This article was downloaded by: [University of New Hampshire] On: 11 February 2015, At: 21:30 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of Personality Assessment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjpa20
The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a Measure of Anxiety Karin E. Klenke-Hamel & Louis H. Janda Published online: 10 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: Karin E. Klenke-Hamel & Louis H. Janda (1979) The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a Measure of Anxiety, Journal of Personality Assessment, 43:2, 150-154, DOI: 10.1207/ s15327752jpa4302_7 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4302_7
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Journal of Personality Assessment, 1979,43,2
The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a Measure of Anxiety KARIN E. KLENKE-HAMEL and LOUIS H. JANDA Old Dominion University Summary: Women divided into two levels of sex-guilt were administered the Word Association Test under three different conditions. In the first a confederate modeled sexual responses, in the second a confederate modeled nonsexual responses, and in the third condition no confederate was present. The results indicated that both low-and high-guilt women made significantly more sexual responses when exposed to the sexual model than in the nonsexual or no-model conditions. The asopposed to results wereinter~retedassu~~ortineanavoidant-anxietyconceptualizationofguilt Mosher's preservation of self-esteem view.
Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 21:30 11 February 2015
A.
v
Mosher (1965) conceptualized sexguilt from a social-learning framework and proposed that sex-guilt acts as a personality disposition to inhibit the expression of sexually unacceptable behaviors. According to this hypothesis high guiltindividuals are expected to respond in potential conflict situations in accord with their internalized standards of proper behavior based on a generalized expectancy for self-mediated punishment, that is, guilt. This anticipatory guilt, in turn, serves to maintain the person's self-esteem by preventing the violation of internalized standards. Low-guilt individuals, on the other hand, would be dependent upon external cues to regulate their responses in potential conflict situations because their behavior is not determined by a strong internalized sense of guilt. To test the construct of sex-guilt, Mosher (1966) developed the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale (MFCGS) that included a subscale measuring sex-guilt. Construct validity of the Sex Guilt subscale is supported by data from several investigations. For example Galbraith (1968) demonstrated that sex-guilt correlated negatively with free associative responses to double-entendre words and that sexual stimulation increased thefrequency of sexual responses in low-guilt individuals but did not affect the level of sexual responsiveness of high-guilt people (Galbraith, Hahn, & Lieberman, 1968). Negative correlations between high levels of sex-guilt and overt sexual responsiveness were also reported by Galbraith and Mosher (1968)and Janda, Witt, and Manahan (1976). The results from these investigations are consistent
with the inhibitory motivational qualities of sex guilt assumed in Mosher's conceptualization of guilt. Additional evidence for the construct validity of the Sex Guilt subscale was provided by a series of validation studies. Galbraith (1969) reported a significant negative correlation between sex-guilt scores derived from the MFCGS and scoresfrom the Sex Drive and Interest subscale of the Thorne Sex Inventory (SI), (Thorne, 1966) as well as a significant positive correlation between scores of the Sex Guilt subscale and those on the Repression of Sexuality subscale of the SI. Similarly, Mosher (1970, 1973) provided evidence that highguilt individuals are less likely to purchase or expose themselves to pornographic material, while the recent study by Schill and Chapin (1972) indicated that lowguilt males were more likelytolookthrough Playboy or Penthouse magazines when waiting for an appointment as compared to high-guilt males. Taken togqther, these findings support the validity of Mosher's construct of sex-guilt since it has been consistently shown that individualswhose behavior is determined by a strong expectancy for internal punishment act in accord with internalized standards of proper behavior and are, therefore, relatively insensitive to external manipulations portending censure, disapproval or punishment. In the case of low-guilt individuals, on the other hand, it has been consistently demonstrated that such individuals are quite sensitiveto situational cues, and that their responses are controlled, in part, by their expectancies for approval or disapproval. Rather than viewing sex-guilt as a gen-
Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 21:30 11 February 2015
