Maternal discipline, culture, and sensory processing sensitivity: A cross-cultural study of children’s shame- and guilt-proneness in Türkiye and Iran

Date

2025-8-26

Author

Golchin, Sarvin

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

11871
views

0
downloads

Cite This

This cross-cultural study examined how maternal disciplinary practices, maternal self-construals, children's sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), and perceived normativeness of disciplinary practices relate to children’s shame- and guilt-proneness in Türkiye and Iran, two culturally similar societies undergoing distinct social transitions. Participants consisted of 344 mother-child dyads (174 from Turkey, 170 from Iran), with children aged 9-10. Mothers completed questionnaires on self-construal and their child’s SPS, which included the dimensions of overreaction to stimuli and depth of processing. Children reported on their mother’s discipline, perceived normativeness of these practices, and their own shame- and guilt-proneness. Turkish mothers were perceived to use power assertion, love withdrawal, and induction more frequently than Iranian mothers and reported higher levels of individuated and balanced self-construals. The conducted hierarchical regressions revealed that love withdrawal predicted higher shame-proneness in both countries, while other-oriented induction predicted lower shame-proneness in Iran. Guilt-proneness was not significantly associated with disciplinary practices. In Türkiye maternal induction was associated with higher shame-proneness among children who were low in overreaction to stimuli. In Iran, higher overreaction predicted greater shame-proneness, while depth of processing predicted lower shame-proneness. Additionally, children’s perceptions of the normativeness of inductive discipline moderated its association with shame-proneness in Iran. Maternal self-construals did not directly predict discipline overall, but in Iran, greater relatedness was associated with lower love withdrawal. The current findings highlight the relevance of parenting, cultural context, and child-specific characteristics in understanding children’s proneness to experience shame and guilt.

Subject Keywords

Shame and Guilt, Maternal Discipline, Cultural Differences, Sensory Processing Sensitivity, Self-Construals

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115529

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis