Gender Differences in Guilt and Shame Proneness from Moral Dilemmas

Decision-making is a common daily task that people experience and can sometimes lead to moral dilemmas. Moral dilemmas may lead to consequential emotions, both negative and positive, and previous research suggests that there may be a difference in those emotional responses between different genders. The purpose of the present study was to examine if there is a difference of gender regarding moral dilemma responses and whether female-identifying participants would score higher (i.e., more prone to guilt/shame) on the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale (GASP) than male-identifying participants. There were 42 participants (30 female, 10 male, and 2 non-binary) who completed the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale. The results of the data were examined across the four subscales of the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale: Guilt-Negative-Behavior-Evaluation (NBE), Guilt-Repair, Shame-Negative-Self-Evaluation (NSE), and Shame-Withdrawal. The results demonstrated that there were no significant differences between genders overall across the four scales, however, there was a significant main effect between the different GASP sub-scales. This did not support the hypothesis that female-identifying individuals would score higher on the GASP scale, demonstrating more guilt and shame, than male-identifying individuals when presented with moral dilemmas scenarios.University of Wisconsin--Stout. Office of Research and Sponsored Program