K. E. KLENKE-HAMEL and L. H. JANDA eralized expectancy for self-mediated punishment, Galbraith (1968) suggested that guilt may be regarded as a form of avoidant anxiety based upon aversive conditioning experiences. According to this view, high-guilt individuals inhibit sexual responses because they have experienced aversive consequences in the form of disapproval or punishment in the past. One implication of Galbraith's hypothesis is that it should be possible to manipulate situational cues in such a way as to affect the sexual responsiveness of high-guilt individuals. If highguilt persons are inhibiting their sexual responses because of their generalized expectancy for external punishment, as Galbraith suggests, rather than suppressing sexual behavior because of a generalized expectancy of internal punishment, as Mosher would argue, it may be predicted that high-guilt individuals would increase the frequency of sexual responses if situational cues signaling aversive consequences are minimized or completely eliminated. Janda and O'Grady(1976) reported two experiments that were designed specifically to contrast Mosher'sand Galbraith's conceptualizations of sex-guilt. These investigators varied the response modality for making sexual responses. In the first experiment, women wrote their responses to the Word Association Test (WAT) containing 30 sexual double-entendre words; in the second experiment women gave their responses to a tape recorder with no one else in the room. The results of both experiments indicated that only the low-guilt women increased their sexual responsaveness under conditions of guaranteed anonymity. The anonymity manipulation had no effect upon highguilt women. The authors interpreted the results as supporting the preservation of self-esteem view of guilt. However, they did not demonstrate the invalidity of the avoidant-anxiety view. Perhaps the conditions were not sufficiently anonymous to overcome the generalized expectancies for external punishment in the high-guilt women. The purpose of the present experiment, then, was to create a situation in which
151
high-guilt individuals would feel confident that they would not receive external punishment far making sexual responses. In order to create an experimental setting free of censure or disapproval cues, female college students were exposed to a female confederate who either modeled a high level of sexual responsivity or completely ignored the sexual connotation of the doubleentendre words. In view of the contrasting conceptualizations of sexguilt proposed by Mosher and Galbraith, the following predictions were made: according to Mosher's preservation of selfesteem view of guilt, the modeling manipulation was expected to fail to have an effect upon high-guilt women. Presumably, their level of sexual responsivity would not change across conditions because it would violate their internalized standards of proper behavior, thereby lowering their self-esteem. Galbraith's avoidant-anxiety hypothesis of guilt, on the other hand, would lead to the lprediction that both high-and low-guilt women would show increased sexual responsiveness when exposed to the confederate modeling sexual responses. Presuimably, high- and low-guilt individuals would not anticipate disapproval or punishment in the presence of the permissive model since they have the opportunity of observing another person responding sexua1l:y without suffering any negative consequences. A secondary purpose of the study was to examine the affective responses of the subjects following their exposure to sexual stimulus materials. Mosher and Greenberg (1969) have reported that high-guilt women experienced higher levels of affective guilt than low-guilt women after exposure to sexual stimulus materials. In contrast to these findings, Janda, lvlagri, and Barnhart (1977) reported no relationship between scores on the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale and on measures of affective guilt following exposure to sexual materials. No specific prediction was made with respect to this aspect of the study. Method Subjects The subjects were 72 female undergraduate st~tdentsenrolled in introduc-
Mosher Forced Guilt Scale and Anxiety
Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 21:30 11 February 2015
tory psychology courses who participated in the study as part of theircourse requirements. The subjects were not aware that the experiment involved sexual content at the time they volunteered to participate. Procedure During the first phase of the experiment, the women were administered the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale(Ga1braith & Mosher, 1968)in smallgroups. A median split was performed to divide the women into the two levels of guilt. The high- and low-guilt women were randomly assigned to one of three groups; a sexual model group; a nonsexual model group; and a no-model control group. This resulted in six cells with 12 women in each cell. All subjects were seen individually for the second part of the experiment in which they completed the Word Association Test (Galbraith & Mosher, 1968).This test contains 30 words that are doubleentendre with respect to sex. Following this, they completed the Differential Emotions Scale (Izard, Note I) which measures seven emotional states: interest, joy, surprise, guilt, fear, and sexual arousal. The subjects were then debriefed and dismissed. Two undergraduate women served as the models. Each confederate modeled for six subjects in each of the modeling conditions. In both modelingconditions,when the subject arrived at the appointed time she was told that "the other girl" was there first. The subject was then invited to have a seat in the experimental room while the confederate responded to the Word Association Test. After this was completed, the confederate was asked to go to another room to complete the "other forms." The subjwt then responded to the Word Association Test. In the sexual model condition, the confederate responded to the30 sexualdoubleentendre stimulus words with predetermined sexual responses (e.g., screw-intercourse, rubbercontraceptive). In the nonsexual condition, the confederate made predetermined nonsexwl responses to all 50 stimulus words in the Word Association Test (e.g,, screw-bolt, rubber-tree). The responses to the 20 words that were not
Table 1 Means and Standard Deviations of Scores on the Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory Experimental Condit~on Subject
Sexual Model
Nonsexual Model
Control
SD
19.33 4.69
19.25 4.59
18.17 5.27
LSG M SD
7.42 2.47
7.42 3.17
6.58 4.27
HSG M
double-entendre were the same in both conditions. Results The scores on the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale were subjected to a 2 X 3 analysis of variance to insure that the random assignment of subjects tocells was successful. This resulted in only a main effect for guilt, F (1,66) = 150.3 1, p < .001, which indicated that this procedure was successful. Examination of the results for the Word Association Test indicated lack of homogeneity ofvariance, Fmax(6,11)= 33.95, p < .001. Consequently, logarithmic transformations were performed on the original data to stabilize the differences in variances. A second test for homogeneity of variance on the transformed data indicated that the transformation resulted in a reduction of heterogeneity of variance, Fmax (6,l l ) = 4.28, p < .05. The means and standard deviations for the original data can be seen in Table 1. A 2 X 3 analysis of variance was performed on the transformed scores. They resulted in main effects forguilt, F(1,66) = 4.80, p < .05, and for modeling, F (2, 66) = 50.12,p< .001. The mainkffect for guilt resulted from the low-guilt women making more sexual responses than the high-guilt women. The main effect for mode)ing resulted from women in the sexual model condition making more sexual responses than women in thenonsexual or no-model condition (both ps < .OOl). The interaction effect was not significant.
Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 21:30 11 February 2015
K. E. KLENKE-HAMEL and L. H. JANDA To test the specific hypotheses of the study, individual means comparisons were performed. As the avoidant-anxiety view of guilt would suggest, highguilt women exposed to the sexual confederate made more sexual responses than high-guilt women in the nonsexual model condition 0, < .001). Additionally, the difference between the low-guilt women and the high-guilt women in the nonsexual model condition was significant O)< .01). The difference between high- and low-guilt women in the other two conditions was not significant. With regard to the Differential Emotions Scale, 2 X 3 analyses of variance were performed on the scores for theseven different emotional states. No significant effects were obtained on any of these analyses.
Discussion The results of this study support the avoidant-anxiety conceptualization as proposed by Galbraith. Mosher's preservation of self-esteem would suggest that individuals high in sex-guilt would not show greater responsiveness to sexual stimuli when exposed to the permissive confederate who modeled sexual responses. Since according to this view, high-guilt subjects respond in accord with internalized standards of proper behavior, the permissive model should have had little or no influence. However, the results of the present study clearly demonstrated that observing a model making sexual responses leads to increased sexual responsiveness in both high- and low-guilt subjects. In fact, there was no significant difference in the frequency of sexual responses between high-and low-guilt women in the condition where the model behaved in a sexually permissive manner. This seems to suggest that situational cues can indeed be manipulated to overcome the generalized expectancies for external negative consequences. If such cues can be eliminated and replaced by situational determinants encouraging sexual behavior, high-guilt women can be expected to make sexual responses. One concern of research of this type is that it is often of an "either-or" nature.
