In this article, I examine the relevance and desirability of shame and guilt to restorative justice conferences. I argue that a careful study of the psychology of shame and guilt reveals that both emotions possess traits that can be desirable and traits that can be undesirable for restoration. More in particular, having presented the aims of restorative justice, the importance of face-to-face conferences in reaching these aims, the emotional dynamics that take place within such conferences, and (...) the relevant parts of the empirical psychology of shame and guilt, I argue that restorative justice practitioners have to take account of a rather more complex picture than it had hitherto been thought. Restorative conferences are not simply about "shame management," though practitioners must certainly avoid shaming and humiliation. Given the nature of shame, guilt, and restorative conferences, it is not possible to provide a single concrete precept applicable to all restorative conferences. The successful holding of conferences depends in large part on the cultural and situational specificities at hand. The latter include among others knowledge of the perceived relations standing between victim and offender as well as the affective specificities of the individuals involved. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that guilt and shame are not distinctive emotions. Instead, guilt is best seen as a kind of shame. I present three reasons for this view: First, guilt cannot merely arise as a consequence of how we evaluate our behaviour, since how we act implicates the whole self. Second, guilt cannot be relieved by taking responsibility, apologising and making amends unless it is a kind of shame. Third, the empirical research that seems to show that ‘shame’ (...) and ‘guilt’ are distinct can be explained by re-interpreting the data. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1 Introduction 1 -- 2 Central themes and critical issues 10 -- Introduction 10 -- Core themes 11 -- Differences which have surfaced in the move from -- margins to mainstream 15 -- The claims of restorative justice: a brief examination 21 -- Some limitations of restorative justice 25 -- Some dangers of restorative justice 29 -- Debunking restorative justice 32 -- 3 Reviving restorative justice traditions (...) 36 -- The rebirth of an ancient practice 36 -- Pre-modem criminal justice 37 -- The renaissance of native justice traditions 43 -- Navajo peacemaking 44 -- Can one characterise ancient and indigenous -- justice as restorative? 47 -- Can one revive restorative justice traditions? 49 -- Conclusion: did restorative justice ever die? 59 -- 4 Healing the victim 62 -- Introduction 62 -- The experiences and needs of victims 64 -- The inadequacy of punitive justice for the victim 67 -- Victim reforms 70 -- Restitution from the offender 74 -- Beyond restitution: restoring victims 76 -- Restorative justice or 'clubbing together'? 78 -- Using victims to rehabilitate offenders 81 -- Paternalism towards victims 83 -- Balancing the needs of the victim with those of society 84 -- 5 A restorative approach to offenders 87 -- Introduction 87 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to retributive justice 88 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to treatment 94 -- The goals and methods of restorative justice in relation -- to offenders 95 -- An alternative to punishment or an alternative form of -- punishment? 106 -- An alternative to treatment? 111 -- 6 Shame, apology and forgiveness 114 -- Introduction 114 -- Restorative cautioning 115 -- The psychological routes of restorative conferencing 116 -- The idea of reintegrative shaming 118 -- Some questions about shaming 123 -- Apology and forgiveness 132 -- 7 Mediation, participation and the role of community 136 -- Introduction: handling criminal conflicts 136 -- The rationale for the restorative justice process 140 -- Achieving restorative goals 141 -- Moral development and the strengthening of community 144 -- The role of community 151 -- 8 The future of restorative justice 161 -- Introduction 161 -- Implementing restorative justice: the paths less likely 163 -- The implementation of restorative techniques 166 -- Restorative justice and the pattern of penal control 169 -- The future of restorative justice research 170 -- Appendix to chapter 3: the theological roots of judicial -- punishment 172. (shrink)

This paper makes two essential claims about the nature of shame and shame punishment. I argue that, if we properly understand the nature of shame, that it is sometimes justifiable to shame others in the context of a pluralistic multicultural society. I begin by assessing the accounts of shame provided by Cheshire Calhoun (2004) and Julien Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, & Fabrice Teroni (2012). I argue that both views have problems. I defend a theory of shame and embarrassment that connects both (...) emotions to “whole-self” properties. Shame and embarrassment, I claim, are products of the same underlying emotion. I distinguish between moralized and nonmoralized shame in order to show when, and how, moral and non-moral shame may be justly deployed. Shame is appropriate, I argue, if and only if it targets malleable moral or non-moral normative imperfections of a person’s ‘whole-self.’ Shame is unjustifiable when it targets durable aspects of a person’s “whole-self.” I conclude by distinguishing shame punishments from guilt punishments and show that my account can explain why it is wrong to shame individuals on account of their race, sex, gender, or body while permitting us to sometimes levy shame and shame punishment against others, even those otherwise immune to moral reasons. (shrink)

