Innocent fun – Ideological shame

On shame, shame-depression, and other depressions.

Ideological Strategy

Ideological parsimony

The theoretical virtue of parsimony values the minimizing of theoretical commitments, but theoretical commitments come in two kinds: ontological and ideological. While the ontological commitments of a theory are the entities it posits, a theory’s ideological commitments are the primitive concepts it employs. Here, I show how we can extend the distinction between quantitative and qualitative par...

Running head: MORAL SHAME AND IMAGE SHAME 1 Two faces of group-based shame: Moral Shame and Image Shame differentially predict positive and negative orientations to ingroup wrongdoing

This paper proposes distinctions between guilt and two forms of shame: guilt arises from a violated norm and is characterised by a focus on specific behaviour; shame can be characterised by a threatened social image (Image Shame) or a threatened moral essence (Moral Shame). Applying this analysis to group-based emotions, three correlational studies are reported, set in the context of atrocities...

Predicting Ideological Prejudice

A major shortcoming of current models of ideological prejudice is that although they can anticipate the direction of the association between participants' ideology and their prejudice against a range of target groups, they cannot predict the size of this association. I developed and tested models that can make specific size predictions for this association. A quantitative model that used the pe...