The Effect of Self-Regulation of Shame on Teenagers’ Aggression

Abstract

Studies have found that shame and aggression are closely connected, and self-blaming and re-planning strategies can regulate an individual’s shame. This study conducted two experiments to investigate the effects of self-regulation of shame on explicit and implicit aggressiveness of adolescents. Shame was induced in both experiments by audio recordings describing different shameful situations that adolescents may experience in daily life. The participants of 7th grade were required to self-regulate their shame by self-blaming strategy, re-planning strategy, or non-regulation, and rated their explicit aggressiveness in Study 1 and did implicit association test (IAT) in Study 2, respectively. The current studies found that the regulation of shame with self-blaming strategy enhanced explicit aggression, but did not affect the bias of implicit aggression.