153
That is, guilt is either preservation of selfesteem or avoidant-anxiety. It seems more likely that both processes operate. Perhaps some high-guilt individuals inhibit sexual responses to preserve their selfesteem while others inhibit such responses because of concern for external disapproval. Furthermore, it is conceivable that both processes operate in the same individual in some cases. If this is true, it would be of interest to develop inventories that can distinguish between the two processes. Perhaps a sex-anxiety invientory could complement Mosher's sex-guilt inventory. From the viewpoint of theory and methodology, then, this research suggests that the prevailing conceptual assumption that high sex-guilt leads to an iinhibition of sexual responsiveness may require some modification. Guilt is typically conceptualized as a self-evaluation against internalized standards of 'right' and 'wrong.' However, if the high-guilt person is exposed to a situation where external cues clearly signal that it is 'right' to make sexual responses, then the behavioral restraints associated with internalized standards may be removed. If the manipulation of situational cues can be successfully applied to individuals with pathological levels of sex-guil t and/ or sex activity, this research may have positive therapeutic implications. Further research is necessary to explore and delineate the particular situational cues which may be potent enough to encourage sexual resplonses in individuals high with sex-guilt. Finally, this study failed to find a relationship between dispositional guilt as measured by the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Inventory and emotional states as measured by the Differential Emotions Scale. These results are consistent with the findings of Janda, Magri, and IBarnhart (1977). They reported that in two experiments M~osher'sscale was successful in predicting sexual behavior, but not the emotional state of guilt. This would suggest that guilt as a behavioral tendency and guilt as an emotional state\ may be independent constructs. If they ' are related, as the results of Moshes and
Mosher Forced Guilt Scale and Anxiety
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Greenberg (1969) would seem to indicate, then additional research identifying the types of situations that mediate such a relationship needs to be done. In summary, this research has shown that conceptualizations of sex-guilt as preservation of self-esteem and as avoidant-anxiety are not mutually exclusive formulations but coexist. Each of the two contrasting hypotheses must be interpreted in accordance with situational determinants in order to identify the particular conceptualization of guilt which can best predict and account for the behavior of high- and low-guilt individuals. Reference Note I. Izard, C. E. Differential Emorions Scale. Unpublished test, Vanderbilt University, 1969. References Galbraith, G. G. Effects of sexual arousaland guilt upon free associative sexual responses. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psvchology, 1968, 32, 6,707-7 1 1. Galbraith, G. G. The Mosher Sex Guilt Scale and the Thorne Sex Inventory: Inter-correlations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1969,25,3,292294. Galbraith, G. G., Hahn, K., & Lieberman, H. Personality correlates of free associative responses to double entendre words. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1968, 32, 2, 193197. Galbraith, G. G., &Mosher, D. L. Associat~vesexual responses in relation to sexualarousal, guilt, and external approval contingencies. Journalof Personality and Social Ps.vchoIogy, 1968, 10, 142-147. Janda, L. H., Magri, M. D.,& Barnhart, S. Determinants of affective guilt states in women and the PGI. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1977,41, 79-84.
Janda, L. H., & O'Grady, K. E. Effects ofguilt and response modality upon associative sexual responses. Journal of eesearch in Personahty, 1976,IO. 457-462. Janda, L. H., Witt, C. G., & Manahan, C. Effects of guilt and approachability of examiner upon associative sexual responses. Journal of Consulting and Clmical Psychology, 1976,44,986990. Mosher, D. L. The development and multitraitmultimethod matrix analysis of three measures of three aspects of guilt. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1966,30, 1.25-29. Mosher, D. L. Interaction of fea;and guilt In inhibiting unacceptable behavior. Journalof Consulting Psychology, 1965,29,2, 161-167. Mosher, D. L. Psychological reactions topornographicfilms. Technicalreports of the Commrssion on Obscenity and Pornography (Vol. 8). Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1970. Mosher, D. L. Sex differences, sex experience, sex guilt, and explicity sexual films. Journal of Social Issues. 1973.29, 95-1 12. Mosher, D. L., & Greenberg, T. Females'affective responses to reading erotic literature. Journalof Consultingand Clinical Psychology, 1969,33,4, 472-477. Schill, T., & Chapin, J. Sex guilt in males'preferences for reading erotic magazines. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1972,39, 516. Thorne, F. C . The SexInventory. Journalof Clinical Psychology, 1966,22, 367-374.
