Study On The Developmental Characteristics And Influencing Factors Of Preschoolers' Shame

Sense of shame is one of the important social and moral feelings, which plays a central role in motivating and regulating people's thoughts, feelings, behaviors and social adaptation. Although it has been ignored for a period of time, the experience of shame is catching increasing interest now, since it is one of the feelings in human beings. However, there are still large cross-cultural differences in definition, antecedents and actual experience of shame, as well as in the ensuing action tendencies, reported by some researchers. Especially, shame is an important part of emotional experience for Chinese, while it may be still ignored by the western theorists. So the literatures about shame in the western countries cannot exactly explain the roles of shame in Chinese culture. Therefore, we need to know about the occurring and development of shame in Chinese, particularly in the early years of Chinese children.Based on the extensive literature and updated findings from both home and abroad, the purpose of this study is to examine the developmental trait of shame and its influencing factors in early childhood. Through these open questionnaires, we collect the data about the expressive features of shame reactions. According to these features, we assess the development of shame in 3-6-year-old children by natural observation, situational experiment and scenario. We examine the development of understanding about shame and theory of mind and their correlations with the development of shame in 3-6-year-old children by clinical method. The main results and conclusions of our research are listed as follows:1. The expressive features of shame reactions are head lowered, gaze aversion, covering face and escaping and so on.2. Sense of shame emerges in 38-month-old children. A significant age difference exists in development of shame. The accelerating development of shame is 3-5-year-old.3. Although the young girls exhibit shame more readily than boys, there is no significant gender difference.4. Two types of events (moral event and nonmoral event) can elicit shame feelings.5. Young children experience shame feelings more easily by hints from adults.6. A significant age difference exists in development of understanding of shame. The accelerating developmental period is 3-5-year-old.7. In general, there is no significant gender difference in understanding of shame except action tendencies following shame. Young girls know action tendencies following shame earlier than boys. The accelerating developmental period for girls is 3-4-year-old, while for boys is 4-5-year-old.8. There is significant positive correlation between development of shame and capacity of understanding about shame. There is also significant positive correlation between development of shame and capacity of theory of mind. The correlations are still significant when controlling for age.