Our research focuses on autobiographical memory and emotion in adolescence. Autobiographical memory is a type of memory that concerns important events of a story life (Rubin, 1986). Emotions and feelings are important ingredients of personally relevant autobiographical recalls (Christianson, Safer, 1996). Life story begins to emerge in adolescence (Habermas, Bluck, 2000) as a sample of emotional episodes: achievements, separations, humiliations, and so on. We investigated children and adolescents’ personal narratives of guilt and shame, wishing to explore life events related to two self-conscious emotions. We predicted to find differences as a function of age and gender. Participants were 147, divided in three groups: children (m=9,5), young (m=14,3) and late adolescents (m=19,5). They were asked to fill in a Narrative Self Report Instrument (Grazzani, Antoniotti, 2004) presenting two ‘emotional autobiographical-memory task’, one for each of the two moral emotions. Narratives were transcribed and a content analysis was carried out on the basis of previous studies (Castelfranchi, et al., 1994). Our analysis confirmed the predictions: differences were found both as a function of age and gender. For instance, about guilt, younger subjects narrated events in which they damaged something or somebody, whereas older participants focused on the consequences of their actions in relation to others; moreover, females were more interested in the effects of their acts in terms of relationships. When asked to recall episodes of shame, younger subjects described inappropriate actions, whereas older adolescents wrote about negative aspects of the Self; females were more worried about their own self.
Ornaghi, V., Antoniotti, C., Grazzani, I. (2007). Children and adolescents' autobiographical narratives of episodes of guilt and shame: age and gender differences. Intervento presentato a: ECDP - European Conference of Developmental Psychology, Jena, Germany.
Children and adolescents' autobiographical narratives of episodes of guilt and shame: age and gender differences
ORNAGHI, VERONICA MARIA;GRAZZANI, ILARIA
2007
Abstract
Our research focuses on autobiographical memory and emotion in adolescence. Autobiographical memory is a type of memory that concerns important events of a story life (Rubin, 1986). Emotions and feelings are important ingredients of personally relevant autobiographical recalls (Christianson, Safer, 1996). Life story begins to emerge in adolescence (Habermas, Bluck, 2000) as a sample of emotional episodes: achievements, separations, humiliations, and so on. We investigated children and adolescents’ personal narratives of guilt and shame, wishing to explore life events related to two self-conscious emotions. We predicted to find differences as a function of age and gender. Participants were 147, divided in three groups: children (m=9,5), young (m=14,3) and late adolescents (m=19,5). They were asked to fill in a Narrative Self Report Instrument (Grazzani, Antoniotti, 2004) presenting two ‘emotional autobiographical-memory task’, one for each of the two moral emotions. Narratives were transcribed and a content analysis was carried out on the basis of previous studies (Castelfranchi, et al., 1994). Our analysis confirmed the predictions: differences were found both as a function of age and gender. For instance, about guilt, younger subjects narrated events in which they damaged something or somebody, whereas older participants focused on the consequences of their actions in relation to others; moreover, females were more interested in the effects of their acts in terms of relationships. When asked to recall episodes of shame, younger subjects described inappropriate actions, whereas older adolescents wrote about negative aspects of the Self; females were more worried about their own self.
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