In the field of Conflict Transformation, Restorative Justice is often perceived as a transformative process focused on healing relationships after a specific harm. The parties considered in a RJ setting are those harmed, those responsible and the community impacted. This is particularly true in the field of criminal and transitional justice, and in an extended and spiritual view, there is reconciliation with the parties and God. Despite cultural differences, RJ theory and concepts have been accepted favorably in (...) the many countries. From a viewpoint focused on methodology and process, however, cultural differences have a significant effect for implementation. For example, important concepts such as control, choice, harm, responsibility, apology, shame, reconciliation and forgiveness vary greatly in the manner in which they are perceived from culture to culture and may create obstacles for successful implementation of a successful process when one culture’s process and definitions are forced upon another. Therefore, promotional factors and the implication of semiotics are an absolute consideration in developing a RJ process within a particular culture. This paper discusses the cultural differences between the United States and Japan with regard to semiotic obstacles in the implementation of a RJ model in the Japanese criminal justice system. While the exploration of cultural differences, particularly between the United States and Japan is not new and has been the focus of many disciplines, little has been considered regarding the assimilation and implementation of a Western RJ model into the Eastern culture of Japan. In sum, is an attempt to clarify and integrate the effects of cultural differences for some factors as they apply to a RJ based reconciliation process focused in Semiotics, Social psychology and the Sociology of law as they apply to the United States and Japan. (shrink)

The connection between shame, guilt and morality is the topic of many recent debates. A broad tendency consists in attributing a higher moral status and a greater moral relevance to guilt, a claim motivated by arguments that tap into various areas of morality and moral psychology. The Pro-social Argument has it that guilt is, contrary to shame, morally good since it promotes pro-social behaviour. Three other arguments claim that only guilt has the requisite connection to central moral concepts: the Responsibility (...) Argument appeals to the ties between guilt and responsibility, the Autonomy Argument to the heteronomy of shame and the Social Argument to shame's link with reputation. In this paper, we scrutinize these arguments and argue that they cannot support the conclusion that they try to establish. We conclude that a narrow focus on particular criteria and a misconception of shame and guilt have obscured the important roles shame plays in our moral lives. (shrink)

From a phenomenological viewpoint, shame and guilt may be regarded as emotions which have incorporated the gaze and the voice of the other, respectively. The spontaneous and unreflected performance of the primordial bodily self has suffered a rupture: In shame or guilt we are rejected, separated from the others, and thrown back on ourselves. This reflective turn of spontaneous experience is connected with an alienation of primordial bodiliness that may be described as a "corporealization": The lived-body is changed into the (...) objective, corporeal body or "body-for-others." The polarity of "bodiliness" and "corporeality" may further a phenomenological understanding of several mental disorders connected with shame and guilt. This is shown by the examples of body dysmorphic disorder and melancholic depression. (shrink)

social psychology, legal theory, neuroscience, affect-script psychology, sociology, forensic mental health, political sciences, psychology and positive psychology to articulate for the first time a psychological concept of restorative justice. -/- To this end, the book studies the power structures of the restorative justice movement, the very psychology, motivations and emotions of the practitioners who implement it as well as the drivers of its theoreticians and researchers. Furthermore, it examines the strengths and weakness of our own societies (...) and the communities that are called to participate as parties in restorative justice. Their own biases, hunger for power and control, fears and hopes are investigated. The psychology and dynamics between those it aims to reach as well as those who are funding it, including policy makers and politicians, are looked into. All these questions lead to creating an understanding of the psychology of restorative justice. The book is essential reading for academics, researchers, policymakers, practitioners and campaigners. (shrink)

Drawing on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and on his lecture on the Punitive Societies as well as on affect theories, this text tries to analyze a surprising return to shame as a paradigm for punishment. In this context, shame and guilt are both seen not so much as real emotions occurring within the soul of a subject, but as dispositives or affective arrangements that seek different ways to regulate and modulate the feelings of justice and injustice within a society. (...) Excessive shaming, which does not fit well in Foucault’s narrative of a development towards more subtle forms of punishment, will be understood as a form of resistance against the subtleties of control. The text discusses this using the example of Electronic Monitoring and its history as a form of making shame invisible, hiding it as micro-political shame in an economy of guilt. Against this economy, excessive shame as punishment forms an aneconomic force that sets out to reset the rules of community and identity. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that it is possible to have an account of shame and guilt as mature concepts in moral psychology that sit alongside immature ones. In arguing for this, I adopt the critical r...

From a phenomenological viewpoint, shame and guilt may be regarded as emotions which have incorporated the gaze and the voice of the other, respectively. The spontaneous and unreflected performance of the primordial bodily self has suffered a rupture: In shame or guilt we are rejected, separated from the others, and thrown back on ourselves. This reflective turn of spontaneous experience is connected with an alienation of primordial bodiliness that may be described as a "corporealization": The lived-body is changed into the (...) objective, corporeal body or "body-for-others." The polarity of "bodiliness" and "corporeality" may further a phenomenological understanding of several mental disorders connected with shame and guilt. This is shown by the examples of body dysmorphic disorder and melancholic depression. (shrink)

