ABSTRACT RAND Europe (2008) highlighted several risk factors for violent crime, including mental illness and high levels of anger (Novaco & Renwick, 1998). Recently anger management interventions for the mentally disordered offender (MDO) population have been critiqued for a lack of acknowledgement of the driving force of other emotions present when angry, including shame (Walker & Bright, 2009a). Lewis (1971) argued that shame is such an unbearable emotion that individuals protect themselves using anger and aggression, giving rise to the shame-rage spiral. Evidence for the existence of a link between shame and anger exists in the general population (e.g. Tangney, Wagner, Fletcher & Gramzow, 1992) but within the forensic population, results are less conclusive (Farmer & Andrews, 2009). Authentic (specific) pride in one's achievements can give rise to high social status via prestige and hubristic (global) pride in oneself raises the self through dominance (Cheng, Tracy & Henrich, 2010). Hubristic pride has been linked to aggression and hostility (Paulhus, Robins, Trzesniewski, K.H., & Tracy, 2009). The current study aimed to explore the relationship between shame and anger; in addition it examined the influence of authentic and hubristic pride upon this relationship in MDOs. Medium and low secure settings were accessed from across London and a total of 51 participants completed the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-II (Spielberger, 1999); the Experience of Shame Scale (Andrews, Qian & Valentine, 2002); the Authentic and Hubristic Pride Scale (Tracy & Robins, 2007) as measures of anger, shame and pride respectively. Correlation analyses revealed significant positive associations between levels of trait anger, anger expression and angry reaction (sub-scale of trait anger) with total shame and the shame sub-scales of characterological (personal) and behavioural shame. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to establish the extent to which pride predicted levels of trait anger over and above that of shame; total shame explained a significant amount of variance (22.3%) in Trait Anger (F(l, 48)= 15.09, p<.OOI; R2 =.239, adjusted R2 =.223). Authentic and hubristic pride at Step 2 did not contribute a significant increase in variance explained. In the final equation, only total shame significantly made a unique contribution to levels of Trait Anger (t(46)= 3.708, p<.Ol). Results are discussed in relation to the literature and limitations are considered. The clinical implications are explored.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:589457 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Morrison, Annabelle |
| Publisher | University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds