Guilt and Shame: The Measured Difference

June Price Tangney and Ronda Dearing reveal why two sentences that sound alike produce opposite outcomes: "I did a bad thing" versus "I am a bad person." A longitudinal study of 476 U.S. jail inmates found guilt-proneness predicted fewer repeat offences, while shame-proneness predicted more through one specific pathway: externalising blame. Building on Helen Block Lewis's 1971 distinction and the TOSCA measurement tool, this book maps how judgment's address determines whether negative feeling drives repair or flight.

You'll learn:

- Why the urge to disappear, not self-criticism, drives harmful shame

- How generalised guilt without an event behaves statistically like shame

- What cross-cultural data from 15 communities reveals about shame as social signal