Dr. Karin E. Klenke-Hamel Dept. of Psychology Old Dominion University Norfolk, Virginia 23508 Received: February 28,1978
Journal of Personality Assessment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjpa20
The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a Measure of Anxiety Karin E. Klenke-Hamel & Louis H. Janda Published online: 10 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: Karin E. Klenke-Hamel & Louis H. Janda (1979) The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a Measure of Anxiety, Journal of Personality Assessment, 43:2, 150-154, DOI: 10.1207/ s15327752jpa4302_7 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4302_7
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Journal of Personality Assessment, 1979,43,2
The Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale as a Measure of Anxiety KARIN E. KLENKE-HAMEL and LOUIS H. JANDA Old Dominion University Summary: Women divided into two levels of sex-guilt were administered the Word Association Test under three different conditions. In the first a confederate modeled sexual responses, in the second a confederate modeled nonsexual responses, and in the third condition no confederate was present. The results indicated that both low-and high-guilt women made significantly more sexual responses when exposed to the sexual model than in the nonsexual or no-model conditions. The asopposed to results wereinter~retedassu~~ortineanavoidant-anxietyconceptualizationofguilt Mosher's preservation of self-esteem view.
Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 21:30 11 February 2015
A.
v
Mosher (1965) conceptualized sexguilt from a social-learning framework and proposed that sex-guilt acts as a personality disposition to inhibit the expression of sexually unacceptable behaviors. According to this hypothesis high guiltindividuals are expected to respond in potential conflict situations in accord with their internalized standards of proper behavior based on a generalized expectancy for self-mediated punishment, that is, guilt. This anticipatory guilt, in turn, serves to maintain the person's self-esteem by preventing the violation of internalized standards. Low-guilt individuals, on the other hand, would be dependent upon external cues to regulate their responses in potential conflict situations because their behavior is not determined by a strong internalized sense of guilt. To test the construct of sex-guilt, Mosher (1966) developed the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale (MFCGS) that included a subscale measuring sex-guilt. Construct validity of the Sex Guilt subscale is supported by data from several investigations. For example Galbraith (1968) demonstrated that sex-guilt correlated negatively with free associative responses to double-entendre words and that sexual stimulation increased thefrequency of sexual responses in low-guilt individuals but did not affect the level of sexual responsiveness of high-guilt people (Galbraith, Hahn, & Lieberman, 1968). Negative correlations between high levels of sex-guilt and overt sexual responsiveness were also reported by Galbraith and Mosher (1968)and Janda, Witt, and Manahan (1976). The results from these investigations are consistent
with the inhibitory motivational qualities of sex guilt assumed in Mosher's conceptualization of guilt. Additional evidence for the construct validity of the Sex Guilt subscale was provided by a series of validation studies. Galbraith (1969) reported a significant negative correlation between sex-guilt scores derived from the MFCGS and scoresfrom the Sex Drive and Interest subscale of the Thorne Sex Inventory (SI), (Thorne, 1966) as well as a significant positive correlation between scores of the Sex Guilt subscale and those on the Repression of Sexuality subscale of the SI. Similarly, Mosher (1970, 1973) provided evidence that highguilt individuals are less likely to purchase or expose themselves to pornographic material, while the recent study by Schill and Chapin (1972) indicated that lowguilt males were more likelytolookthrough Playboy or Penthouse magazines when waiting for an appointment as compared to high-guilt males. Taken togqther, these findings support the validity of Mosher's construct of sex-guilt since it has been consistently shown that individualswhose behavior is determined by a strong expectancy for internal punishment act in accord with internalized standards of proper behavior and are, therefore, relatively insensitive to external manipulations portending censure, disapproval or punishment. In the case of low-guilt individuals, on the other hand, it has been consistently demonstrated that such individuals are quite sensitiveto situational cues, and that their responses are controlled, in part, by their expectancies for approval or disapproval. Rather than viewing sex-guilt as a gen-
Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 21:30 11 February 2015
