Self-conscious emotions in response to academic failure: Evidence from cross-cultural research

This study explored the occurrence of shame and guilt in response to student report card grades among fourth-grade students from two different countries—the United States and Bulgaria—and investigated potential contributors to such negative emotional experiences. Guided by the understanding that student affective reactions stem from differences in individual predispositions, social interactions, and their interplay, the study focused simultaneously on personal and environmental factors. It was hypothesized that the self-conscious emotions of shame and guilt in response to academic failure would be triggered by four key factors: perceived failure, parental evaluative feedback, children's negative affectivity, and culture. Within this causal system, parental evaluative feedback and children's level of anxiety were identified as mediators between student perceptions of academic failure and the resulting emotions of shame and guilt.;The study provides insights about an array of factors that might underlie children's emotional experiences. It also draws upon data analytic techniques that have been proclaimed as highly effective in dealing with the idiosyncrasies of cross-cultural research yet have remained largely underutilized.;Survey research methodology was utilized with 9- and 10-year-old children from U.S. and Bulgaria. Structural equation modeling was employed for the purposes of hypothesis testing. The analysis showed that regardless of culture-specific factors, negative affectivity, as an inborn or behaviorally learned predisposition to experience highly negative emotions, predicts shame and guilt towards academic failure. However, culture conditions the relative importance of some family process variables in children's experiences of shame and guilt. Bulgarian children's experiences of shame and guilt were amplified by the negative valence of their parents' evaluative feedback in the aftermath of academic failure. This was not the case for the U.S children, whose perceptions of failure appeared to be less influenced by their parents' judgments of their demonstrated academic performance.