Self-conscious Emotions - Poor Behaviour and Self Conscious Emotions

Poor Behaviour and Self Conscious Emotions

Initially self-conscious emotions were looked upon as troublesome and all part of an internal fight. However views on this have now changed. There is a strong link between the ability of an individual to regulate their behaviour in an appropriate manner and problems with their self-conscious emotions. A school was able to list a set of boys who were classified as ‘prone to aggression and delinquent behaviour’. When these boys sat an interactive IQ test, they scored higher on scores of anger compared the normal boys at the school. They also scored lower in feelings of embarrassment (Keltner, 1995).

Caution should be taken with regards to these studies. While the findings are becoming more robust, the number of different variables involved will make it hard to ever come to a conclusion on the subject of poor behaviour being caused by these deficiencies. With the difficultly only being further increased, by the hardship of creating the proper environment within a lab where self-conscious emotions would not only occur, but could be adequately measured.