K. E. KLENKE-HAMEL and L. H. JANDA eralized expectancy for self-mediated punishment, Galbraith (1968) suggested that guilt may be regarded as a form of avoidant anxiety based upon aversive conditioning experiences. According to this view, high-guilt individuals inhibit sexual responses because they have experienced aversive consequences in the form of disapproval or punishment in the past. One implication of Galbraith's hypothesis is that it should be possible to manipulate situational cues in such a way as to affect the sexual responsiveness of high-guilt individuals. If highguilt persons are inhibiting their sexual responses because of their generalized expectancy for external punishment, as Galbraith suggests, rather than suppressing sexual behavior because of a generalized expectancy of internal punishment, as Mosher would argue, it may be predicted that high-guilt individuals would increase the frequency of sexual responses if situational cues signaling aversive consequences are minimized or completely eliminated. Janda and O'Grady(1976) reported two experiments that were designed specifically to contrast Mosher'sand Galbraith's conceptualizations of sex-guilt. These investigators varied the response modality for making sexual responses. In the first experiment, women wrote their responses to the Word Association Test (WAT) containing 30 sexual double-entendre words; in the second experiment women gave their responses to a tape recorder with no one else in the room. The results of both experiments indicated that only the low-guilt women increased their sexual responsaveness under conditions of guaranteed anonymity. The anonymity manipulation had no effect upon highguilt women. The authors interpreted the results as supporting the preservation of self-esteem view of guilt. However, they did not demonstrate the invalidity of the avoidant-anxiety view. Perhaps the conditions were not sufficiently anonymous to overcome the generalized expectancies for external punishment in the high-guilt women. The purpose of the present experiment, then, was to create a situation in which
151
high-guilt individuals would feel confident that they would not receive external punishment far making sexual responses. In order to create an experimental setting free of censure or disapproval cues, female college students were exposed to a female confederate who either modeled a high level of sexual responsivity or completely ignored the sexual connotation of the doubleentendre words. In view of the contrasting conceptualizations of sexguilt proposed by Mosher and Galbraith, the following predictions were made: according to Mosher's preservation of selfesteem view of guilt, the modeling manipulation was expected to fail to have an effect upon high-guilt women. Presumably, their level of sexual responsivity would not change across conditions because it would violate their internalized standards of proper behavior, thereby lowering their self-esteem. Galbraith's avoidant-anxiety hypothesis of guilt, on the other hand, would lead to the lprediction that both high-and low-guilt women would show increased sexual responsiveness when exposed to the confederate modeling sexual responses. Presuimably, high- and low-guilt individuals would not anticipate disapproval or punishment in the presence of the permissive model since they have the opportunity of observing another person responding sexua1l:y without suffering any negative consequences. A secondary purpose of the study was to examine the affective responses of the subjects following their exposure to sexual stimulus materials. Mosher and Greenberg (1969) have reported that high-guilt women experienced higher levels of affective guilt than low-guilt women after exposure to sexual stimulus materials. In contrast to these findings, Janda, lvlagri, and Barnhart (1977) reported no relationship between scores on the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale and on measures of affective guilt following exposure to sexual materials. No specific prediction was made with respect to this aspect of the study. Method Subjects The subjects were 72 female undergraduate st~tdentsenrolled in introduc-
Mosher Forced Guilt Scale and Anxiety
Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 21:30 11 February 2015
tory psychology courses who participated in the study as part of theircourse requirements. The subjects were not aware that the experiment involved sexual content at the time they volunteered to participate. Procedure During the first phase of the experiment, the women were administered the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale(Ga1braith & Mosher, 1968)in smallgroups. A median split was performed to divide the women into the two levels of guilt. The high- and low-guilt women were randomly assigned to one of three groups; a sexual model group; a nonsexual model group; and a no-model control group. This resulted in six cells with 12 women in each cell. All subjects were seen individually for the second part of the experiment in which they completed the Word Association Test (Galbraith & Mosher, 1968).This test contains 30 words that are doubleentendre with respect to sex. Following this, they completed the Differential Emotions Scale (Izard, Note I) which measures seven emotional states: interest, joy, surprise, guilt, fear, and sexual arousal. The subjects were then debriefed and dismissed. Two undergraduate women served as the models. Each confederate modeled for six subjects in each of the modeling conditions. In both modelingconditions,when the subject arrived at the appointed time she was told that "the other girl" was there first. The subject was then invited to have a seat in the experimental room while the confederate responded to the Word Association Test. After this was completed, the confederate was asked to go to another room to complete the "other forms." The subjwt then responded to the Word Association Test. In the sexual model condition, the confederate responded to the30 sexualdoubleentendre stimulus words with predetermined sexual responses (e.g., screw-intercourse, rubbercontraceptive). In the nonsexual condition, the confederate made predetermined nonsexwl responses to all 50 stimulus words in the Word Association Test (e.g,, screw-bolt, rubber-tree). The responses to the 20 words that were not
Table 1 Means and Standard Deviations of Scores on the Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory Experimental Condit~on Subject
Sexual Model
Nonsexual Model
Control
SD
19.33 4.69
19.25 4.59
18.17 5.27
LSG M SD
7.42 2.47
7.42 3.17
6.58 4.27
HSG M
double-entendre were the same in both conditions. Results The scores on the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Scale were subjected to a 2 X 3 analysis of variance to insure that the random assignment of subjects tocells was successful. This resulted in only a main effect for guilt, F (1,66) = 150.3 1, p < .001, which indicated that this procedure was successful. Examination of the results for the Word Association Test indicated lack of homogeneity ofvariance, Fmax(6,11)= 33.95, p < .001. Consequently, logarithmic transformations were performed on the original data to stabilize the differences in variances. A second test for homogeneity of variance on the transformed data indicated that the transformation resulted in a reduction of heterogeneity of variance, Fmax (6,l l ) = 4.28, p < .05. The means and standard deviations for the original data can be seen in Table 1. A 2 X 3 analysis of variance was performed on the transformed scores. They resulted in main effects forguilt, F(1,66) = 4.80, p < .05, and for modeling, F (2, 66) = 50.12,p< .001. The mainkffect for guilt resulted from the low-guilt women making more sexual responses than the high-guilt women. The main effect for mode)ing resulted from women in the sexual model condition making more sexual responses than women in thenonsexual or no-model condition (both ps < .OOl). The interaction effect was not significant.
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K. E. KLENKE-HAMEL and L. H. JANDA To test the specific hypotheses of the study, individual means comparisons were performed. As the avoidant-anxiety view of guilt would suggest, highguilt women exposed to the sexual confederate made more sexual responses than high-guilt women in the nonsexual model condition 0, < .001). Additionally, the difference between the low-guilt women and the high-guilt women in the nonsexual model condition was significant O)< .01). The difference between high- and low-guilt women in the other two conditions was not significant. With regard to the Differential Emotions Scale, 2 X 3 analyses of variance were performed on the scores for theseven different emotional states. No significant effects were obtained on any of these analyses.
Discussion The results of this study support the avoidant-anxiety conceptualization as proposed by Galbraith. Mosher's preservation of self-esteem would suggest that individuals high in sex-guilt would not show greater responsiveness to sexual stimuli when exposed to the permissive confederate who modeled sexual responses. Since according to this view, high-guilt subjects respond in accord with internalized standards of proper behavior, the permissive model should have had little or no influence. However, the results of the present study clearly demonstrated that observing a model making sexual responses leads to increased sexual responsiveness in both high- and low-guilt subjects. In fact, there was no significant difference in the frequency of sexual responses between high-and low-guilt women in the condition where the model behaved in a sexually permissive manner. This seems to suggest that situational cues can indeed be manipulated to overcome the generalized expectancies for external negative consequences. If such cues can be eliminated and replaced by situational determinants encouraging sexual behavior, high-guilt women can be expected to make sexual responses. One concern of research of this type is that it is often of an "either-or" nature.
