Self-Blaming and Other-Blaming Moral Emotions Are Complementary: Two Studies in Turkish Culture

The present paper reports results of empirical investigation for a model that posits a complementary relationship between self-blaming and other-blaming emotions and suggests that distinctive relationships between them depend on the relational context and associated moral codes. Relevant findings of two studies in Turkish culture that examined different aspects of the model are presented. The first study provided partial support for the relationship between shame- and guilt-proneness and relational model preferences. The findings of the second study revealed strong support for the complementary relationship (1) between shame related to rejection or exclusion and disgust in contexts that represented the communal sharing relational model / divinity moral code; (2) between shame related to status loss and contempt in contexts that represented the authority ranking relational model / community moral code and (3) between guilt and anger in contexts representing equality matching or market pricing relational model / autonomy moral codes. Overall, these findings in Turkish culture provided initial empirical evidence for the connections between moral emotions, moral codes and relational models