Appraisal theories of emotion assert that guilt arises from the evaluations one ill makes about one's behavior. Perpetrators experience guilt when they view themselves as responsible for harm caused to their victims. Interpersonal theories of emotion hold that guilt is a function of relational factors, including the need to repair relationships. Theorists argue that guilty feelings often arise in spite of appraisals, and that perpetrators feel guilty because of a need to communicate reconciliatory messages to their victims. These two views of guilt are generally seen as mutually exclusive. This study proposed integrating both views of guilt into a single, interactive theory of guilt that includes both appraisals and interpersonal concerns and that asserts that guilt varies as a function of the appraisals one makes about one's own and others' behavior, the nature of the relationship between perpetrators and victims, the perspective from which one views events, and the passage of time. The main question asked was: when taking into account these factors, is guilt better accounted for by an appraisal, interpersonal , or the newly proposed integrative view of guilt? One-hundred forty-seven male and 168 female university students were presented with scenarios depicting the interaction of two people who were friends or enemies and were directed to adopt the perspective of perpetrators, victims, or were not given instructions to adopt a perspective. In each scenario, a perpetrator acted to inflict harm that was either unintentional or angrily intended. Participants then rated perpetrators' responsibility appraisals, emotional responses, and forgiveness needs. Additionally, participants were asked to rate how responsible perpetrators believed their victims believed them to be. Correlational analyses and AN OVA were used to test the effects of the factors in the proposed model on ratings of guilt. Although partial support was found for both the appraisal view and the interpersonal view of guilt, results provided the strongest support for the interactive view of guilt. Discussion focused on the role of appraisals, relational factors, perspective, and time in guilty feelings and the implications of these findings for further research.

The purpose of this study was to examine the potentially unique roles that parental use of two psychological control dimensions, shame and disappointment, play in predicting children's relational and physical aggression. It was additionally of interest to investigate whether warm/involved parenting would moderate the effects of these forms of psychological control on both types of childhood aggression. Based on a review of literature, it was hypothesized that parental use of shame would positively predict aggression in children, whereas parental use of disappointment would not be significantly associated with childhood aggression. Additionally, it was hypothesized that warm, involved parenting would have varied interactions with shaming and disappointment. Specifically, it was expected that warmth and involvement would exacerbate the aversive affects of shaming (leading to more child relational aggression), but that warmth and involvement would enhance the effect of disappointment to curtail relationally aggressive behavior. The participants were 217 fourth grade children (100 boys, 117 girls) and their parents (184 fathers, 216 mothers) from two school districts in an urban, moderate-sized community in the Western United States. Separate regression models were conducted for pairs of psychologically controlling and positive parenting dimensions in order to test for the main effects of the variables and also potential interaction effects. Additionally, this study explored the interactions between warm/involved parenting and shame and disappointment as they affected childhood aggression. To a large extent, the hypotheses were confirmed. In line with expectations, parental use of shame was significantly and positively associated with both physical and relational aggression, whereas disappointment was not. Interestingly, mothers' use of shaming significantly predicted relational aggression in all models for both boys and girls, whereas physical aggression was predicted only twice, once in the mother-son dyad and once in the father-daughter dyad. Two forms of warmth and involvement emerged in exploratory factor analysis: expressive warmth and supportive involvement. These positive parenting dimensions demonstrated very few main effects and only one significant moderating effect, which was on the relationship between shame and physical aggression. Specifically, post hoc analysis showed that fathers' use of shaming significantly and positively predicted boys' physical aggression only when supportive involvement was low. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.