Paul Fromson, a professor of psychology, and Carol England ’09 presented research at the recent Eastern Psychological Association annual conference in Pittsburgh.
The study, “Risk-taking behavior as a function of guilt versus shame prone personality,” grew out of England’s research for the Elon College Fellows program. Arguing that the decisions we make not only have tangible outcomes [such as money gained or lost], but also implications for how we feel about ourselves, psychologists have begun to explore personality dimensions that influence people’s tendency to take or to avoid risk when confronted with choices. The intense, negative focus upon the self that is associated with shame – but not with guilt – was hypothesized to elicit maladaptive patterns of decision-making.
The results suggested that guilt-prone individuals tend to behave in ways predicted by standard economic theories whereas shame-prone individuals made choices counter to those theories and, of greater importance, counter to their own best interests.