Shame themes in projective data as a function of gender

This was an exploratory study intending to discover the thoughts and feeling young adults have about the topic of shame when asked to write a creative, imaginative story about it. A total of 40 undergraduate subjects, 20 male and 20 female, were asked to write two creative stories about shame, one involving a woman and one involving a man. Order of request of protagonist sex was varied, so that half of the males (10 Ss) and half of the females (10 Ss) wrote about a same sex hero first while the remaining subjects wrote about an opposite sex hero first. The 80 stories generated were then rated for themes, emotional tone, outcome, and passive/active nature of the shame situation in regard to sex of author/sex of hero. It was anticipated that shame themes would generally revolve around some action or quality of the protagonist in contrast to parent or parent figure wishes or standards, and that sex of author would interact with sex of hero in a variety of the shame themes. Specifically it was hypothesized that men would write about issues of competency, competition, achievement and inadequacy more often, and that these would be attributed to men by both sexes, and that women would write more often about nurturance and caring for others, and that these would be more often attributed to them by both sexes. Results indicated that shame themes for both sexes revolve around qualities/behaviors conflicting with parental wishes/expectations. Although male authors did not write more frequently about competency themes, these were attributed more often to men, suggesting that such themes may be part of the male sex role. In contrast, women did write more frequently about themes of caring, although there was no specific pattern to the attribution of these themes. Males were significantly more likely to attribute a grimmer tone and outcome to stories with a female protagonist, and although both sexes were equally likely to write about active themes, these were primarily attributed to men. Results were discussed in regard to gender identity and sex role.