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That is, guilt is either preservation of selfesteem or avoidant-anxiety. It seems more likely that both processes operate. Perhaps some high-guilt individuals inhibit sexual responses to preserve their selfesteem while others inhibit such responses because of concern for external disapproval. Furthermore, it is conceivable that both processes operate in the same individual in some cases. If this is true, it would be of interest to develop inventories that can distinguish between the two processes. Perhaps a sex-anxiety invientory could complement Mosher's sex-guilt inventory. From the viewpoint of theory and methodology, then, this research suggests that the prevailing conceptual assumption that high sex-guilt leads to an iinhibition of sexual responsiveness may require some modification. Guilt is typically conceptualized as a self-evaluation against internalized standards of 'right' and 'wrong.' However, if the high-guilt person is exposed to a situation where external cues clearly signal that it is 'right' to make sexual responses, then the behavioral restraints associated with internalized standards may be removed. If the manipulation of situational cues can be successfully applied to individuals with pathological levels of sex-guil t and/ or sex activity, this research may have positive therapeutic implications. Further research is necessary to explore and delineate the particular situational cues which may be potent enough to encourage sexual resplonses in individuals high with sex-guilt. Finally, this study failed to find a relationship between dispositional guilt as measured by the Mosher Forced Choice Guilt Inventory and emotional states as measured by the Differential Emotions Scale. These results are consistent with the findings of Janda, Magri, and IBarnhart (1977). They reported that in two experiments M~osher'sscale was successful in predicting sexual behavior, but not the emotional state of guilt. This would suggest that guilt as a behavioral tendency and guilt as an emotional state\ may be independent constructs. If they ' are related, as the results of Moshes and
Mosher Forced Guilt Scale and Anxiety
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Greenberg (1969) would seem to indicate, then additional research identifying the types of situations that mediate such a relationship needs to be done. In summary, this research has shown that conceptualizations of sex-guilt as preservation of self-esteem and as avoidant-anxiety are not mutually exclusive formulations but coexist. Each of the two contrasting hypotheses must be interpreted in accordance with situational determinants in order to identify the particular conceptualization of guilt which can best predict and account for the behavior of high- and low-guilt individuals. Reference Note I. Izard, C. E. Differential Emorions Scale. Unpublished test, Vanderbilt University, 1969. References Galbraith, G. G. Effects of sexual arousaland guilt upon free associative sexual responses. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psvchology, 1968, 32, 6,707-7 1 1. Galbraith, G. G. The Mosher Sex Guilt Scale and the Thorne Sex Inventory: Inter-correlations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1969,25,3,292294. Galbraith, G. G., Hahn, K., & Lieberman, H. Personality correlates of free associative responses to double entendre words. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1968, 32, 2, 193197. Galbraith, G. G., &Mosher, D. L. Associat~vesexual responses in relation to sexualarousal, guilt, and external approval contingencies. Journalof Personality and Social Ps.vchoIogy, 1968, 10, 142-147. Janda, L. H., Magri, M. D.,& Barnhart, S. Determinants of affective guilt states in women and the PGI. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1977,41, 79-84.
Janda, L. H., & O'Grady, K. E. Effects ofguilt and response modality upon associative sexual responses. Journal of eesearch in Personahty, 1976,IO. 457-462. Janda, L. H., Witt, C. G., & Manahan, C. Effects of guilt and approachability of examiner upon associative sexual responses. Journal of Consulting and Clmical Psychology, 1976,44,986990. Mosher, D. L. The development and multitraitmultimethod matrix analysis of three measures of three aspects of guilt. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1966,30, 1.25-29. Mosher, D. L. Interaction of fea;and guilt In inhibiting unacceptable behavior. Journalof Consulting Psychology, 1965,29,2, 161-167. Mosher, D. L. Psychological reactions topornographicfilms. Technicalreports of the Commrssion on Obscenity and Pornography (Vol. 8). Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1970. Mosher, D. L. Sex differences, sex experience, sex guilt, and explicity sexual films. Journal of Social Issues. 1973.29, 95-1 12. Mosher, D. L., & Greenberg, T. Females'affective responses to reading erotic literature. Journalof Consultingand Clinical Psychology, 1969,33,4, 472-477. Schill, T., & Chapin, J. Sex guilt in males'preferences for reading erotic magazines. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1972,39, 516. Thorne, F. C . The SexInventory. Journalof Clinical Psychology, 1966,22, 367-374.
Dr. Karin E. Klenke-Hamel Dept. of Psychology Old Dominion University Norfolk, Virginia 23508 Received: February 28,1978
