criteria for distinguishing the type of discipline used, Hoffman found the following pattern in his review of the natural- istic studies: the frequent use of power assertion by the mother was consistently associated with weak moral development. Induction was associated with advanced moral development. The latter relationship, however, was not quite as strong and consistent across the various age levels as the negative one for power assertion. But in no case was induction found to relate negatively to the moral indices. Love with- drawal was found to relate infrequently to the moral indices; the few significant findings did not fit any apparent pattern. Very few relationships were obtained between the father's dis- cipline practices and the child's moral development for either boys or girls. Father absent boys did show consistently lower moral devel- opment scores than boys who had fathers. It thus seems that while the father plays a necessary role in the boy's moral development, his discipline methods do not seem to be crucial in the process. Laboratory Research The results of the laboratory studies on power assertion sug— gest that under certain conditions, namely high intensity and early timing, power assertion may promote the immediate suppression of pleasure-oriented tendencies (Parke and Walters, l967; Aronfreed and Reber, 1965; Walters, Parke and Cane, l965). A number of laboratory studies suggest that love withdrawal may contribute to an intensification of the child's need for adult approval. These studies have generally shown that "when the rein- forcement for learning simple discrimination tasks consists of social approval by an adult experimenter, children who had previously expe- rienced a period of social isolation show more rapid learning than children who had no such experience (Hoffman, l970)." Hoffman states that if we assume “that isolation is an appropriate laboratory analogue of love withdrawal discipline and that increased learning reflects an increased need for adult approval, these experiments sug- gest that love withdrawal intensifies the need for adult approval" and raises the level of performance--but only with respect to simple cog- nitive tasks and in the adult's presence. There is some evidence that love withdrawal may contribute to the inhibition of expression of overt hostility to peers. Psycho- analytic theory might thus be correct in assuming that anxiety over love withdrawal plays an important role in the socialization of the child's impulses. Hoffman and Saltzstein (l967) suggest that the contribution of love withdrawal to moral development may be to attach anxiety directly to the child's hostile impulses and thus motivate him to keep them under control: Since the hostility is usually expressed toward the parent in situtaions in which the child's desires conflict with those of the parents, the anxiety associated with hostility may generalize to these desires. Thus love withdrawal may contribute to a gen- eral anxiety over impulses. Love withdrawal alone, however, does not appear to be sufficient for the development of the capacities for guilt and internal moral judgment which are the characteristics of a fully developed, mature conscience. (Hoff- man, l970). The effect of pointing out the consequences of the child's behavior (i.e.,induction) has not been investigated in the laboratory. Although the children in some of the studies (mentioned above) on timing of punishment were given some cognitive mediation, the flaws in the designs of the experiments preclude drawing any implications regarding the effects of the cognitive information on the children's behavior. Theoretical Implications All three types of discipline communicate some negative evalua- tion by the parent and arouse the child's need for approval. Hoffman suggests that love withdrawal and power assertion may be too highly arousing, and that it may only be in inductive techniques that the need for approval is aroused to an optimal degree. Hoffman (l970) suggests that ”techniques which are predomi- nantly power assertive are least effective in promoting development of moral standards and internalization of controls because they elicit intense hostility in the child and simultaneously provide him with a model for expressing that hostility outward as well as a rela- tively legitimate object against which to express it." Because the child's intense hostility is experienced as legitimate, his need for approval from the parent becomes less salient. Furthermore, "this IO hostility functions as an obstacle to the arousal of empathy and the comprehension of any cognitive components of the technique." While love withdrawal techniques depend on the affectionate. relationship between the child and parent to a greater degree than the other two techniques, they do so in a way that is more likely to pro- duce anxiety in the child. Because communication is reduced or stopped in love withdrawal techniques, the cognitive material needed to heighten the child's awareness of wrongdoing and enable him to generalize accurately to other situations is also not included. Or, if the cog- nitive material is included, there is a good chance that the anxiety aroused Mfill interfere with comprehension of the message. Love with- drawal may lead to an intensified inhibition not only of hostility but of all impulses associated with behaviors that have been frowned upon by the parent. The child learns to be good in order to avoid losing the parent's love--and being good means controlling impulses. Induction techniques are less punitive than either power asser- tion or love withdrawal, and are more of an attempt to persuade or convince the child that he should change his behavior in the pre- scribed manner. In addition, because inductions explain the conse- quences of the child's behavior, they may also make the criticism appear to derive from the situation rather than from the negative parental feeling toward the child. They indicate that expressing one's anger or impulses need not damage the relationship with the person toward whom it is expressed. The act of repairing damages, in addi- tion to suggesting a constructive manner of restoring the relationship, ll also serves to place a limit on whatever love withdrawal is communi- cated by the parent. The effectiveness of induction as a discipline technique thus appears to be based on the child's connecting its cog- nitive substance with his own resources for comprehending the require- ments of the situation and controlling his behavior accordingly. Research Implications Perhaps the most surprising result of Hoffman's (l970) research review was the poor showing made by love withdrawal. Much of the literature has been predicated on the hypothesis, derived from the psychoanalytic theory of anaclitic identification, that anxiety over possible loss of parental love is the major contributing factor to the child's internalization of parental values and standards. The central thrust of the theory is summarized by Hoffman (l970) as follows: the young child is inevitably subjected to many frustrations, some of which are due to parental intervention. . . . All of these frustrations contribute to the development of hestility toward the parent. Due to anxiety over anticipated punishment, especially loss of love and abandonment by the parent, the child represses the hostility. To help maintain the repression, as well as elicit continuing expressions of affection, the child adopts in relatively unmodified form the rules and prohibitions emanating from the parent. He also develops a generalized motive to emulate the behavior and adopts the parent's capacity to punish himself when he violates a prohibition or is tempted to do so, turning inward in the course of doing this, the hostility that was originally directed toward the parent. This self-punishment is experienced as guilt feelings, which are dreaded because of their intensity and their resemblance to the earlier anxieties about punishment and abandonment. The child therefore tries to avoid guilt by acting always in accordance with incorporated parental prohibitions and erecting various mechanisms of defense against the conscious awareness of impulses to act to the contrary. 12 This hypothesis is seriously called into question by the research findings or lack of them. Hoffman and Saltzstein's (l967) work suggests that the mother's use of induction techniques rather than love withdrawal is associated with guilt feelings in children. What then is the impact of love withdrawal techniques on the person- ality development of the child? Because of the many similarities between the experience of shame and the experience of the child in love withdrawal discipline, it is suggested that love withdrawal techniques may be the prototype of the early interventions which con- tribute to a shame orientation in an individual. In order to explore this hypothesis, let us further clarify some of the properties which distinguish the experience of shame from that of guilt (according to Lynd, l958 and Lewis, l97l) and compare the experiences of shame with love withdrawal and guilt with induc- tion. I In the common sense view, guilt is a conscious experience that follows the violation of an internalized standard--in particular, parental standards. Internalization in this sense means that although detection and punishment are unlikely, the individual still feels critical of himself and remorseful because he knows he has done wrong. The individual thus experiences the standards as an obligation to himself and the negative evaluation originates within the self rather than in reference to some external figure. Guilt is thus evoked by uniform stimuli: the acceptance or acknowledgment of moral transgression. In guilt, the self is evaluated l3 negatively in connection with something done or undone, but it is not itself the focus of the experience. In this sense, guilt is associa- ted with a wrong act, a part of oneself that is separate, segmented, and redeemable. There is usually a possibility of choice, foresight, a weighing of pros and cons over a long period of time and awareness in regard to a specific act. Guilt reactions may be readily dis- charged by some activity which makes amends, or balances the scales of obligation: confession, repentance, punishment, atonement, con- demnation, restoration. Because the self may function actively in attempting to make amends, the self is experienced as active and in control; the other is seen as injured. As suggested above, inductions may be successful in fostering guilt feelings in children because they focus on the act rather than the negative parental feeling toward the child. Furthermore, they suggest a constructive manner of restoring the relationship and repairing the damages. This cognitive material is necessary for the child to comprehend the requirements of the situation so that he may have the possibility of choice and foresight in the future and control his behavior appropriately. Shame, in contrast, may be evoked by moral or nonmoral stimuli. The experience of shame involves the unexpected exposure of peculiarly sensitive, intimate vulnerable aspects of the self. Certain features of one's body are unalterable, uncontrollable and in a unique way are "oneself." The sudden exposure of them, or lack of control of them (e.g., tears) or awareness of the difference between the way one sees l4 one's own body and the way others may see it are all occasions for the experience of shame. There is nothing wrong with what one has done; no sin has been committed. But what is exposed is incongruous with, or glaringly inappropriate to, the situation, or to our previous picture of ourselves in it. Whatever part voluntary action may have in the experience of shame becomes secondary and is swallowed up in the sense of something that overwhelmes us from without. Because there is no isolated act that can be detached from the self, the thing that is revealed is what_I am, The whole self stands revealed. Shame reactions, taken lightly, dissipate of their own accord. The recognition that the shame reaction was "only about the self" allows shame to dissipate with a touch of self—ridicule or allows it to be tempered by some kindness or reassurance from another. But because it is the whole self which stands revealed, the individual who is not able to take the shame reaction lightly is likely to feel that there is nothing that he can do to rectify or alleviate the experience of shame short of a change in the whole self. Some shame cultures have even provided ritual ceremonies through which experiences of shame may be wiped out by total destruction of the self (i.e., ritual suicide). Ruth Benedict (l946) notes that, “Where shame is the major sanction, a man does not experience relief when he makes his fault public even to a confessor. . . . Shame cultures have ceremonies for good luck rather than expiation.