This up-to-date resource on restorative justice theory and practice is the literature’s most comprehensive and authoritative review of original research in new and contested areas. -/- Bringing together contributors from across a range of jurisdictions, disciplines and legal traditions, this edited collection provides a concise, but critical review of existing theory and practice in restorative justice. Authors identify key developments, theoretical arguments and new empirical evidence, evaluating their merits and demerits, before turning the reader’s attention to (...) further concerns informing and improving the future of restorative justice. Divided into four parts, the Handbook includes papers written by leading scholars on new theory, empirical evidence of implementation, critiques and the future of restorative justice. -/- This companion is essential reading for scholars of restorative justice, criminology, social theory, psychology, law, human rights and criminal justice, as well as researchers, policymakers, practitioners and campaigners from around the world. (shrink)

Shifting the focus from fear, guilt, and indignation related to deteriorating environmental quality, the authors hypothesized that people who see greater potential for restorative experiences in natural environments also do more to protect them by behaving ecologically, as with recycling or reduced driving. University students rated a familiar freshwater marsh in terms of being away, fascination, coherence, and compatibility, qualities of restorative person-environment transactions described in attention restoration theory. They also reported on their performance of various ecological behaviors. (...) The authors tested a structural equation model with data from a randomly drawn subset of participants and then confirmed it with the data from a second subset. For the combined subsets, perceptions of the restorative qualities predicted 23% of the variance in general ecological behavior. As the only direct predictor, fascination mediated the influences of coherence, being away, and compatibility. (shrink)

This essay argues that the criminal justice system in the United States is flawed because it focuses principally on punishment of illegal actions without considering offenders as persons in their entirety. It considers the role that constructive shame and mercy can play in addressing this flaw. The essay concludes by applying this argument to the case of shaming penalties within criminal justice.

This groundbreaking book revisits the current model for preventing and controlling violent radicalisation and extremism. It proposes a new, evidence-based model, using restorative justice and positive psychology. Using data collected through six international projects and pilots in several countries from 2017 to 2023, it presents the results of these pilots and recommends best practices that adopt successful and positive models for the prevention and control of extremist and hate attitudes. This book speaks to researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and human (...) rights campaigners from around the world looking for a new approach that can better serve harmed parties, their families, and communities. (shrink)

How does shame differ from guilt? Empirical psychology has recently offered distinct and seemingly incompatible answers to this question. This article brings together four prominent answers into a cohesive whole. These are that (a) shame differs from guilt in being a social emotion; (b) shame, in contrast to guilt, affects the whole self; (c) shame is linked with ideals, whereas guilt concerns prohibitions and (d) shame is oriented towards the self, guilt towards others. After presenting the relevant empirical evidence, we (...) defend specific interpretations of each of these answers and argue that they are related to four different dimensions of the emotions. This not only allows us to overcome the conclusion that the above criteria are either unrelated or conflicting with one another, it also allows us to tell apart what is constitutive from what is typical of them. -/- . (shrink)

Although it originated in criminal justice, restorative justice is essentially a peacebuilding or conflict transformation approach to justice. The crossdisciplinary experience at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding has suggested some important lessons for restorative justice, peacebuilding and related fields. These include the role of trauma and victimization in justice and peacebuilding; the significance of justice questions in trauma and conflict resolution; the importance of addressing responsibilities as well as needs; the (...) role of shame, storytelling and empathy; the commonality of underlying values; the need for our fields to address underlying issues of bias and structure; and the susceptibility of our fields to unintended consequences. Restorative justice suggests some questions and issues that may be of use to peacebuilding practitioners in general. Above all, it is important for all of us to see ourselves within a larger umbrella of peacebuilding; this will require that we move from competition to collaboration and adopt a common vision of "justpeace.". (shrink)

This article takes restorative justice as an example of an initiative that crosses disciplinary boundaries, and that has been usefully applied within educational contexts. Grounded in criminology, restorative justice also has roots in psychology, education, sociology, peace studies, philosophy and law. The article draws on an ESRC funded seminar series which investigated interdisciplinary perspectives on restorative justice and their applicability to education. The series found that the ways in which restorative justice is (...) conceptualised and applied varies according to disciplinary norms and assumptions. It is this creative tension that the current article explores. (shrink)

Research has paid scant attention to reparative behavior to compensate for unintended wrongdoing or to the role of emotions in doing the right thing. We propose a new approach to investigating reparative behavior by looking at moral emotions and psychological proximity. In this study, we compare the effects of moral emotions (guilt and shame) on the level of compensation for financial harm. We also investigate the role of transgressors’ perceived psychological proximity to the victims of wrongdoing. Our hypotheses were tested (...) through a scenario based questionnaire on a sample of 261 participants. Analyses indicate that (1) guilt has a stronger effect on the level of compensation than shame; (2) psychological proximity influences the level of guilt, shame, and compensation; and (3) shame interacts with psychological proximity to predict compensation, whereas guilt mediates the relationship between psychological proximity and compensation. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze norm enforcement on social media, specifically cases where an agent has committed a moral transgression online and is brought to account by an Internet mob with incongruously injurious results in their offline life. I argue that users problematically imagine that they are members of a particular kind of moral community where shaming behaviors are not only acceptable, but morally required to ‘take down’ those who appear to violate community norms. I then demonstrate the costs that (...) are associated with this strategy; the most worrisome being those that distort the nature of moral dialog and the purpose and effectiveness of accountability practices online, creating a vitriolic and polarising online environment. Because of these negative consequences, I suggest that we ought to hold others accountable for restorative ends. I argue that restorative accountability practices can help us cultivate new norms online that rely less for their enforcement upon negative acts such as shame, and more upon positive acts that focus upon the most appropriate way to make amends to the victim(s) and the community. In this sense, restorative accountability incorporates important elements from the ethics of care, a relational ethics that values creating, promoting, and restoring good social and personal relationships. I conclude by arguing that accountability practices premised on the ethics of care produce better outcomes for the victim (s) of a moral violation, the transgressor, and the community. (shrink)

