FEELING GOOD OVER SPILLED MILK: UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF REAPPRAISAL OF A CHALLENGING EVENT ON PRESCHOOLERS' SHAME AND GUILT

Abstract

Shame and guilt have been linked to negative outcomes like depression in preschoolers. The current study explores if reappraising a challenging event can reduce shame and guilt in preschoolers. Twenty-six preschoolers aged 3-7 were recruited from preschools around Singapore. Upon parental consent, preschoolers were given a Baseline Mood Check. Next, they were divided into two groups (Control condition and External/Controllable Reappraisal condition) and presented with a standard violation task where they played with a toy that broke easily and were provided negative appraisals for it. In the control condition, the experimenter did not provide any reappraisal for the situation. In the External/Controllable Reappraisal condition, the experimenter reappraised the situation such that fault is attributed to the circumstance (external) and/or that the situation was under the child’s control (controllable). Next, children from all three conditions completed a subsequent task (Copy Task) that was also negatively appraised to determine if the previous reappraisals reduced children’s experience of shame and guilt in a later task. The reappraisal by an adult experimenter was found to be effective in increasing positive and external appraisals in preschoolers and possibly reducing shame and guilt, but these effects were not found to be sustained in a later task when a subsequent negative appraisal was given on the later task. Significantly more children also expressed that they experienced guilt instead than shame and lends support for the differentiation of shame and guilt in preschoolers. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications and provides suggestions to parental and teaching practices to use external explanations that provide external attribution to outcome and controllable causes to reappraise stressful events that might have already been appraised negatively.