Abstract
As people normally care about what others think of them, any failures associated with them can be experienced as socially embarrassing. Consequently, they might become motivated to blame someone else for the failure in order to defend against possible criticism from others. In line with this reasoning, a study (N = 129) investigating how people think a family would feel and cope if their son or daughter failed to complete a high-school education was conducted. Specifically, it was expected that people would consider this as an embarrassing experience for the family, and due to this, blame the school for the failure. It was also expected that the link between embarrassment and blame directed at the school to be fully mediated by the feeling of rejection. Implications for research on norm violations and emotions, and implications for professional workers dealing with failure to complete a high-school education are discussed.
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Notes
Age did not have a significant effect on any of the variables that were investigated. However, there was a marginal effect of age on the feeling of rejection. Increased age was associated with more feelings of rejection (\(\beta .16, p = .093\)).
In an alternative model, two other core feelings that Gausel et al. (2011, 2012) highlight as typically felt in the aftermath of a failure—i.e., felt shame and felt inferiority—were allowed to mediate the relationship between embarrassment for failure and blaming the school. Although this model fit the data well, \(\chi ^{2} (45) = 61.64, p = .050, \chi ^{2}/df = 1.37, \,IFI = .987, \,CFI = .987, \,RMSEA = .054,\) both felt shame (\(\beta .28, p = .116\)) and felt inferiority (\(\beta -.21, p = .564\)) were non-significant predictors of blaming the school. Felt rejection was still a significant predictor of blaming the school, although marginal (\(\beta .48, p = .074\)). As before, the link between embarrassment for failure to complete and blaming the school were reduced to non-significance (\(\beta .06, p = .521\)). This finding supports Gausel et al’s (2011, 2012) argument that felt rejection is the emotional “engine” behind anti-social motivation.
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The author would like to thank Agnes Serine Bossum, Linda Lie Christensen, Cathrine Solum Hansen, and Kine Maria Laup Karlsen for their help collecting data for this manuscript.
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Gausel, N. It’s not our fault! Explaining why families might blame the school for failure to complete a high-school education. Soc Psychol Educ 17, 609–616 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-014-9267-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-014-9267-5