The principle of nemo iudex in causa sua is central to John Locke’s social contract theory: the state is justified largely due to the human need for an impartial system of criminal justice. In contemporary Anglo-American legal practice, the value of impartiality in criminal justice is accepted uncritically. At the same time, advocates of restorative justice frequently make reference to a crime victim’s right to have his or her voice heard in the criminal justice process (...) without regard for impartiality as potentially being morally valuable. In this article, I challenge the central place of impartiality in criminal justice on the grounds that it leads to a setup ill-suited to moral psychology. Though restorative justice advocates are not principled in their implicit rejection of impartiality and the nemo iudex principle, their preferred method of criminal justice conduces to crime victims’ being good judges in their own case. (shrink)

This study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in the experiences of guilt and shame. Guilt concerns a subject’s action or omission of action and has a clear temporal unfolding entailing a moment in which the subject lives in a care-free way. Afterwards, this moment undergoes a reconstruction, in the moment of guilt, which constitutes the moment of negligence. The reconstruction is a comprehensive transformation of one’s attitude with respect to one’s ego; one’s action; the object of guilt and (...) the temporal-existential experience. The main constituents concerning shame are its anchorage in the situation to which it refers; its public side involving the experience of being perceptually objectified; the exclusion of social community; the bodily experience; the revelation of an undesired self; and the genesis of shame in terms of a history of frozen now-ness. The article ends with a comparison between guilt and shame. (shrink)

The biology of early life adversity explores how social experiences early in life affect physical and psychological health and well-being throughout the life course. In our previous work, we argued that narratives emerging from and about this research field tend to focus on harm and lasting damage with little discussion of reversibility and resilience. However, as the Science and Technology Studies literature has demonstrated, scientific research can be actively taken up and transformed as it moves through social worlds. Drawing on (...) fieldwork with actors in education and juvenile corrections in the US Pacific Northwest, we found that they employed the biology of early life adversity not only to promote prevention but also to argue for changes within their own institutions that would allow them to better serve children and youth who have experienced adversity and trauma. Our study shows that biosocial narratives are neither inherently liberatory nor inherently oppressive but that the situated narrative choreographies in which they are enrolled are essential for their political effects. In our case, we show how these biosocial narratives have been articulated with knowledge and practices from restorative justice and trauma-informed care to reimagine the social meaning of the biology of early life adversity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice by Christopher D. MarshallGlen StassenCompassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice CHRISTOPHER D. MARSHALL Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012. 386 pp. $33.60Christopher Marshall is known to Society of Christian Ethics members for his highly acclaimed book on restorative (...) justice, Beyond Retribution, and for his plenary address at the SCE annual meeting published in the JSCE 27, no. 2 (2007). The plenary address forms one chapter of the present Compassionate Justice. Well [End Page 221] informed on ethics, criminal justice, and human rights, Marshall is a New Testament scholar at Victoria University in New Zealand.Marshall points out that the two best-known of Jesus’s parables—the Compassionate Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son—have been the most influential of Jesus’s parables in Western culture and legal theory. The Compassionate Samaritan is Jesus’s response to a lawyer’s question that answers a central legal question of the time: Who is my neighbor, whom I am obligated by Leviticus 19:7 to love as myself? In the Prodigal Son, the three main characters in legal offense are clearly portrayed as the offender, the victim, and the law-abiding community; in turn, as Marshall points out, “the older brother’s reaction centers directly on the justice of his father’s actions” (192–93). Marshall argues that present legal theory can learn from careful dialogue with these two parables. These parables are not only historically influential but also so insightfully and beautifully crafted that dialogue with them can bring incisive insights. In addition, dialogue with them presses Anglo-Saxon liberalism where it is weak and needs to grow.The parable of the Compassionate Samaritan opens up questions about the need for Good Samaritan laws that defend persons who come to the aid of a person in danger of death (e.g., from an accident, fire, or drowning) against liability for inadvertently and unintentionally causing damage. Under present Anglo-Saxon law, such good Samaritans can be sued for damages. This is not the case, however, in most European countries. Similarly, most European and Latin American countries have bad Samaritan laws: Where “victims are in mortal danger and unable to save themselves,” there is a legal duty for “those who are consciously aware of the victim’s predicament, who are close enough to intervene, and who have the effective means of intervention available to them” to come to the aid of the victims. “The most glaring exception to this pattern,” Marshall argues, “occurs in Anglo-American legal systems” because of liberalism’s maximization of individual liberty even against coercion to come to the aid of persons who would die if no help arrives (155). Samaritan laws “give formal expression to the supreme value of human life, to the bonds of solidarity and empathy that comprise human identity and that bind people together in social community, and to ongoing need human beings have to be committed to one another’s rescue and restoration when severe harm befalls them” (174).Responding to the parable of the Prodigal Son, Marshall argues that both compassion and repentance are crucial for understanding the humanity and the sufferings of persons being defended or judged by law. This does not replace the standard tools of legal interpretation; it takes account of the more holistic context (288–90). In fact, “unreflective compassion can be dangerous and distorting” (296). Marshall discusses the complications insightfully and in a balanced [End Page 222] way. He concludes with an extensive discussion and refutation of perhaps the most important book-length criticism of restorative justice.Marshall’s interpretation of these two parables surpasses any other that I have read. His sensitive and thoughtful analysis of the experience of victimization goes beyond any other interpretation of the Compassionate Samaritan that I have seen. In this he resembles Daniel Philpott’s interpretation of victimization in Just and Unjust Peace (Oxford University Press, 2012). His description of the shameful rupture of relationship with father, family, and community by the prodigal son goes well beyond what I have seen previously. I think... (shrink)