“ Moreover, in the experience of shame, the self is not solely responsible for its own feeling of disgrace; the source of blame or l5 negative evaluation of the self is localized as ”out there," originat- ing in the other. Because the shame of failure is for an involuntary event, the self is experienced as passive and helpless; the other is seen as powerful and active--the source of scorn. Thus, in both the experience of shame and in discipline encounters involving the withdrawal of love, communication is broken and the other is experienced as withdrawing. Because no cognitive feedback is given, the negative parental feeling or feeling of condem- nation from the other is not experienced in relation to a specific act, but in relation to the self. In addition, because no informa- tion is communicated as to how one may repair the damage done to the relationship and restore communication, the individual feels help- less and dependent on the other. He cannot restore the lost approval short of a change in the whole self. Furthermore, the individual does not gain the kind of information about the impact of his behavior on the feelings of others that would permit choice and foresight in his future behavior; as in the experience of shame, love withdrawal appears to come on one suddenly and unexpectedly from without. The other is seen as powerful and in control; the self is experienced as passive and unable. These similarities suggest the following reformulation of Hoffman's statement of the psychoanalytic theory of anaclitic identifi- cation quoted above: the young child is subjected to many frustrations, some of which are due to parental interventions. . . . All of these frustra- tions contribute to the development of hostility toward the parent. Due to anxiety over punishment, especially loss of love l6 and abandonment by the parent, the child represses the hostility. To help maintain the repression, as well as elicit continuing expressions of affection, the child adopts in relatively unmodi- fied form (the ideals of the loving parents). He also develops a generalized motive to emulate the behavior and adopts the parent's capacity to punish himself when he (fails to achieve an ego-ideal), turning inward, in the course of doing this, the hostility that was originally directed toward the parent. This self-punishment is experienced as (shame) feelings, which are dreaded because of their intensity and their resemblance to the earlier anxieties about punishment and abandonment. The child therefore tries to avoid (shame) by acting always in accordance with incorporated (admiredpmrentalinwges) and erecting various mechanisms of defense against the conscious awareness of impulses to act to the contrary. Thus, similar to Piers' (l953) and Lewis' (l958) conception of shame, it is suggested that love withdrawal techniques set up a tension not between the ego and the internalized parental values and standards, but between the ego and the beloved and admired parental images in the ego-ideal. Statement of the Problem There is little naturalistic research on the antecedents of shame and guilt affect. The review of the literature on parent-child rearing practices suggests that the particular form of parental dis- cipline may be related to children's reactions to transgression. Based on the theory of anaclitic identification, we would expect love withdrawal techniques to be associated with guilt. But Hoffman and Saltzstein's (l967) work indicates that the mother's use of discipline which focuses on the act and provides feedback about what the transgression was and how it can be rectified (i.e., induc- tion) is associated with children developing internalized standards and the capacity for guilt feelings. 17 Since love withdrawal is not associated with guilt feelings in children, and since the experience produced by love withdrawal parallels that of shame, it is suggested that love withdrawal tech- niques may actually be associated with shame feelings. This research was designed to test this hypothesis by studying the association between parental discipline practices (i.e., power assertion, love withdrawal, and induction) and indices of shame and guilt in children. CHAPTER II METHOD Sample The children studied were sixth and seventh graders in the Saginaw TownshipithLh25chool System. The rationale for selecting sixth and seventh graders was pragmatic: several instruments in the present study were adapted from ones developed for use with children of this age level. All sixth and seventh graders were given an envelope to bring home to their parents. The envelope contained a questionnaire for each parent and a form granting permission for their child to partici- pate in the study. A letter attached to each questionnaire requested that the mother and the father each complete a questionniare as part of a study "to find out about the different things which parents do to help their children grow up.” These questionnaires were to be returned in a pre-stamped, addressed envelope. In addition, they were asked to have the child return the signed permission form to the school. It was felt that this procedure would allow the parents maxi- mum confidentiality and yet not delay collection of the permission forms. Approximately lOOO envelopes were distributed. A copy of these materials including the letter to the parent, the parent ques- tionnaire, and the permission form may be found in Appendix A. 18 19 A test battery consisting of a guilt measure, an embarrassa- bility measure and a measure of need for social desirability were administered to the children who returned permission forms. Children whose parents refused to complete the questionnaires were eliminated from the sample. Further shrinkage due to absence during the testing session, failure to return the permission form before the testing session, incomplete background information, and incomplete responses resulted in a sample of lO7 children and their parents: 46 boys and 6l girls. Socioeconomic Status (SES) Because of the differences in parent discipline practices of middle-class and lower-class parents noted by Hoffman (l970) and Miller and Swanson, et al. (l960), the sample was further divided according to socioeconomic status. The family's social class was determined on the baSis of the father's occupation as reported on his question- naire. The Hollingshead and Redlich (l958) Occupational Scale for scoring social position was used to score socio-economic level. Since the information provided on the questionnaire concerning the father's occupation was sparse, socioeconomic level was scored accord- ing to whether the father's occupation was white collar or blue collar. Categories one through four on the Hollingshead and Redlich scale were scored as white collar occupations and categories five through seven as blue collar occupations. The resulting SES distribution consisted of 3l middle—class boys, 49 middle-class girls, l5 lower- class boys and l2 lower-class girls. 20 There was no direct way to determine whether the small propor- tion of lower-class parents and children in the sample was representa- tive of the general p0pulation in Saginaw Township. However, census data obtained from Saginaw Township indicated that 25 percent of the population earned an income between $l,OOO and $ll,OOO. It seemed reasonable to assume that few blue collar workers would be earning more than $ll,OOO. Consequently, we assumed that our lower-class sample, while small, was fairly representative of the distribution of lower-class families in the Saginaw Township population. Instruments To control for order effects, the tests were presented in six different orders: l,2,3; l,3,2; 2,1,3; 2,3,l; 3,l,2; and 3,2,l. An equal number of children received each order of tests. These instru- ments may be found in Appendix B, and are described below in detail. Parent Discipline Questionnaire This questionnaire was developed by adapting items from the Hoffman and Saltzstein (l967) measures of parent discipline practices. Hoffman and Saltzstein asked each parent to imagine four situations: one in which the child delayed complying with a parental request to do something, a second in which the child was careless and destroyed something of value, a third in which he talked back to the parent, and a fourth in which he had not done well in school. Following each 21 situation there was a list of from lO to l4 practices. The parent was asked Unindicate how often they used each practice (i.e., usually, sometimes, rarely, or never) and then to indicate the first, second, and third practice most frequently used. Hoffman and Saltzstein categorized each of the practices as to whether they employed pri- marily power assertion (PA), love withdrawal (LW) or induction (IND) techniques, as defined above. The parent's three choices were then weighted, and the scores summed across the four situations to deter- mine a score for each of the three categories of discipline. The present writer did not feel that many of the parental practices were categorized appropriately. Therefore, two judges were asked to score independently the parental practices using the same three categories as Hoffman and Saltzstein. The judges agreed on 75 percent of their judgments as to which of the three categories the parental practices belonged. Disagreements were resolved and the resulting scoring system was compared with Hoffman and Saltzstein's. The new scoring system disagreed with Hoffman and Saltzstein's on 27 percent of the judgements as to which of the three categories of dis- cipline was most descriptive of the parental practices. A pilot study was conducted to examine the reliability of the scoring systems. Additional items were generated so that following each of the four situations there was a list of 20 practices. The percentage of agreement between the same two judges as to which of the three categories the parental practices belonged on the expanded instrument was 74 percent. This scoring system will be referred to as the Weigel scoring system. 22 The expanded questionniare was distributed to the parents of approximately 300 seventh and 300 eighth graders in Mason Junior High School. Each parent was asked to indicate how often they employed each discipline practice: usually, sometimes, rarely, or never. Approximately 260 questionnaires were returned. The responses for each subject on each item were weighted, "usually“ receiving a score of four and "never" a score of one. The scores were then summed across the situations to determine a score for each of the three categories of discipline. This was done for both the Weigel and the Hoffman and Saltzstein scoring systems. Because many of the parents did not respond to the fourth situation and indicated that their child never had problems in school, it was decided to eliminate this situation from further analysis and from the Parent Discipline Questionnaire. In order to measure the internal consistency of the scoring systems, alpha coefficients were computed for the three parental practices (PA,le,and IND) across the remaining three situations. Using the Hoffman and Saltzstein (l967) scoring system on the short version (l0 to l4 practices after each situation), the alpha coeffi- cients were .74 (PA), .62 (LW) and .79 (IND) as compared with .79 (PA), .83 (LW) and .83 (IND) when using the Weigel scoring system on the expanded instrument (20 practices after each situation). Since the latter alpha coefficients were higher, it was decided to use the expanded version of the Parent Discipline Questionniare and the Weigel scoring system in the main study. 