Notes

The distinction between shame and guilt in chapter 2, and the summary of what each is linked to, draws on June Price Tangney, Jeff Stuewig and Debra Mashek, "Moral emotions and moral behavior", Annual Review of Psychology, 2007, volume 58, pages 345 to 372. Most of the research it reviews measures how prone people are to each feeling using questionnaires, and it's largely correlational.

The pooled analysis of shame, guilt and depression in chapter 2 is Sangmoon Kim, Ryan Thibodeau and Randall Jorgensen, "Shame, guilt, and depressive symptoms: a meta-analytic review", Psychological Bulletin, 2011, volume 137, pages 68 to 96. It covered 108 studies and more than 22,000 participants. It also found that some kinds of guilt, such as exaggerated responsibility for things outside your control, were tied to depression about as strongly as shame was. The guilt this book recommends is the ordinary kind, about a specific act that you can repair.

The analysis showing that shame can go with constructive effort when repair looks possible is Colin Wayne Leach and Atilla Cidam, "When is shame linked to constructive approach orientation? A meta-analysis", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015, volume 109, pages 983 to 1002.

The review of stress hormone studies in chapter 3 is Sally Dickerson and Margaret Kemeny, "Acute stressors and cortisol responses: a theoretical integration and synthesis of laboratory research", Psychological Bulletin, 2004, volume 130, pages 355 to 391. The account of why children absorb labels as facts is my interpretation.

In chapter 4, the goal studies are Theodore Powers, Richard Koestner and David Zuroff, "Self-criticism, goal motivation, and goal progress", Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2007, volume 26, pages 826 to 840. The experiments on responding to failure are Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, "Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2012, volume 38, pages 1133 to 1143. The goal studies were correlational. They also found that rumination and procrastination appeared to carry the effect of self-criticism on progress. That fits the loop in which shame leads to avoiding the task, though the loop itself is my interpretation.

The four exits in chapter 5 are from Donald Nathanson, "Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self", 1992, where he calls them withdrawal, attack self, avoidance and attack other. The plain names are mine. The questionnaire study is Jeff Elison, Randy Lennon and Steven Pulos, "Investigating the Compass of Shame: the development of the Compass of Shame Scale", Social Behavior and Personality, 2006, volume 34, pages 221 to 238. The shame and anger study is June Price Tangney, Patricia Wagner, Carey Fletcher and Richard Gramzow, "Shamed into anger? The relation of shame and guilt to anger and self-reported aggression", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992, volume 62, pages 669 to 675. The later work is Jeffrey Stuewig, June Tangney, Caron Heigel, Laura Harty and Laura McCloskey, "Shaming, blaming, and maiming: functional links among the moral emotions, externalization of blame, and aggression", Journal of Research in Personality, 2010, volume 44, pages 91 to 102. These studies show statistical links between traits measured at one time, so they can't show what came first. In the 2010 paper the link through blame showed up mainly when people reported their own aggression. The second-by-second account of how shame turns into blame is my reading of them.

In chapters 7 and 10, the experiment with young children is Melissa Kamins and Carol Dweck, "Person versus process praise and criticism: implications for contingent self-worth and coping", Developmental Psychology, 1999, volume 35, pages 835 to 847. There were 67 children in the criticism study and 64 in the praise study, and the children role-played the scenes. The family study is Ming-Te Wang and Sarah Kenny, "Longitudinal links between fathers' and mothers' harsh verbal discipline and adolescents' conduct problems and depressive symptoms", Child Development, 2014, volume 85, pages 908 to 923. The weight study is Angelina Sutin and Antonio Terracciano, "Perceived weight discrimination and obesity", PLOS ONE, 2013, volume 8, article e70048. Its participants were Americans aged fifty and over, from the Health and Retirement Study. It relied on people's own reports of discrimination and can't prove cause. When starting weight was taken into account, the figure fell from about two and a half times to about 1.7 times. The inmate study is June Tangney, Jeffrey Stuewig and Andres Martinez, "Two faces of shame: the roles of shame and guilt in predicting recidivism", Psychological Science, 2014, volume 25, pages 799 to 805. Its picture of shame is mixed. Shame that didn't lead to blaming others was linked to slightly less reoffending.

The remark in chapter 8 that small children don't reliably understand irony draws on Eva Filippova and Janet Wilde Astington, "Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding", Child Development, 2008, volume 79, pages 126 to 138, in which five-year-olds lagged behind seven and nine year olds. What a small child takes from a sarcastic tone is less settled. Morton and Trehub, "Children's understanding of emotion in speech", Child Development, 2001, volume 72, pages 834 to 843, found that young children judging how a speaker felt went mostly by the words when the words and the tone disagreed. So the chapter says only that the child can't put the two together.

The theory in chapter 9 is from John Braithwaite, "Crime, Shame and Reintegration", Cambridge University Press, 1989. He uses the word shaming for both kinds of disapproval and calls the respectful kind reintegrative. I've kept "shaming" for the stigmatising kind only.

The "when X happens, I'll do Y" plans in chapter 10 are known in the research as implementation intentions. See Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006, volume 38, pages 69 to 119.

The brain-imaging study in chapter 11 is Matthew Lieberman and colleagues, "Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli", Psychological Science, 2007, volume 18, pages 421 to 428. Participants labelled the emotion shown in negative images. They weren't labelling feelings of their own.

In chapter 12, the studies of secrets are Michael Slepian, Jinseok Chun and Malia Mason, "The experience of secrecy", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017, volume 113, pages 1 to 33, and Michael Slepian, James Kirby and Elise Kalokerinos, "Shame, guilt, and secrets on the mind", Emotion, 2020, volume 20, pages 323 to 328. The therapy pilot is Paul Gilbert and Sue Procter, "Compassionate mind training for people with high shame and self-criticism: overview and pilot study of a group therapy approach", Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 2006, volume 13, pages 353 to 379. The authors describe it as an uncontrolled trial.

The rule in chapter 10, the repair steps in chapter 13, the tests for jokes and honesty in chapter 8, and the account of how shaming passes from person to person are my own reasoning, built on the research above. Test them against your own experience, as the exercises ask you to.

This book is general information and is no substitute for medical or psychological care.