Despite a wide range of restorative practices in use around the world, most recent research has been focused on one model, family group conferencing. In part due to the salience and appeal of Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming theory, this important emphasis on the role of structured dialogue with family and intimates privileges an emotional connection that elicits reintegrative shame on the part of the offender, accompanied by group support. In this paper, I argue that reintegrative shaming as practiced in family (...) group conferencing in the youth justice context is based on a theory of “strong ties” associated with the extended families of Gemeinschaft societies. This important emphasis on the family/extended family unit as an affective focus, however, may have inadvertently diverted attention from the importance in Gessellschaft societies of “weak ties.” In modernity, such ties provide instrumental support that leads to connections that link offenders and victims to broader “bridging” relationships associated with social and human capital. This paper briefly considers two ostensibly “weak” restorative practices that effectively engage these broader connections for young offenders and families that may be fundamental to reintegration and other prosocial outcomes, while also mobilizing and strengthening the parochial controls and social support of neighbors and other adults. Ultimately, the sustainability of restorative justice will require an openness to practices that accomplish restorative goals, while also facilitating a more flexible, problem solving, and community-building focus. (shrink)

How does shame differ from guilt? Empirical psychology has recently offered distinct and seemingly incompatible answers to this question. This article brings together four prominent answers into a cohesive whole. These are that shame differs from guilt in being a social emotion; shame, in contrast to guilt, affects the whole self; shame is linked with ideals, whereas guilt concerns prohibitions and shame is oriented towards the self, guilt towards others. After presenting the relevant empirical evidence, we defend specific interpretations of (...) each of these answers and argue that they are related to four different dimensions of the emotions. This not only allows us to overcome the conclusion that the above criteria are either unrelated or conflicting with one another, it also allows us to tell apart what is constitutive from what is typical of them. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a new framework for understanding infant-feeding-related maternal guilt and shame, placing these in the context of feminist theoretical and psychological accounts of the emotions of self-assessment. Whereas breastfeeding advocacy has been critiqued for its perceived role in inducing maternal guilt, we argue that the emotion women often feel surrounding infant feeding may be better conceptualized as shame in its tendency to involve a negative self-assessment—a failure to achieve an idealized notion of good motherhood. Further, we (...) suggest, both formula-feeding and breastfeeding mothers experience shame: the former report feeling that they fail to live up to ideals of womanhood and motherhood, and the latter transgress cultural expectations regarding feminine modesty. The problem, then, is the degree to which mothers are vulnerable to shame generally, regardless of infant feeding practices. As an emotion that is less adaptive and potentially more damaging than guilt, shame ought to be the focus of resistance for both feminists and breastfeeding advocates, who need to work in conjunction with women to oppose this shame by assisting them in constructing their own ideals of good motherhood that incorporate a sense of self-concern. (shrink)

We are interested in the relations among shame, guilt, and embarrassment and especially in how each relates to judgments of character. We start by analyzing the distinction between being and feeling guilty, and unearth the role of shame as a guilt feeling. We proceed to examine shame and guilt in relation to moral responsibility and to flaws of character. We address a recent psychological finding that shame is both destructive and in so far as it has a social function could (...) be replaced by guilt. We reinterpret the guilt culture/shame culture distinction in terms of our way of distinguishing these emotions. Finally we examine embarrassment as distinct from shame and find the difference to lie not so much in the phenomenology of the participant as it is in context, and in which elements of the context the speaker describing the emotion wishes to stress. We conclude by defending shame despite its psychological troubles. (shrink)

The idea behind right and wrong is premised on ethics. There have been controversies about the philosophy of right and wrong in Western and African thoughts. There is a perception that the essential difference between right and wrong is honor-orientation versus justice-orientation, which is believed to be based on shame and guilt. With the aforementioned, the researcher sought to explore the comparative analysis on guilt and shame in Western and African ethics using a qualitative research design to make the (...) investigation. It was discovered that Western ideas and beliefs are quite different from those of African society. Western ethical standards have been used wrongly to scan African ethics and ethical conducts and these African ethical conducts have not been given elaborate investigation and clarification. It concluded that using Western ethical standards to judge African moral ideas is biased and demeaning to philosophical scholarship. Some recommendations on extensive analysis and interpretation of moral values on the scale of guilt and shame as well as a rethink on morality as it relates to ethics and corporate existence were made. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice by Christopher D. MarshallGlen StassenCompassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice CHRISTOPHER D. MARSHALL Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012. 386 pp. $33.60Christopher Marshall is known to Society of Christian Ethics members for his highly acclaimed book on restorative (...) justice, Beyond Retribution, and for his plenary address at the SCE annual meeting published in the JSCE 27, no. 2 (2007). The plenary address forms one chapter of the present Compassionate Justice. Well [End Page 221] informed on ethics, criminal justice, and human rights, Marshall is a New Testament scholar at Victoria University in New Zealand.Marshall points out that the two best-known of Jesus’s parables—the Compassionate Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son—have been the most influential of Jesus’s parables in Western culture and legal theory. The Compassionate Samaritan is Jesus’s response to a lawyer’s question that answers a central legal question of the time: Who is my neighbor, whom I am obligated by Leviticus 19:7 to love as myself? In the Prodigal Son, the three main characters in legal offense are clearly portrayed as the offender, the victim, and the law-abiding community; in turn, as Marshall points out, “the older brother’s reaction centers directly on the justice of his father’s actions” (192–93). Marshall argues that present legal theory can learn from careful dialogue with these two parables. These parables are not only historically influential but also so insightfully and beautifully crafted that dialogue with them can bring incisive insights. In addition, dialogue with them presses Anglo-Saxon liberalism where it is weak and needs to grow.The parable of the Compassionate Samaritan opens up questions about the need for Good Samaritan laws that defend persons who come to the aid of a person in danger of death (e.g., from an accident, fire, or drowning) against liability for inadvertently and unintentionally causing damage. Under present Anglo-Saxon law, such good Samaritans can be sued for damages. This is not the case, however, in most European countries. Similarly, most European and Latin American countries have bad Samaritan laws: Where “victims are in mortal danger and unable to save themselves,” there is a legal duty for “those who are consciously aware of the victim’s predicament, who are close enough to intervene, and who have the effective means of intervention available to them” to come to the aid of the victims. “The most glaring exception to this pattern,” Marshall argues, “occurs in Anglo-American legal systems” because of liberalism’s maximization of individual liberty even against coercion to come to the aid of persons who would die if no help arrives (155). Samaritan laws “give formal expression to the supreme value of human life, to the bonds of solidarity and empathy that comprise human identity and that bind people together in social community, and to ongoing need human beings have to be committed to one another’s rescue and restoration when severe harm befalls them” (174).Responding to the parable of the Prodigal Son, Marshall argues that both compassion and repentance are crucial for understanding the humanity and the sufferings of persons being defended or judged by law. This does not replace the standard tools of legal interpretation; it takes account of the more holistic context (288–90). In fact, “unreflective compassion can be dangerous and distorting” (296). Marshall discusses the complications insightfully and in a balanced [End Page 222] way. He concludes with an extensive discussion and refutation of perhaps the most important book-length criticism of restorative justice.Marshall’s interpretation of these two parables surpasses any other that I have read. His sensitive and thoughtful analysis of the experience of victimization goes beyond any other interpretation of the Compassionate Samaritan that I have seen. In this he resembles Daniel Philpott’s interpretation of victimization in Just and Unjust Peace (Oxford University Press, 2012). His description of the shameful rupture of relationship with father, family, and community by the prodigal son goes well beyond what I have seen previously. I think... (shrink)

This article proposes that restorative justice practices, as used in New Zealand schools, are better understood as an instrument of social development than a behaviour management practice. Concerns about the achievement of Māori students are relocated, from an individualised psychological and pedagogical problem to an interdisciplinary context of historical and social development. Social constructionist theory is suggested as a lens through which RJPs in schools may be seen as the intentional production of respectful social relationships, rather than as (...) behaviour management. A restorative process has the productive capacity to restore healthy relational functioning, both for those who have been offended against and those who have offended. It is argued that the primary function of restorative justice in schools is not about resolving specific conflicts, but rather, about the production and maintenance of respectful relationship, which is the antithesis of colonised relationship. Such a position reflects accountability on a communal, rather than individualised basis, and accords with recent moves in the United Nations Development Programme to look at Human Development as building agentive capacity. (shrink)

Using the machinery of Game Theory, this article analyzes how shame and guilt affect preferences. Based on abundant psychological literature, we posit that the preference ordering of someone who can feel shame (or guilt) must satisfy a number of axioms and prove that it can be represented by a particular utility function. Understanding how shame and guilt work is important to explain why people respect social norms and exhibit prosocial behavior, many times contrary to their material interest.