23 In addition, because many of the parental practices were also thought to employ direct shaming techniques (S), the same two judges were asked to rescore independently the parental practices for the three situations indicating which ones employed shaming techniques. This allowed us to examine the effects of direct shaming techniques compared with pure physical punishment, love withdrawal and induction. Shaming techniques were defined as follows: Shaming techniques include many of the properties of love with- drawal; communication is broken and no cognitive information is communicated about what the child has done or how he may make reparation and restore the lost relationship. In addition, in shaming techniques the child is made to feel that the act would not have occurred if the child was like other people. He experiences himself as responsible not because he did a particu- lar act, but because he is a certain way. Examples of shaming techniques include ridicule, showing contempt for the child and indicating disappointment in or dislike of the child as a person. The judges agreed that l9 of the 60 practices employed shaming tech- niques. Of these techniques, 53 percent were originally scored by the judges as love withdrawal, 37 percent as induction, and lO percent as power assertion. The Weigel scoring system may be found in the left margin of the parent questionniare in Appendix A. Child Guilt Index Four story-completion items were used to assess the intensity of the child's guilt reaction to transgression. The child was pre- sented with a story (Stenu which focused on a basically sympathetic child of the same age who had committed a transgression. Following each story there were five or six multiple choice endings indicating 24 what the protagonist thought and felt and what happened afterwards. The child was asked to put a l_and a 2_next to the story endings that were "most like" and "second most like" what he thought the person was thinking and feeling and what happened afterwards. The assumption was made that the child identified with the protagonist and therefore' revealed his own internal reactions (although not necessarily his overt reactions) through his completion of the story. The first story used was concerned with a girl who through negligence contributed to the death of a younger child. The story stem was constructed so as to provide several other characters on whom to transfer blame. The second story was about a boy who cheated in a swimming race. These two stories were adapted from Hoffman and Saltzstein (1967). The third story dealt with a girl who withheld, from her best friend, important material for an exam (adapted from Aronfreed, l960). The fourth story concerned a boy who stole a catcher's mitt (Allinsmith, l960). The five multiple choice endings for each story were constructed to represent five different intensities of guilt using a Thurstone method of equal-appearing intervals. A large sample of potential story completions was collected from a group of 40 seventh graders and from several psychologists and interns. From these items, ten story endings were selected for each of the four stories to represent the complete range of possible guilt reactions to each of the situations. A second group of 25 seventh graders were then asked to judge the intensity of guilt feeling expressed by each story ending. The 25 subjects were asked to sort the lO endings for each story along a five point scale from "feels extremely guilty" to "feels very little guilt." 'The subjects were instructed to disregard their own attitudes in this item—categorization process, and to be sure that the subjective distances between contiguous points on the five-point scale were equal. The scale value of each item was then determined by the aver- age rating it received by the judges. The final sets of five endings for each story were selected so that the means of the items would cover the entire range of guilt feelings, approximately equal differ- ences would be maintained between the means of successive items and the standard deviations of the chosen items would be approximately equal. Items were assigned the value of their means for use in com- puting the child's guilt index. The values of the means are shown in the left margin on the Story Completion Test in Appendix B. The child's guilt index was determined by averaging the values of the items marked l_and 2_for each story and then summing the averages across the four stories. Child Embarrassabilityglndex Because of the difficulty in defining and communicating the nature of the shame experience, research on assessment of shame orientation has been limited. Measures of embarrassability have generally been employed to assess shame orientation. The rationale for accepting a measure of embarrassment for use in the present study as an indicator of shame states was a pragmatic one. Preliminary work 26 indicated that the amount of time and pilot testing involved in devel- oping a measure of shame (e.g., story stems to elicit shame) really warranted a separate research project beyond the scope of this study. Embarrassability was assessed by a scale of 54 items each describing a potentially embarrassing situation. Most of these items were adapted from the Susceptibility to Embarrassment scale in the Objective-Analytic Anxiety Battery (Cattell & Scheier, l960). Cattell reports that this scale has an average split-half corrected reliability (based on two studies) of .90. On each item the child was asked to rate how embarrassed he personally would feel in that situation: very embarrassed, somewhat embarrassed, not embarrassed. The choice for each item was weighted ("very embarrassed" receiving a score of three and "not embarrassed” a score of one) and the scores summed across all of the items. Child Need for Social Desirability Since the scale for embarrassability may be susceptible to a subject's propensity to distort his answers to a questionnaire in a socially desirable manner, and since such a bias would spuriously inflate the embarrassability score, it seemed wise to include a scale to assess this bias as a means of partialling it out, if necessary. Thus, the Marlowe and Crowne Need for Social Desirability (M-C SD) scale (Crowne and Marlow, 1964) was included in the battery. The M-C SD scale is a 33—item, true-false questionnaire. The scale was standardized on a sample of college students in an introductory 27 psychology course. It has an internal consistency coefficient of .88 and a test-retest reliability of .88. The need for social desirability score was determined by summing the number of items answered in a socially desirable direction. The scoring system is shown in the left margin of the M-C SD scale in Appendix B. Data Analysis The data were analyzed separately for middle-class boys, middle-class girls, lower—class boys and lower-class girls. The pro- cedure for each of these groups was to compute the correlations between the child's need for social desirability score, embarrassability index, guilt index and his parent's discipline scores. These corre- lations were computed separately for the mother's and father's parental discipline practices. deem Hoffman (l970) did not find any consistent relationships between either the middle-class father's or the lower-class parent's discipline practices and the child's moral development. Consequently, although the data were analyzed, no predictions were made for these groups. The following predictions were made for the relationships between the middle-class mother's discipline and the child's embarrass- ability index: Hypothesis la: The mother's use of love withdrawal techniques will be positively correlated with the child's embarrass- ability index. 28 Hypothesis 1b: The mother's use of induction will not be posi- tively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. Hypothesis 1c: The mother's use of power assertion will not be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. Hypothesis 1d: The mother's use of those techniques that are scored as shaming will be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. Hypothesis 1e: The correlation in 1d will be significantly greater than that in 1a. It was also predicted that the middle-class mother's discipline would be associated with the child's guilt index as follows: Hypothesis 2a: The mother's use of induction techniques will be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. Hypothesis 2b: The mother's use of love withdrawal will not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. Hypothesis 2c: The mother's use of power assertion will not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. Hypothesis 2d: The mother's use of shaming will not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. CHAPTER III RESULTS In the main, analysis consisted of correlations between the child's measures and each of the parent's. Correlations were computed separately for each of the four groups (sex x SES). Contrary to expectations, the sample included a very small proportion of lower-class subjects. Since we do not know how repre- sentative this sample is, we can not say anything definite about lower-class parent/child-rearing practices. Therefore, it was decided to explore what the lower-class data suggest for future research. The results will be presented separately for the middle-class and lower- class parents and children. Middle-Class Parents and Children While predictions were made only for middle-class mothers, the results for middle-class fathers will be presented at the same time. The correlation matrices for middle-class parents and children may be found in Tables 1 (girls) and 2 (boys). Hypothesis 1a: The mother's use of love withdrawal techniques will be positively correlated with the child's embarrass- ability index. This hypothesis was not supported. Neither the mother's nor the father's use of love withdrawal correlated positively with the child's embarrassability index. 29 30 Table 1.-—Corre1ation Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Middle- Class Girls. .—.--.....-_.._..—_____._—- -—- 0—..- -uu-W.w .—_-——_.__.—. ...- .- .w...—... .- - “. us. Oggiigbility Embarrassability Guilt Child (N = 49) (N = 46) Social Desirability -.1078 -.O731 Embarrassability .1016 Mother (N = 48) (N = 48) (N = 45) PA .0199 -.2077 -.O764 LW .1078 -.1827 -.0665 IND .0448 -.3006* -.1627 Shaming .0830 -.2074 -.O908 PA + LII/sa .0707 -.2127 -.0549 Father (N = 47) (N = 47) (N = 44) PA -.0609 -.0767 -.1581 LW .0075 -.0815 .1019 IND .0621 -.O498 -.O696 Shaming .0332 -.0550 -.OO77 PA + LII/sa -.0606 -.lO64 -.0633 aPA combined with those LW techniques also scored as shaming items. *p < .05. 31 Table 2.--Correlation Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Middle- Class Boys. 3222:;b111t Embarrassability Guilt (N = 3]) y (N = 31) (N = 28) Child Social Desirability -.2499 .0911 Embarrassability -.0413 Mother PA .3537 .0310 .0072 LW -.0239 .2710 .0514 IND -.1238 .2468 -.0893 Shaming -.0483 .2191 -.0109 PA + LII/sa .2688 .1303 .0315 Father PA -.O490 -.l662 -.O797 LW .0548 .0369 -.3802* IND .1550 .0014 —.l472 Shaming .0774 .0287 -.3521 PA + LII/sa .0499 -.1190 -.l987 aPA combined with those LW techniques also scored as shaming items. *p < .05. 32 Hypothesis 1b: The mother's use of induction will not be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. This hypothesis was supported. Neither the mother's nor the father's use of induction was correlated positively with the child's embarrass- ability index. Furthermore, the middle-class mother's use of induction . correlated -.30 (N = 48; p < .05) with the daughter's embarrassability index (See Table l). Hypothesis 1c: The mother's use of power assertion will not be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. This hypothesis was supported. Neither the mother's nor the father's use of power assertion was correlated positively with the child's embarrassability index. Hypothesis 1d: The mother's use of those techniques that are scored as shaming will be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. This hypothesis was not supported. There were no positive correlations between either the mother's or the father's use of shaming and the child's embarrassability index. Hypothesis 1e: The correlation in 1d will be significantly greater than that in 1a. This hypothesis was not supported for either parent. Hypothesis 2a: The mother's use of induction techniques will be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. This hypothesis was not supported. Neither the mother's nor the father's use of induction techniques correlated positively with the child's guilt index. Hypothesis 2b: The mother's use of love withdrawal will not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. 33 This hypothesis was supported. There were no positive correlations between the mother's or the father's use of love withdrawal and the child's guilt index. In addition, there was a negative correlation of -.38 (N = 28; p < .05) between the father's use of love withdrawal and the son's guilt index (See Table 2). Hypothesis 2c: The mother's use of power assertion will not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. This hypothesis was supported. There were no positive correlations between either the mother's or the father's use of power assertion and the child's guilt index. Hypothesis 2d: The mother's use of shaming will not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. This hypothesis was supported. There were no positive correlations between either the mother's or the father's use of shaming and the child's guilt index. Additional AnaLyses A previous analysis of the pilot Parent Discipline Question- naire indicated that love withdrawal items that were also scored as shaming (LW/S) tended to fall in with power assertion rather than pure love withdrawal as a discipline pattern. This suggested that embarrassability scores might be positively correlated with a combina- tion of power assertion and love withdrawal/shame items (PA + LW/S). These correlations were computed and are included in Tables 1 and 2. The results indicated that neither the mother's nor the father's use of PA + LW/S was correlated positively with the child's embarrassa- bility index. 34 Lower-Class Parents and Children The correlation matrices for lower-class parents and children may be found in Tables 3 (girls) and 4 (boys). Hypothesis la: The mother's use of love withdrawal techniques will be positively correlated with the child's embarrassa- bility index. This hypothesis was not supported. Neither the mother's nor the father's use of love withdrawal correlated with the child's embarrassa- bility index. Hypothesis 1b: The mother's use of induction will not be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. This hypothesis was not supported for lower-class mothers and their sons. The mother's use of induction correlated .59 (N = l4; p < .05) with the son's embarrassability index (See Table 4). Hypothesis 1c: The mother's use of power assertion will not be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. This hypothesis was not supported for lower-class mothers and their daughters. The mother's use of power assertion correlated .64 (N = 10; p < .05) with the daughter's embarrassability index (See Table 3). Since the lower-class girl's embarrassability and need for social desirability indices correlated -.64 (N = 10; p < .05), the correlation between the mother's use of power assertion and the daughter's embarrassability index was recalculated with need for social desira- bility partialled out. The correlation was .44 (N = 10; not signifi- cant). Hypothesis 1d: The mother's use of shaming techniques will be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index. 35 TABLE 3.--Correlation Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Lower- Class Girls. Social . . . Dfisirggility Embirrgssab1l1ty Ga1lt10) Child Social Desirability -.6404* -.2664b Embarrassability .1976 Mother PA -.5627 .6378* .3747 LW -.3106 .6136 .3519 IND -.1390 .2887 .1804 Shaming -.4644 .5977 .4098 PA + LII/sa -.5183 .7156* .4663 Father PA -.2255 .4970 -.0452 LW -.4533 .5100 .0025 IND -.O387 .2362 -.0144 Shaming -.3436 .5022 - 1659 PA + LII/sa -.3039 .5486 -.O69l aPA combined with those LW techniques also scored as shaming items. 36 TABLE 4.--Correlati0n Matrix of Parent and Child Measures for Lower- Class Boys. Oggiiability Embarrassability Guilt Child (N = 15) (N = 14) Social Desirability -.3517 -.1066 Embarrassability .3061 Mother (N = 14) (N = 14) (N = 13) PA .5291 -.2729 .2792 LW .2447 -.O981 -.0325 IND -.3408 .5907* .6134* Shaming -.O773 .3607 .3771 PA + LII/sa .4092 -.2298 .1444 Father (N = 15) (N = 15) (N = 14) PA .0412 .0102 -.2313 LW -.1752 .2339 -.O687 IND -.O43O -.0181 .1676 Shaming -.1797 .2223 -.1001 PA + LW/Sa .0965 .0937 .0048 aPA combined with those LW techniques also scored as shaming items. *p < .05. 37 This hypothesis was not supported. There were no positive correla- tions between either the mother's or the father's use of shaming and the child's embarrassability index. Hypothesis 1e: The correlation in 1d will be significantly greater than that in 1a. This hypothesis was not supported for either parent. Hypothesis 2a: The mother's use of induction techniques will be positively correlated with the child's guilt index. This hypothesis was supported for lower-class mothers and their sons. The mother's use of induction correlated .59 (N = 14; p < .05) with the son's guilt index (See Table 4). Hypotheses 2b, 2c, and 2d: These hypotheses were all supported. There were no positive correlations between either the mother's or the father's use of love withdrawal, power assertion, or shaming and the child's guilt index. Additional Analyses The lower-class mother's use of PA + LW/S correlated .72 (N = 10; p < .05) with the daughter's embarrassability index (See Table 3). Since embarrassability and need for social desirability were negatively correlated for lower-class girls, the correlation between the lower-class mother's use of PA + LW/S and the daughter's index was recalculated with need for social desirability partialled out. The correlation was .58 (N = 10; not significant). For lower-class boys, the mother's use of induction correlated positively with both the son's embarrassability (.59) and guilt (.61) indices. The two child measures luul only a low positive (and 38 non-significant) intercorrelation, however. Thus, they must have a number of differential determinants beyond the common association with mother's use of induction. The moderate correlations between the lower-class mother's use of power assertion and the boy's embarrassa- bility and guilt indices were reversed. Power assertion was negatively correlated with embarrassability (-.27) and positively correlated with guilt (.27). To explore what the reversal might mean, multiple corre- lations were calculated. The results indicated that the combination of power assertion and induction increased the predictability of guilt (R2 = .72) but didn't change the ability to predict embarrassa- bility (R2 = .61). Examination of the beta weights in the prediction equation‘flncguilt indicated that induction carried 67 percent of the weight and power assertion 38 percent. Embarrassability and Guilt Scores: Sex and SES Differences In order to further clarify the results, the three child measures were analyzed by 2 x 2 analyses of variance for unequal cell frequencies for the effects of sex and SES. The results of the analysis of variance comparing embarrassa- bility scores with respect to sex and SES are given in Table 5. The effects of both Sex (E_(1,102) = 16.83; p < .0001) and SES (E_(l,102) = 5.29; p < .05) were significant. The interaction was not significant. Examination of the means in Table 6 indicated that girls had higher mean embarrassability scores than boys, and that lower-class children had higher mean embarrassability scores than middle-class children. 39 TABLE 5.-—Summary Table of Analysis of Variance Comparing Embarrassa- bility Scores with Respect to Sex and SES. ————.._. —. Source SS df MS F Total 67611.05 105 A (Sex) 9005.91 1 9005.91 16.83* B (SES) 2830.56 1 2830.56 5.29* A X B 1202.64 1 1202.64 2.25 Error 54571.94 102 535.02 * p < .05. **p < .0001. TABLE 6.--Mean Embarrassability Scores for Boys and Girls by SES. -._-._______ - -__- ‘c— Lower-Class Middle-Class Boys 199.40 179.74 Girls 207.81 204.06 The analyses of variance comparing guilt indices and need for social desirability with respect to sex and SES yielded no significant results. Patterns of Discipline: Sex and SES Differences To further examine sex and SES differences in the parent's use of discipline, the five categories of discipline (PA, LW, IND, 4O shaming, and PA + LW/S) were analyzed by 2 x 2 analyses of variance for unequal cell frequencies for the effects of sex and SES. The results of the analysis of variance comparing the father's use of power assertion with respect to sex and SES are given in Table 7. TABLE 7.--Summary Table of Analysis of Variance Comparing the Father's Use of Power Assertion with Respect to Sex and SES. Source SS df MS F Total 659.66 103 A (Sex) 120.65 1 120.65 1.52 B (SES) 537.96 1 537.96 6.76* A X B 1.05 1 1.05 .01 Error 7958.17 100 79.58 *p < .01. The effect of SES (F (1,100) = 6.76; p < .01) was significant. Examina- tion of the means in Table 8 indicated that lower-class fathers used significantly more power assertion than middle-class fathers. TABLE 8.--Father's Mean Power Assertion Scores for Boys and Girls by SES. Lower-Class Middle-Class Boys 36.00 30.90 Girls 34.91 29.34 41 The results of the analysis of variance comparing the father's use of PA + LW/S with respect to sex and SES indicated that the main effect of SES (E_(1,100) = 4.16; p < .05) was significant. These results are presented in Table 9. Examination of the means in Table 10 indicated that lower-class fathers used significantly more PA + LW/S than middle-class fathers. However, most of this effect may be attributed to the greater use of power assertion by lower-class fathers. TABLE 9.--Summary Table of Analysis of Variance Comparing the Father's Use of Power Assertion Combined with Love Withdrawal/Shame with Respect to Sex and SES. Source SS 'df MS ’F Total 14374.61 103 A (Sex) 27.77 1 27.77 .20 B (SES) 572.51 1 572.51 4.16* A X B 20.66 1 20.66 .15 Error 13753.67 100 137.54 *p < .05 TABLE 10.--Father's Mean Scores on Power Assertion Combined with Love Withdrawal/Shame for Boys and Girls by SES. o..-‘ —. .__.____.-.__..- _ We; _._.______ -.—. - Lower-Class Middle-Class Boys 55.73 51.22 Girls 57.00 50.40 42 The analyses of variance comparing the father's use of LW, IND, and shaming with respect to sex and SES yielded no significant results. None of the analyses of variance comparing the mother's use of disci- pline with respect to sex and SES yielded any significant results. The patterns of practices used by the mothers and fathers were then examined for each group (sex x SES). A comparison of the mean discipline scores on PA, LW, and IND revealed that the patterns of discipline were not markedly different by parent. Within all groups, both parents had the highest mean scores for the use of induction techniques followed by power assertion and love withdrawal. The mean discipline scores are presented in Table 11. TABLE 11.--Mean Parent Discipline Scores. Won-e“ “.mm—v..- .. Middle-Class Lower-Class Boys Girls Boys Girls Mother PA 1.98 1.85 1.98 2.20 LW 1.76 1.82 1.80 2.09 IND 2.60 2.76 2.83 2.87 Father PA 2.06 1.96 2.40 2.33 LW 1.77 1.90 1.95 1.97 IND 2.49 2.49 2.50 2.65 43 Next, the relationships between the parent variables were examined for each parent within the four groups (sex x SES). Since there was considerable overlap between the items in PA + LW/S and shaming techniques and those in power assertion, love withdrawal and induction, only the relationships between the latter were examined. The correlations among the parent variables are presented in Tables 12 (middle-class) and 13 (lower-class). In general, the parent vari- ables were interrelated in a similar fashion in the two groups. There was a moderate positive correlation between love withdrawal and in— duction techniques and between love withdrawal and power assertion. There was very little correlation between power assertion and induc- tion techniques. The relationships between the parent variables for both the mothers and the fathers of lower-class boys were exceptions to this pattern. For fathers oflower~class boys, there was a large posi- tive correlation between power assertion and love withdrawal, as was found in the other groups. However, there was a large negative corre- lation between power assertion and induction techniques and very little correlation between love withdrawal and induction. Examination of the raw data indicated that one father had extreme scores on all of the discipline practices. The correlations between the parent varia- bles were then recalculated excluding this subject. Power assertion correlated .1831 with love withdrawal, and —.2385 with induction. The correlation between love withdrawal and induction was .5260. For mothers of lower-class boys, there were essentially no correlations between any of the three variables. 44 TABLE 12.--Correlation Matrix of Discipline Techniques for Middle- Class Parents. - -_.__..— Boys (N = 31) Girls (N = 48) PA LW PA LW Mother LW .5965 .5895 IND .2790 .5742 .2818 .5111 Father LW .6283 .6818 IND .2203 .6360 .3359 .5320 TABLE 13.--Corre1ation Matrix of Discipline Techniques for Lower- Class Parents. oys Girls PA LW PA LW Mother LW .0808 .5932 IND -.1996 .1308 .3490 .6924 Father LW .5845 .8155 IND -.6119 .0127 .1449 .5052 CHAPTER IV DISCUSSION While there is little naturalistic research on the antecedents of shame and guilt affect, the literature on parent-child rearing practices suggests that the particular form of parental discipline may be related to children's feelings of guilt and perhaps shame. This study was designed to explore the associations between parent discipline practices (power assertion, love withdrawal, and induction) and indices of shame and guilt experienced by children. Based on the work of Hoffman (1970), it was expected that the mother's use of induction would correlate with the child's reports of guilt. Because of the similarity in the experience of the child in love withdrawal and that of shame, it was also anticipated that the mother's use of love withdrawal would correlate with the child's reports of embarrassability (a measure of shame). Power assertion was not expected to correlate with either child measure. Several minor hypotheses were also explored. Some caution must be exercised in interpreting the results. Given the number of correlations computed, the one significant corre- lation in each of the middle-class groups could easily be due to chance. In addition, as mentioned above, the sample of lower-class 45 46 subjects was very small. Since we do not know how representative the sample is of lower-class parent/child-rearing practices, the results will be discussed in terms of what they suggest for future research. We will begin the discussion by focusing on the relationships between parental discipline and each of the child measures. Middle-Class Discipline and Children's Reports of Embarrassability The hypothesis (la) that love withdrawal would correlate positively with the child's embarrassability index was not supported. The hypothesis (1b) that induction would not be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index was supported. The use of induction by middle—class mothers was even found to correlate negatively with the daughter's embarrassability index. The hypothesis (1c) that power assertion would not be posi- tively correlated with the child's embarrassability index was supported. The hypotheses (1d and 1e) that shaming techniques would be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index and that this relationship would be greater than that between love with- drawal and the embarrassability index were not supported. There was no direct support for the theory that the middle- class mother's use of love withdrawal, which focuses on the negative parental feeling toward the child, is associated with high embarrassa— bility. However, the finding that the use of induction by middle- class mothers was negatively correlated with the daughter's embarrassa- bility index suggests that discipline which provides cognitive 47 information and focuses on the act rather than the child's self may inhibit the development of strong shame feelings. This is consonant with clinical observations and theory as presented in the introduction. The lack of any positive relationships between the mother's discipline and the child's embarrassability index may be due in part to the psychometric properties of the Parent Discipline Questionnaire. Many of the practices in the questionniare combined several behaviors which made clear scoring difficult. The practices described in the items also may not have been sophisticated enough to reflect accurately the middle-class mother's pattern of discipline. The combination of items that had a shaming component did not seem to form a pattern of parental discipline that was related to embarrassability. Although all of the items were judged to have a shaming component, the impact of shaming combined with induction may have been quite different from shaming combined with love withdrawal. Middle-Class Discipline and Children's Reports of Guilt The hypothesis (2a) that the mother's use of induction would be positively correlated with the child's guilt index was not con- firmed. The hypotheses that love withdrawal (2b), power assertion (2c) and shaming techniques (2d) would not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index were supported. In addition, the middle- class father's use of love withdrawal was found to be negatively corre- lated with the son's guilt index. 48 It is not uncommon to find that the middle-class father is the disciplinarian for boys. A number of studies (Bronfenbrenner, 1960; Emmerich, 1962; and Tasch, 1952) have found that boys receive more discipline, especially from fathers. It is interesting, however, that it was the use of love withdrawal by the father which correlated negatively with the boy's guilt index. In a study of the development of identification in young children, Sears, Rau and Alpert (1965) con— cluded that the affectionate relationship between the father and the son was related to strong conscience development. Love withdrawal discipline employs the affectionate relationship between the parent and the child to a greater degree than the other techniques. But it does so in a way that is likely to arouse a great deal of anxiety in the child over losing the father's love or even abandonment. The results in the present study thus support the theory that the father's affectionate relationship is crucial in determining conscience develop- ment in boys. The threat of losing the father's affection which is implied in love withdrawal may have a detrimental effect on the boy's conscience development. Lower-Class Discipline and Children's Reports of Embarrassability The hypothesis (la) that love withdrawal would correlate posi- tively with the child's embarrassability index was not supported. Contrary to the hypothesis (lb) that induction would not be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index, the lower-class mother's use of induction correlated positively with the son's embarrassability index. 49 The hypothesis (1c) that power assertion would not be posi- tively correlated with the child's embarrassability index was not supported. The mother's use of power assertion and power assertion combined with love withdrawal/shame was positively correlated with the daughter's embarrassability index. The hypotheses (1d and 1e) that shaming techniques would be positively correlated with the child's embarrassability index and that this relationship would be greater than that between love with- drawal and the embarrassability index were not supported. While the mother's use of love withdrawal was not found to correlate with the child's embarrassability score, the results do suggest that a combination of power assertion with love withdrawal items that have a shaming component may be associated with high embarrassability for lower-class girls. This is consistent with the results of the factor analysis in the pilot study which indicated that love withdrawal/shame items tended to fall in with power assertion as a discipline pattern. It is‘difficult to explain the finding that the use of induc- tion by lower class mothers (but not by any other group) correlated positively with the son's embarrassability index. The fact that the mother's induction also correlated positively with the boy's guilt index and that the two child measures had only a low positive (and non-significant) intercorrelation suggested that there may be a number of differential determinants beyond the mother's use of induction. The mothers may have been using induction combined with another form 50 of discipline which the Parent Discipline Questionnaire or the scor- ing system did not evaluate. The results indicted that the combination of the mother's power assertion with induction practices might increase the predicta- bility of the boy's guilt index. The ability to predict the boy's embarrassability score was not improved by this combination. These findings suggest that the lower-class mother's use of induction tech- niques which explain the reasons for the parental request together with a moderate amount of physical threat to back up the request may be most effective in predicting children's reactions to transgression. On the other hand, a somewhat different type of induction used by lower-class mothers in dealing with their sons may indeed be conducive to a tendency to experience shame in relation to wrongdoing. The specifics of this relationship might well be explored in future research. Shaming techniques did not seem to form a pattern of discipline that was related to embarrassability. Lower-Class Discipline and Children's Reports of Guilt Hoffman's (1970) finding that the mother's use of induction would be correlated with the child's guilt index (Hypothesis 2a) was supported for lower-class mothers and their sons. The hypotheses that love withdrawal (2b), power assertion (2c) and shaming techniques (20) would not be positively correlated with the child's guilt index were supported. 