Shame, personality, and social anxiety symptoms in Chinese and American nonclinical samples: a cross-cultural study

✍ Scribed by Jie Zhong; Aimin Wang; Mingyi Qian; Lili Zhang; Jun Gao; Jianxiang Yang; Bo Li; Ping Chen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 152 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1091-4269
• DOI: 10.1002/da.20358

✦ Synopsis

Shame has been observed to play an important role in social anxiety in China [Xu, 1982]. Shame and personality factors, such as neuroticism and introversion-extraversion, are also related to social anxiety symptoms in Chinese college students [Li et al., 2003]. The aim of this study was to explore cross-cultural differences of the effects of shame and personality on social anxiety using the Experience Scale of Shame, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Scale and Social Anxiety Inventory. Data were collected from both a Chinese sample (n=211, 66 males and 145 females, average ages 20.12+/-1.56 years) and an American sample (n=211, 66 males and 145 females, average ages 20.22+/-1.90 years) of college students. The structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed separately for the Chinese and American samples. The SEM results reveal a shame-mediating model, which is adaptive and only in the Chinese sample. This suggests that shame is a mediator between the Chinese personality and social anxiety. The shame factor did not play the same role in the American sample. This empirical study supports the hypothesis that shame has a more important effect on social anxiety in the Chinese culture compared to its effect on Americans.