Guilt and shame are self-conscious emotions with implications for mental health, social and occupational functioning, and the effectiveness of sports practice. To date, the assessment and role of athlete-specific guilt and shame has been under-researched. Reporting data from 174 junior elite cricketers, the present study utilized exploratory factor analysis in validating the Athletic Perceptions of Performance Scale, assessing three distinct and statistically reliable factors: athletic shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, and no-concern. Conditional process analysis indicated that APPS shame-proneness mediated the relationship between general (...) and athlete-specific distress. While APPS domains of guilt-proneness and no-concern were not significant mediators, they exhibited correlations in the expected direction with indices of psychological distress and well-being. The APPS may assist coaches and support staff identify players who may benefit from targeted interventions to reduce the likelihood of experiencing shame-prone states. (shrink)

When an experimenter uses the experimental method to investigate the effects of the experimenter's expectancy it may be that this research, too, is affected by his expectancy and thus there is an expectancy paradox. To the extent that the experimenter expectancy effect accounts for the variation in the dependent variable and is general, that is to say, universal in psychological research, the expectancy paradox is ineluctable. However, an analysis of the research reviews extant in this area yields the conclusion that (...) expectancy effects are neither inexorable nor highly general in psychological research and this provides the basis for its extrication from the expectancy paradox. (shrink)

Despite the by now historical tendency to demarcate scientific epistemology sharply from virtually all others, especially theological “epistemology,” it has recently been recognized that both enterprises share a great deal in common, at least as far as the epistemology of discovery is implicated. Such a claim is founded upon a psychological analysis of figuration, where, it is argued, metaphor plays a crucial role in the mediation of discovery, in the domains of science and religion alike. Thus, although the conventionally conceived (...) scientific method is crucial to the enterprise, primacy must nonetheless be accorded to discovery, which drives virtually all disciplines. (shrink)

We are living in a world where power abuse has become the new norm, as well as the biggest, silent driver of persistent inequalities, racism and human rights violations. As humanity is getting to grips with socio-economic consequences that can only be compared with those that followed World War II, this timely book challenges current thinking, while creating a much needed normative and practical framework for revealing and challenging the power structures that feed our subconscious feelings of despair and defeatism. (...) Structured around the four concepts of power - race - justice - restorative justice, the book uses empirical new data and normative analysis to reconstruct the way we prevent power abuse and harm at the inter-personal, inter-community and international levels. This book offers new lenses, which allow us to view power, race and justice in a modern reality where communities have been silenced, but through restorative justice are gaining voice. The book is enriched with twenty-five case studies written by survivors, practitioners and those with direct experiences of power abuse and inequality. Through robust research methodologies, Gavrielides' new monograph reveals new forms of slavery, while creating a new, philosophical framework for restorative punishment through the acknowledgement of pain and the use of catharsis for internal transformation and individual empowerment. This is a powerful book that generates much needed hope. Through a multi-disciplinary dialogue that uses social sciences, criminology, law, psychology and human rights, the book opens new avenues for practitioners, researchers and policy makers internationally. (shrink)

Shame, shame management and reintegrative shaming feature in some restorative justice literature, and may have implications for schools. Restorative justice in schools is effective when perpetrators of wrong-doing can accept and take ownership of their wrongful acts, are appropriately remorseful, and seek to make amends. Shame may be understood as an ethical matter if it is regarded to arise because of the contradiction between the wrongful act and the individual’s sense of self and self-worth. Shame management (...) (that is, seeking reintegrative over stigmatising shaming) can be regarded to reflect a form of social responsibility as it contributes to community restoration by repairing ruptured social relationships. The notion of shaming and acknowledgement of harm thus assumes norms of acceptable community behaviour, attitudes and relationships, and is therefore also an ethical matter. Successful restorative practices in schools depend on the school-wide existence and practice of such norms, and mesh with virtues education, stimulated by the contemporary demand of many national curricula to promote so-called key competencies. Although the concepts of restorative justice and reintegrative shaming serve as a context for this article, its chief impetus was provided by an evaluative study of a group of New Zealand schools, in the course of which notions such as shame, reintegration and exclusion became evident. The chief purpose of this article is to consider and problematise shame from the perspective of the philosophy of education, and ask whether the concept of shame has a place in schools, whose important aims ought to include the development of democratic citizenship. (shrink)

A consideration of what are sometimes known as the reactive attitudes is useful to outline more positive conditions of ethical restoration. This paper focuses on the ways in which perceptions and experiences of guilt and shame are shaped by political conceptions of who belongs to the more guilty and shameful parties. I use the debate between Karl Jaspers and Arendt over guilt and responsibility, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Giorgio Agamben’s work on shame, to develop an account of the (...) political aspects of perceived and felt guilt and shame in people who are oppressed. I discuss how some philosophers, for example Cheshire Calhoun, have argued that the oppressed should accept the burdens of guilt and shame expected of them because of the social nature of our ethical experience; and then show how that view can be questioned. However, I argue that the view that members of oppressed groups should experience the guilt and shame expected of them by dominant groups ought to be challenged. In this paper, I demonstrate that the debate concerning shame and guilt has obscured emotions that are responses to the actions of others, such as humiliating treatment, thus leading to an inappropriate focus in philosophical discourses on the victims of wrongdoing rather than the perpetrators. This focus implicitly supports the dynamics of humiliation, as I will show. (shrink)