51 The negative relationship between the father's use of love withdrawal and the son's guilt index was not found for lower-class fathers and sons. What might account for the different results in the two groups? Bronfenbrenner (1960) found that the father's discipline techniques were similar in all SES groups, but that the mothers were more influential, and the fathers less so, in lower SES families. Consequently, we might expect that the affectionate relationship between the father and the son would be less related to conscience development in lower-class boys. The lower-class mother's discipline would be more likely to correlate with the boy's indices of guilt and embarrass- ment. And, in fact, this was the case. Other Determinants of Embarrassability and Guilt The results indicated that girls report significantly more embarrassability than boys but that there is no difference in the amount of guilt reported by boys and girls. These findings support Lewis' (1971) hypotheses that (1) in situations involving moral transgression, women and men are equally prone to guilt. In addition, however, women are more likely to respond with the additional component of shame of failure of the self to live up to the moral code. (2) In situations involving the shame of failure of the self, women have a lower threshold for shame. Moreover, the effectiveness of shaming stimuli is greater when these are applied to women than to men. Previous research also tends to support these findings. A number of experimental studies support the hypothesis that in situa- tions where moral transgression is the issue, there is no clear-cut 52 difference between the sexes in their observed behavior. Hartshorne and May (1928) reported that schoolgirls cheated significantly more on a take-home test and at parties; Rebelsky, Allinsmith and Grinder (1963) found that schoolboys cheated more than girls. While there are no studies which directly compare men's and women's shame reactions, results of a study by Crandall, Katkovsky and Preston (1962) suggest that girls' self-esteem is not as objectively grounded as boys'. Crandall et al. found that the brigher the boy, the better he expected to do on a test, but the brighter the girl, the less well she expected to do. They suggested that the girls' greater fear of failure and expectation of it reflected a greater proneness to shame than was characteristic of boys. A second finding concerning the embarrassability scores was that lower-class children reported significantly greater embarrassa— bility than middle-class children. What might account for this difference? The work of Rosen- berg and Simmons (1971) suggests that self-esteem may be related to SES. They quote Langer and Michael (1963) as saying that "our self- image is determined by what others (the larger society) think of us. If they think we are inferior, we also consider ourselves inferior." In our society individuals frequently assess their own worth in terms of their objective accomplishments; the successful are more worthy. The matter of social superiority or inferiority is likely to become salient for lower-class children who are in daily contact with those of superior status, especially if, as in the schools from which this 53 sample was drawn, they constitute a minority group. The lower econ- omic status of the parents of the lower-class children—-their jobs of less regard and responsibility, their lower income—-may have detri- mental consequences for the children's self—esteem. The child with low self-esteem "lacks respect for himself, considers himself unworthy, inadequate, or otherwise seriously deficient as a person (Rosenberg and Simmons).” These are many of the qualities of the experience of shame. Lower-class children may thus be more susceptible to or have a lower threshold for shame and embarrassment because of the effect of SES on their self-esteem. Parent Discipline and Sex of the Child It is interesting to note that while boys and girls did not differ in mean guilt scores, there were no significant correlations between parent discipline and girls' guilt indices; the mother's discipline only correlated with embarrassability for girls. In con- trast, the parent's discipline primarily correlated with guilt indices for boys. What are the implications of these findings? A Lewis (1971) reports a study by Douvan (1960) comparing atti- tudes of adolescent boys and girls in their responses to a structured interview. Two composite scores were found, one involving the "inter- natization of moral standards,” and the other comprising an index of "development of interpersonal sensitivity to others.” It was found that the internalization index predicted ego development in boys and the sensitivity to others index predicted ego development in girls. 54 Lewis interprets these findings to mean that "guilt predicts ego devel- opment in boys, while sensitivity to others, a predictor of shame, is a better predictor of ego development in girls." Lewis further hypothesizes that people differ in superego style and that there is a sex difference in this characteristic; that men have a clearer pattern of proneness to guilt whereas women are more prone to shame. We have already discussed the significant sex difference in embarrassa- bility in this sample. While there was no indication that boys were more guilt-prone,parent discipline predicted guilt better in boys and embarrassability better in girls. The sex differences in the correla- tions between the parent discipline practices and the child measures thus tend to reflect these sex differences in superego style. Further analyses were undertaken to explore whether parents were using different kinds of discipline with boys and girls that might account for these sex differences. There were no significant differences for either the mother or the father in the amount of power assertion, love withdrawal, induction, shaming or power assertion combined with love withdrawal/shame used with boys and girls. An examination of the patterns of discipline used indicated that the patterns are not markedly different by parent for boys and girls. Parents reported that they used induction practices most frequently,followed by power assertion and love withdrawal. Thus, the sex differences in the correlations between the parent discipline practices and the child measures do not appear to be related to parents using different amounts of particular discipline techniques with boys and girls or to different patterns of discipline 55 by the parents, as reflected in the particular instrument used in this study and based on Hoffman and Saltzstein's earlier work. How- ever, a refinement of methods for assessing parental discipline might yield such differences. It is also possible that girls and boys are differentially sensitized to shame and guilt inducing situations for reasons which have to do with other dimensions of parent-child rela- tions than those focused on in this study. Parent Discipline and SES of the Child The results indicated that lower-class fathers used signifi- cantly more power assertion and power assertion combined with love withdrawal/shame than middle-class fathers. This is consistent with the results of previous research. Miller and Swanson et al. (1960) reported that working class parents used significantly more corporal punishment and that middle-class parents used significantly more psy- chological discipline involving explanations of requests. Implications for Future Research Thequestion of what parental discipline practices are posi- tively associated with children's feelings of shame and guilt in middle-class children has not been answered by the present study. Perhaps the greatest work needs to be done in continuing to develop better methods of assessment. Many of the practices listed in the Parent Discipline Questionniare combined several behaviors (e.g., Don't say much but show him my feelings are hurt by what he 56 said.) which made accurate scoring difficult. In addition, there are few items in the questionnaire that are appropriate parental responses. Allowing the parent to respond freely to the discipline situations described might provide more accurate descriptions of the practices used. The story completion endings used in the child's guilt measure could also be improved. Two of the stories (1 and 2) tended to pull standard choices for all children, and thus contributed little vari- ance to the guilt index. Measures of embarrassability have generally been employed to assess shame orientation. The embarrassability instrument used in the present study is a reliable one and seemed to work well. It remains to be demonstrated, however, that embarrassability is an adequate measure of shame orientation. Future research might involve the development of a story completion instrument in which the endings could be scored for intensity of shame feelings, and different dimen- sions of the shame experience. It would be especially interesting to design story completions involving transgression against the parent and discipline of the child. Story endings might then be developed which could be scored for intensity of shame and guilt feelings in response to parent discipline. A larger sample of lower-class children is needed to determine whether the relationships obtained between the parent's discipline practices and the children's indices would be maintained. 57 The fact that girls had significantly higher embarrassability scores and that parent discipline tended to correlate with embarrassa- bility for girls and guilt for boys suggested that there might be different processes of superego development for girls and boys. This raises the question of the role of parent discipline in determining these differences. More complete information such as who ususally disciplines the child and what the nature of the affectionate relation- ship with each parent is like might further clarify some of these issues. APPENDICES 58 APPENDIX A MATERIALS FOR PARENTS 59 I“! c. A LETTER TO THE PARENT May 22, 1974 Dear Parent: The attached questionnaire is part of a research project being carried out in the Michigan State University psychology department. In this research we are studying the different things parents do in bring- ing up their children. There have been several studies like these in the past few years, but we still don't have the answers to many of the questions that parents ask about this topic. Since we don't know for sure what are the best ways to handle children, we are studying more about what parents actually g9, because we believe that in the long run this is necessary to help find out what the best ways are. We would greatly appreciate your participation in this project. In order to do this it is necessary, (1) to SIGN the enclosed PERMISSION FORM and have your child return it to school by Friday, May 24th, at the latest. (2) for EACH parent to complete one of the QUESTIONNAIRES. Please do not discuss your answers while you are filling out the forms. We are mainly interested in children of middle school age. It's some- times hard when you have more than one child to keep them separate, but try to concentrate on just your sixth or seventh grader. When you have completed the questionnaires, please return them in the stamped, addressed envelope provided. Your responses will be kept confidential; no one at school will ever see your answers. Please try to return the questionnaires by Wednesday, May 29th. Thank you for your cooperation. CHILD'S NAME GRADE PARENT'S NAME PARENT'S OCCUPATION 60 W%—_ Ann-L2! all", see I I II in about half an hour. 61 PARENT DISCIPLINE QUESTIONNAIRE You know how hard it is sometimes for parents to get children to do things for them. For example, imagine this kind of situation: You have something that you want very mcuh for your child to do for you rjght_agay, He is in the other room watching television. ask him to do it right away. He says he'll do it as soon as the program is over, You walk in and tell him what you want him to do, and Here is alisJLOf things that some parents interviewed in the past do at times like that. Please check how often yog do each one or some- thing like it. (SCORING) iUSUALLY PA LW/S IND LW IND/S PA IND LW/S IND LW PA LW/S LW IND IND/S PA IND PA _ - -—_—__v.- -—. SOME; ' ....... ”—.T——__I-‘—T.~I TIMES L...— -._ RARELY NEVER .-.- - .-...—._-.—.$__ H..- l I l 1 I I l 1 6~—-——~———‘— ~r—o- . ~ -~~ - _,-.--._-_l-.-. - . _ L.--._.-__-a-»------.~—L-—-————-—--J ..... _ e..— .-.__—.a7~5¥-_ -“L 1 3 Hit or spank him. Tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself. . - —. Tell him I'd do it myself, but I'm tired or not feeling very well. Tell him to go ahead. watch the program, but not to come around later and say 3 I l “T l ' he's sorry. 1 l l l l I l -f--~—~—-—-——§.--—-—‘—— --— I l I Remind him of how much we do for him or I 1 how hard we work. 9 - -....‘... -——+——-- -—--4v 5 I Tell his father (mother) and let him . I (her) handle it. ‘ ----4...-.--4.---u..-.._ ..... _, ' I Go over and turn off the television set. -4..-_-__._. ._____- - .__-.__- ' Tell him he can finish the program as long as he does what I want as soon as its ; OVET‘. - L .__..~..._.-... - - . -- - 4—— -.~-_~-- r--.-__.-_._- -m-.. Go and do it myself, but show him that I'm hurt or disappointed. ' Tell him I'm sorry he'll miss the program f and explain the reason why the thing i j ; should be done right away. . -.._._.-.-.._. 1 1 Give him an angry look and walk away. f 1911 him that if he doesn't do it right away. he won't be able to have something he likes or do s0mething he likes to do. -+----- -4.» ._.. .----—-__._-.