Shame-proneness and achievement behaviour

High shame-prone individuals attribute transgressions and negative outcomes to characterological faults, experiencing global feelings of self-debasement and enduring negative affect. As such, they are likely to be more vulnerable to the negative effects of failure, performing poorly and reducing practice effort irrespective of ameliorating or mitigating circumstances. In this study the latter assumption was tested for high relative to low shame-prone students, examining performance outcomes and practice effort following humiliating failure relative to face-saving failure and success. High shame-prone and low shame-prone students completed measures of state anxiety and negative affect prior to attempting to solve 20 anagrams serving as a performance measure, and 16 unicursal tasks, assessing practice effort. Following face-saving failure, low shame-prone students spent less time on the unicursal tasks, attempting fewer items and solving fewer problems. They also reported greater negative affect and higher anxiety. Implications are drawn in terms of the manner in which the unproductive attributions of shame-prone students following failure are best modified. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.