The precompetitive, competitive, and postcompetitive mental states of athletes are currently not sufficiently researched. Long-term exposure to stressors contributes to the formation of mental blocks and leads to various health problems. One of the factors that can explain the variability of athletes' reactions to stress is their personality. This study is the first to examine competitive anxiety, and guilt and shame proneness in the context of the reaction of football players to distress in sports. The study consists of 112 male (...) football players aged 16–24 who were divided into type D and non-type D football players according to scoring on the Denollet Scale. Football players also filled out the Sport Anxiety Scale and the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale. The taxonomic approach was conducted to test and to examine differences in stressor intensity as a function of type D personality. A correlation, multivariate analysis of variance, and regression analysis were performed in the study. We found that type D football players were more afraid of failures in sports, felt more often autonomous excitement concentrated in the stomach and muscles, and showed more frequent concentration disruption than did non-type D football players. We also found that although type D football players were more likely to rate their behavior as negative and inappropriate, they showed a much greater effort to correct it than did non-type D football players. Negative affectivity and social inhibition of type D football players were positively correlated with competitive anxiety. In addition, we noted lower levels of somatic anxiety and lower concentration disruption for football players who used escape strategies to manage stress. The shame proneness subscale monitoring negative self-evaluation was also closely related to the concentration disruption of football players. We found that the examination of athletes by type D personality is necessary due to the fact that negative affectivity and social inhibition are significant predictors of competitive anxiety of football players, which explains their worries at 24.0%, somatic anxiety at 8.2%, and concentration disruption at 10.6%. (shrink)

This paper involves a critical evaluation of a conceptualization of guilt and shame, which guides a number of research mainly in social psychology. In the contemporary literature, conceptualization of guilt and shame shows variation. In one of the leading approaches, guilt is regarded as an experience that targets behavior in evaluative thought and shame as targeting the self. According to this distinction, guilt has a constructive nature and it motivates the individual to take reparative actions, since it targets the behavior, (...) whereas shame has a destructive quality and is linked with problem behaviors, since it targets the self. The claim that guilt and shame are adaptive and maladaptive feelings respectively by their very nature, has been challenged by theory and research. Researchers from non-Western cultures also criticized compartmentalization of guilt and shame as constructive and destructive emotions by emphasizing cultural variation in the experience of self-conscious emotions. In this regard, the present paper argues that features of constructiveness and destructiveness do not necessarily follow from the definitions of guilt and shame and that this dichotomous conceptualization of guilt and shame, and the research findings based on this dichotomy need reconsideration. (shrink)

This article explores how historical narratives affect the evaluation of political decisions regarding justice during peace negotiations. Specifically, this study evaluates how different narratives of the Colombian armed conflict relate to the preference for either restorative or retributive justice. Results revealed that a historically accurate narrative that included structural elements correlated with the preference for restorative justice, whereas a schematic narrative that focused on individual greed favoured the preference for retributive justice. These results are (...) explained in terms of the characteristics of expert historical narratives, which include structural elements, such as economic and institutional factors. The presence of these elements in the explanation of conflicts decreases the weight of individual decisions and, in this way, prevent ingroup attributional biases. (shrink)

This study examined psychopathological correlates of implicit and explicit shame and guilt in 30 clinical and 129 non-clinical youths aged 8–17 years. Shame and guilt were measured explicitly via two self-reports and a parent report, and implicitly by means of an Implicit Association Test (IAT), while a wide range of psychopathological symptoms were assessed with questionnaires completed by children, parents, and teachers. The results showed no differences of implicit and explicit shame and guilt between the clinical and non-clinical group, implying (...) that dysregulation of these self-conscious emotions is not per definition associated with psychopathology. Correlational analyses indicated that self-reported explicit shame was positively associated with a broad range of internalizing psychopathology, while self-reported explicit guilt was associated with higher levels of anxiety and to some extent lower levels of externalizing psychopathology. Correlations with parent-rated shame and guilt revealed the same pattern of results but were in general weaker. Furthermore, implicit shame and guilt did not show significant correlations with the various measures of psychopathology. It can be concluded that the link between shame and guilt and psychopathology is complex, and partly dependent on the disorder under study and context-related factors defining the maladaptive nature of these self-conscious emotions. (shrink)

This article is focused on the differences between shame and guilt examined through a psychological perspective. The purpose of this analysis developed here is to attain conceptual clarity about what is distinctive about shame and guilt. We claim that shame is erroneously included in the category of “moral emotions” and that, paradoxically, there is nothing moral in it. To this end, we emphasize that shame is produced by the failure to achieve a certain minimum, which is social in its nature. (...) It is therefore connected with low demands on one’s self and low self-esteem. Guilt, on the other hand, is based on the failure to achieve a subjective maximum and an ideal, so it tends to be observed in personalities that exhibit high demands upon themselves and a high self-esteem. (shrink)