Introducing the Gasp scale

A new measure of guilt and shame proneness

Bibliographic Data

ID6206099
AuthorsTaya R Cohen (0000-0001-7325-793X, Carnegie Mellon University), Scott T Wolf (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), A T Panter (0000-0001-6914-8490, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Chester A Insko (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Year2011
Volume100
Issue5
Pages947-966
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037/a0022641
PMID21517196
OpenAlexW1975816768
LanguageEN
Citations received136
References cited2

Although scholars agree that moral emotions are critical for deterring unethical and antisocial behavior, there is disagreement about how 2 prototypical moral emotions--guilt and shame--should be defined, differentiated, and measured. We addressed these issues by developing a new assessment--the Guilt and Shame Proneness scale (GASP)--that measures individual differences in the propensity to experience guilt and shame across a range of personal transgressions. The GASP contains 2 guilt subscales that assess negative behavior-evaluations and repair action tendencies following private transgressions and 2 shame subscales that assess negative self-evaluations (NSEs) and withdrawal action tendencies following publically exposed transgressions. Both guilt subscales were highly correlated with one another and negatively correlated with unethical decision making. Although both shame subscales were associated with relatively poor psychological functioning (e.g., neuroticism, personal distress, low self-esteem), they were only weakly correlated with one another, and their relationships with unethical decision making diverged. Whereas shame-NSE constrained unethical decision making, shame-withdraw did not. Our findings suggest that differentiating the tendency to make NSEs following publically exposed transgressions from the tendency to hide or withdraw from public view is critically important for understanding and measuring dispositional shame proneness. The GASP's ability to distinguish these 2 classes of responses represents an important advantage of the scale over existing assessments. Although further validation research is required, the present studies are promising in that they suggest the GASP has the potential to be an important measurement tool for detecting individuals susceptible to corruption and unethical behavior

Cartography · Data mining · Geography · Measure (data warehouse) · Scale (ratio) · Shame · Computer Science · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Humor Studies and Applications · Personality Traits and Psychology · Psychology · Social Psychology

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