-_._---_-_ ; Tell him I'm disappointed in him. 1 Do it myself and show him I don't like ' it by not talking to him for a while. Tell him I sometimes have to do things I don't want to do. -I - I I 1 l I 4 _._..._—'__._.--—_—. l I 3 Tell him I like him to be more con- ' : siderate of my wishes, l , Do nothing. --.__.._1._.._ .__..._ “a“ ' Tell him to do it now anywaY- l _l_.__._...-_ 4..-- l Explain why I can't do it myself. fl —. Tell him he'll be sorry if he doesn't do it right now. _ _)--._ ._0__L _-_ ..... . - r~_ -v- -w...-._. _ __-- --.——.———————.d_--.-_. 62 Once in a while kids are a little careless and break things like a good dish or a lamp, or spill something that stains the rug or couch, or do something like that. Here is a list of things some parents do when this happens. Please check how often you do each thing or something like it. (SCORING) PA IND/S LN/S LN/S PA LW/S LN/S LW/S LU/S IND LN PA IND IND PA/S PA PA/S IND SOME— USUALLY TIHES RARELY NEVER Hit or spank him. Show him I'm sad and tell how much I liked the thing he broke or spoiled. Tell him he's clumsy. Don't say much but let him know I'm sad about what happened. - ~4I— -——-—— - ~—<)- <>»-—-—- Tell him I'll hit or spank him if he I ever does it again. _ -.- - - ---_iI -— ..... 4I-—.--- --..‘i_ - .. Ask in an angry voice why he wasn't more I careful. -_ - --—.|t ------ 4——~—- -- - —I».—— -——- I“- I Tell him I'm disappointed in him for I being so careless. I~—m- L— - --—-».._..-. I I Tell him not to worry about it because I I know he didn't do it on purpose. L ......... L- -- -J---- ——- J ---._.-- - ------—._ l I Don't say much, but ignore him for a I I while after that. _____._. ___ . 3.- --- -- -. _. _--_---_.-_ I Take money out of his allowance to repair i I the damage. I--.__— -I_.~.-_ -I--.-. ._.J--.. - ‘I“’”""'—"”“"’ I I ' Tell him to please try to be more careful ‘ i in the future. i . Show him how to clean it up. I ........ - -.. I- - - ....... I .......... ' ' I Tell him I'm angry at him for not being more careful. '~~ W -v~~“fi ------ i””-~~m—"" i Tell him not to worry about it, I'll I clean it up. _ -_ .-,_.-_._--- _- -._-- -...__I.....---._ 4...__ ___ -‘ - b—_— _—-—A bb “—H-- Not let him have something he likes or do something he likes to do. Tell him his father (mother) will be angry at him for what he did. Explain to him how the situation might have been avoided. .____ 613 Every child when he can't have his own way will sometimes get angry at his parents and talk back. Here is a list of things some parents do when a child talks back. Please check how often you do each thing or something like it. SOME- (SCORING) USUALLY TIMES RARELY NEVER PA , I ; Hit or spank him. IND/S I Show him I feel sad and tell him I never expected to hear him talk like that. . -,--- _ ._-__ Lw Tell him I don't like children who . don't show respect for their parents. PA .3 z I I Tell him I'll hit or spank him if he ' ‘ ever talks like that again. IND/S f ; i . Don't say much but show him my feelings I I . I are hurt by what he said. I—-~—~ ~4v— _ ---I---__.. -__ '-*+~-'~—-'-- -—--—— - LN ' ' f I Tell him I don' t want to talk to him I or have anything to do with him unless he says he's sorry. . Not let him have something he likes or . g I . do something he likes to do. I-.--------I_--.-_--r---,-_---I-..._.--I- ~- IND/S I , I J L Tell him I' m hurt or disappointed by ' ' I I 2 what he said. I-—--e--~+~--~-.-+»--~----+e~ ~~~~~ +———-~—v~--— LN I l I I I Give him an angry look and walk away. .- ----- ~--~r- ------- 1‘""""“"”T“"‘"‘_1"""""'“"""*' ~~~—--—- ' 3 1 Tell his father (mother) and let him . (her) handle it. r----*‘<-'i' ‘- "'1"‘°""""""‘“""‘fh"“” _ . ' 1 I I Do nothing. I i "‘? ------- v*'- - --1-‘->---r—- ----—- -——-—-—-- PA I .7. I I I I I . .1.__- l t -_....I_____ __-- -.——— - 1 ; T I (After he says he's sovry) Tell him ' i . I it' 5 all Iight,1 know he didn't wean I what he said. IND ‘ I . E Tell him I'm angry at him for what he ' I I 5 I said and explain why he can't have I his way. I I I -,--_ . --,.-.__-_..- _- -__.----..___. l I PA 1 Send him to his room until he's ready I to talk about it. I I 1 i ‘ l . —--4”~r-------9------*~+-~‘ -———-i——---—--- - I I i - Tell him now I know he doesn't care 3 ' i T about me. NOT SCORED .-~--.---gp- -«-~-' ----- ~—?-~‘—~——-—4_.—_.__————--— ————__ I LN/S 7 . I Tell him he ought to be ashamed of . L . I himself for talking like that. ...-.----.-....-.I _._._.-.-_---.~._+._.__.---_-_.- _. IND/S . i § ‘ Ask him how he can talk like that after 1 all we do for him. I I I ...... -.,-..-__--,..--..f---‘..__..-__.‘_..4... ___._-.__.____ _ i I I I Lw . ; I I Give him an angry look and ignore him for a while. I I I ..-._._ ----.-._..-_-+-—..._._ _.f.__~‘. fl-_.-.-_-__ I Lw i g I ‘ Tell him I won't talk to him or have I | I l anything to do with him if that's the way he's going to act. I .. ----. *—--~+I----«—-~ I— . IND i I I 1 Tell him I know he's angry and explain ' I ' I I why he can‘t have his way. ‘ - _L--_..-,-_I--__.._.._.--_-_.___.--_-_ PERMISSION FORM I agree to allow my child Name participate in the Michigan State University research project on how parents help their children to grow up. Signed, to Parent Signature 64 APPENDIX B CHILD TEST BATTERY 65 LETTER TO THE STUDENT Dear Student: We are trying to learn more about the feelings and reactions of young people your age. So we are going to ask you certain questions about the way you feel and react in particular situations. This is not a test and no one at school will ever see your paper. Since this is not a test, there are no right or wrong anwers. log are the only one here who knows how you feel. So please answer the questions as well as you can. It will be a great help to us. Thank you very much. 66 STORY COMPLETION TEST Name STORY COMPLETIONS On each of the next few pages you will find a story. After each story there is a list of different ways the story might end. Read each story and the list of story endings carefully. Then put a l_next to the story ending that is most like what you think the person is thinking and feeling and what happens afterwards. Put a 2_next to the story ending that is second most like what you think the person is thinking and feel— ing and what happens afterwards. Do this for each story. Art and his friends are at a school picnic. The picnic includes many contests. Art likes to take part in the contests and wants to win one very badly. Friends of his win the jumping contest, the treasure hunt, and the running race. Art is one of the kids who hasn't come close to winning anything. He even came in last in a few contests. He thinks to himself: "Maybe I can win the swimming race. That's the main eventi" When the swimming race comes up, Art sees a way to win. The contest is to swim underwater to a big float and back. The total dis- tance is about 25 feet. Art knows no one could see him if he turned around underwater before actually reaching the bottom of the float, because a lot of people have been swimming in the pond and it's a little muddy. So Art swims only part way, turns around, and comes in first. Everyone cheers his victory. When the other swimmers come in, they tell Art what a good swimmer he is. No one saw Art turn around. He is given a ribbon, and no one realizes he is not the best swimmer. NOW PLACE A 1_ AND A §_NEXT TO THE STORY ENDINGS THAT ARE MOST LIKE AND SECOND MOST LIKE WHAT YOU THINK ART IS THINKING AND FEELING AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTERWARDS. (Scoring) 2.9 At the next year's picnic, Art sees that he is winning the race at the halfway mark, so he swims slower and loses on purpose. 2.6 Art feels guilty about winning the prize and decides to play fair from now on. 4.2 Art feels bad for days. Finally his conscience drives him mad and he tells his friends what he did. l.6 Art feels bad about cheating, decides it is silly to worry about it, and forgets the whole thing. 3.6 Art feels so guilty that he decides not to compete in the contests the next year. 67 68 Early one evening Judy and her friend are hurrying along the street on their way to the biggest rock concert of the year. Judy can't wait to hear the concert. It starts in five minutes, and they don't want to miss any of it. All the kids will be there. On the way they see a little boy wandering around across the street. He seems to be callingcnrtsonebody's name. Judy and her friend are the only ones around. They don't know who he is. Judy turns to her friend and says, "Gee, that little kid looks lost. Maybe we ought to go over and help him. It will only take a few minutes." But her friend says, ”Come on, let's mind our own business. We don't want to miss any of the concert, do we? Besides, his parents will find him after a while and he'll be all right. Come on, are you my friend or aren't you?" Judy finally says, "Okay. I suppose you're right. His folks will find him soon." They get to the concert in time and really enjoy it. The next morning Judy notices a picture of the same little boy in the newspaper. The newspaper says that a neighbor lady was taking care of the little boy for the afternoon. She left the four-year old boy outside a hairdressing shop while she had her fair fixed. She told the little boy to play outside and wait for her. But the little boy started walking around and got lost. Before the neighbor lady could find him, the little boy ran across the street and got hit by a car. The newspaper says he died on the way to the hospital. Now PLACE A 1 AND A 2_NEXT TO THE STORY ENDINGS THAT ARE MOST LIKE AND SECOND MOST LIKE wHAT YOU THINK JUDY IS THINKING AND FEELING AND NHAT HAPPENS AFTERNARDS. (Scoring) 4.0 Judy feels so guilty that she becomes a nurse and spends the rest of her life trying to save people's lives. 2.4 Judy thinks she should have stopped and helped the little boy. 2.0 Judy believes she Should have helped the boy, but then tells herself it was the babysitter's fault. 3.l Judy saves her money, and when she has $50, She sends it to the boy's parents with no note. 4.4 Judy feels as if She had killed the little boy herself. 3.5 Judy feels awful and can't think of anything else for days. 69 Bill's friends have formed a baseball team. They promised Bill he could be their catcher if he could get a catcher's mitt. His father told him he could not buy him a catcher's mitt. Bill saved all the money he could. At last he had $l0 saved up to get a really good glove. When he arrives at the sports store, he sees the sales-clerk going down the stairs to the cellar of the store. The clerk does not see Bill. Bill decides to look at the catcher's mitts himself before calling the clerk. He finds just the one he wants. Then he reaches for his money. It is gone. He realizes that he has lost it on the way downtown. Bill feels awful. He looks around. There is nobody in the store or near it outside. The clerk is still in the cellar. It occurs to Bill that the mitt would just fit under the bulge of his jacket. He hides the mitt under his jacket and walks out of the store. No one sees him leave. NON PLACE A l_AND A g_NEXT TO THE STORY ENDINGS THAT ARE MOST LIKE AND SECOND MOST LIKE WHAT YOU THINK BILL IS THINKING AND FEELING AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTERWARDS. (Scoring) 3.3 Bill's conscience bothers him for weeks and he finally quits the team. 3.6 By the time Bill gets halfway home, he starts to feel guilty and sneaks the glove back into the store. 2.9 Bill confesses to his coach what he did and says he is sorry. Then Bill feels better. 2.6 Bill feels uncomfortable when anyone admires his glove. 2.1 Bill knows he shouldn't have done it but he wanted to be catcher. 