Shame proneness is associated with individual differences in temporal pole white matter structure

ABSTRACT

Shame and guilt are distinct negative moral emotions, although they are usually regarded as overlapping affective experiences. Of these two emotions, shame is more closely related to concerns about other people’s judgment, whereas guilt is more related to concerns about one’s own judgment. Although some studies have tried to identify the psychological process underlying shame as opposed to guilt, there is no clear evidence of brain regions that are specifically relevant to the experience of shame rather than guilt and, more generally, self-blame. We therefore investigated associations between individual differences in shame- and guilt-proneness and the gray and white matter structures of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry while controlling for associations with guilt- or shame-proneness. To accomplish this goal, we enrolled 590 healthy, right-handed individuals (338 men and 252 women; age, 20.6 ± 1.8 years). We administered a questionnaire to assess shame proneness and guilt proneness. Based on our hypothesis, we found that high shame proneness was associated with decreased regional white matter density only in the right inferior temporal pole, whereas no significant region was associated with guilt. The function of this area may be important for the underlying processes differentiating shame from guilt.

KEYWORDS:

• Shame proneness
• right inferior temporal pole
• regional white matter density
• voxel-based morphometry

Acknowledgments

We thank Yuki Yamada for operating the MRI scanner, Haruka Nouchi for conducting the psychological tests, and all other assistants for helping with the experiments and the study in general. We also thank the study participants and all of our colleagues at the IDAC at Tohoku University for their support. We would like to acknowledge JRAS Inc. (www.jras.co.jp) for providing technical assistance with the data analysis. We would also like to thank AJE (www.aje.com) for editing the English-language text of the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful for the assistance provided by Miuna Miyauchi, Kouta Miyauchi, and Julia Narumi Miyauchi in the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.