70 Anne likes to compete with Barbara in most things. Anne is a little better in her studies, but doesn't take the initiative in makingfwjends. Barbara, her closest friend since childhood, introduces Anne to boys and girls, makes her feel comfortable with people, and always helps her in tough spots. Because of Barbara, Anne is happy in school and gets to have more confidence in herself. One day, just before the final exam in a very important course that they are taking, Anne finds in the library a terrific book that answers a lot of diffi- cult points on the exam. That afternoon the other girls are kidding Anne about being a little shy around boys. Barbara joins in, and starts to tell a friendly joke about Anne. Anne says nothing, but she feels like choking Barbara. After the others leave, Barbara asks: "Well, any new ideas on the exam?" Anne replies, "No. I guess I'll go study." And she goes home. NOW PLACE A 1_AND A g_NEXT TO THE STORY ENDINGS THAT ARE MOST LIKE AND SECOND MOST LIKE WHAT YOU THINK ANNE IS THINKING AND FEELING AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTERWARDS. (Scoring) 4.1 Anne feels so guilty that she calls Barbara later and invites her over to study. 2.5 Anne feels bad and talks to the teacher about the book. 2.0 Anne apologizes to Barbara after the exam for not telling her about the book. 3.5 Anne feels so guilty about what She did that she never tells Barbara and it sours their friendship. 3.3 Anne feels bad about what she did and does poorly on the exam on purpose. EMBARRASSABILITY SCALE NAME EMBARRASSING CIRCUMSTANCES Embarrassment is an emotion which almost everyone has experienced on repeated occasions; yet it is an emotion we know very little about. Despite its universality, people have some difficulty in knowing just when they are embarrassed, and are reluctant to admit it when they are. If we are to learn about the situations which people your age find embarrassing, it is essential that you be as frank as possible in describing your reactions to each situation. Try to imagine as vividly as possible that each of these events is happening to you. If they have occurred to you in the past, think back to how you felt at the time. Then indicate how embarrassed you would feel if the event were actually happening to you by placing a check in the gne_column which best describes your own reaction. Even if some events strike you as funny, please don't laugh out loud. Also, don't skip any situations on the list. NOT SOMEWHAT VERY EMBARRASSING EMBARRASSING EMBARRASSING l. Your teacher asks you a question you can't answer. 2. You Show fear in front of friends. 3. You have to have some- thing explained to you several times. 4. You start to pay for something in a store and discover you don't have enough money. 5. You fall down on a crowded sidewalk. 6. You tell a joke, but no- body finds it funny. 7. You overhear, by chance, something bad someone says about you. 7T 10. ll. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 72 NOT SOMEWHAT EMBARRASSING EMBARRASSING You are one of the last ones picked when someone is chosing members of their team. VERY EMBARRASSING (If a boy) Dancing with a girl who's taller than you. (If a girl) Dancing with a boy who's shorter than you. You get a big hug or kiss from one of your parents, in front of your friends. You get a low mark on a test and someone asks you what you got. You forget the name of someone you know upon meeting them again. You are reprimanded (bawled out) by a teacher in front of other people. You step on your partner's feet while dancing. You get a "wrong number“ when telephoning. Your gossip about someone gets back to them, and they tell you about it. Someone insults you and challenges you to fight, but you do not. You buy something personal for someone of the opposite sex. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 73 NOT SOMEWHAT EMBARRASSING EMBARRASSING In a party game, you have to kiss a member of the opposite sex. 3VERY EMBARRASSING With several people of the opposite sex, you see a movie which turns out to have a lot of sex in it. You lose a game or con- test to an eight year old (of your sex). You have a complete physical examination. A friend cries in your presence. You are caught cheating in a game with friends. You use a bathroom with- out adequate sound- proofing. You make a criticism of a religious or racial group, then realize that a member of that group is present. You pick up someone else's books by mistake. You get angry at a good friend without real cause. You are laughed at by friends. You accidently spray saliva (spit) when talking. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 74 NOT SOMEWHAT BWBARRASSING EMBARRASSING You use swear words, then suddenly find a member of the opposite sex is present. VERY EMBARRASSING You forget your lines in a play. You attend a party dressed wrongly (dressed up when everyone is wearing jeans). You find dirt on your face and realize you've had it on all day without knowing it. You hear a dirty or obscene joke in a mixed group of boys and girls. You clap at the wrong time during a show or concert. You get hiccups in church. A member of the Opposite sex Shows obvious affec- tion for you while in a public place. You buy personal articles in a drugstore. A member of the opposite sex tries to “pick you Up." You make a "slip of the tongue." A friend tells you you have bad breath. You discover a rip in the seat of your clothes while in a large group of boys and girls. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 75 NOT EMBARRASSING You forget your own address or telephone number. SOMEWHAT EMBARRASSING VERY EMBARRASSING You make some remark which is ignored at a meeting or in a fairly large group. You say hello to someone, then discover you don't know them. You are a dinner guest and spill your glass. A practical joke is pulled on you, for example, someone tripping you. A group of friends are singing "happy birthday" to you. You call someone of the opposite sex for the first time to ask them to go somewhere with you. You walk into a bath- room at someone else's house and discover it is occupied by someone of the opposite sex. You are talking to a stranger who stutters badly due to a speech impediment. You walk into a room full of people you don't know and are introduced to the whole group. You discover you have a large pimple on your face. MARLOWE AND CROWNE NEED FOR SOCIAL DESIRABILITY SCALE NAME PERSONAL REACTION INVENTORY Listed below are a number of statements concerning personal attitudes and traits Read each item carefully and mark a check in ong_ of the two columns to Show whether it is True or False as it pertains to you personally. TRUE FALSE (Scoring) T 1. Before voting I thoroughly investigate the qualifications of all the candidates. T 2. I never hestiate to go out of my way to help someone in trouble. F 3. It is sometimes hard for me to go on with my work if I am not encouraged. T 4. I have never intensely disliked anyone. F 5. On occasion I have had doubts about my ability to succeed in life. F 6. I sometimes feel resentful when I don't get my way. T 7. I am always careful about my manner of dress. T 8. My table manners at home are as good as when I eat out in a restaurant. F 9. If I could get into a movie without paying and be sure I was not seen, I would probably do it. F 10. On a few occasions, I have given up doing something because I thought too little of my ability. F 11. I like to gossip at times. F 12. There have been times when I felt like rebelling against people in authority even though I knew they were right. 76 (Scoring) T 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 77 TRUE FALSE No matter who I'm talking to, I'm always a good listener. I can remember "playing sick" to get out of something. There have been occasions when I took advantage of someone. I'm always willing to admit it when I make a mistake. I always try to practice what I preach. I don't find it particularly difficult to get along with loud mouthed, obnoxious people. I sometimes try to get even, rather than forgive and forget. When I don't know something I don't at all mind admitting it. I am always courteous, even to people who are disagreeable. At times I have really insisted on having things my own way. I would never think of letting someone else be punished for my wrongdoings. There have been occasions when I felt like smashing things. I never resent being asked to return a favor. I have never been irked when people expressed ideas very different from my own. There have been times when I was quite jealous of the good fortune of others. I have almost never felt the urge to tell someone off. (Scoring) F 29. 30. 31. 32. 78 TRUE FALSE I am sometimes irritated by people who ask favors of me. I have never felt that I was punished without a cause. I sometimes think when people have a misfortune they only got what they deserved. I have never deliberately said something that hurt someone's feelings. BIBLIOGRAPHY 79 BIBLIOGRAPHY Allinsmith, W. The learning of moral standards. In D. R. Miller, G. E. Swanson, et al. (Eds.), Inner conflict and defense. New York: Holt, 1960. Aronfreed, J. Moral standards and defenses against guilt. In D. R. Miller, G. E. Swanson, et al. (Eds.), Inner conflict and defense. New York: Holt, 1960. Aronfreed, J., and Reber, A. Internalized behavioral suppression and the timing of social punishment. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol., l965, l, 3-16. Benedict, R. The Chrysanthemum and the sword. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967. Bronfenbrenner, U. Some familial antecedents of responsibility and leadership in adolescents. In L. Petrullo and B. M. Bass (Eds.), Studies in leadership. New York: Holt, 1960. Cattell, R. B., and Scheier, I. H. Handbook and test kit for the objective—analytic anxiety battery, Printed in U.S.A. for the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing, 1960. Crandall, V. J., Katkovsky, W., and Preston, A. Motivational and ability determinants of young children's intellectual achieve- ment behavior. Child Deve1., 1962, 33, 643-661. Crowne, D. P., and Marlowe, D. The approval motive. New York: John Wiley & Sons, l964. Douvan, E. Sex differences in adolescent character processes. Merrill- Palmer Quart., 1960, 6, 203-211. Emmerich, W. Variations in the parent role as a function of the parent's sex and the child's sex and age. Merrill-Palmer Quart., 1962, B, l-ll. Erikson, E. H. Childhood and society. New York: Norton, 1950. Fenichel, 0. The psychoanalytic theory_of neurosis. New York: Norton, 1950. 8O 81 Freud, S. Three essays on the theory of sexuality. London: Imago, 1949. Hartshorne, H., and May, M. Studies in the nature of character: studies in deceit. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Hoffman, M. L. Moral development. In P. H. Mussen (Ed.), Carmichael's manual of child psychology. Vol. 2. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1970. Hoffman, M. L., and Saltzstein, H. D. Parent discipline and the child's moral development. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol., 1967, 3, 45—57. Hollingshead, A. B. Two factor index of social position. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Station, 1957. Langer, 'T. S., and Michael, S. T. Life stress and mental illness. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1963. Lewis, H. B. Shame and guilt in neurosis. New York: International Universities Press, 1971. Lynd, H. M. 0n Shame and the search for identity, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958. Miller, D. R., Swanson, G. E., et al. (Eds.) Inner conflict and defense. New York: Holt, 1960. Parke, R. 0., and Walters, R. H. Some factors influencing the efficacy of punishment training for inducing response inhibition. Monogr. Soc. Res. Child Dev., 1967, 3g, Piers, G., and Singer, M. Shame and guilt: a_psychoana1ytic and cultural study. Springfield, Illinois: Thomas, 1953. Rebelsky, F., Allinsmith, W., and Grinder, R. Sex differences in children's use of fantasy confession and their relation to temptation. Child Deve1., 34, 955—962. Rosenberg, M., and Simmons, R. G. Black and while self-esteem: the urban school child. Arnold and Caroline Rose Monograph Series in Sociology, 1971. Sears, R. R., Rau, L., and Alpert, R. Identification and child rearing, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1965. Tasch, R. J. The role of the father in the family. J. Exp. Ed., 1952, 29; 319-61. Walters, R. H., Parke, R. D., and Cane, V. A. Timing of punishment and the observation of consequence to others as determinants of response inhibition. J. Exp, Child Psychol., 1965, 3, 10-30. "Illlllllllllllllll11111113