Abstract: Virtue of shame has been highly esteemed within Chinese traditional culture, especially as for “face”. Conscious of shame is one of the most important criteria of one’s moral level. Individual would feel shame when one offended social rules or internal moral principles, thus the conscious of shame would act as a main restrain mechanism which maintained individual fulfillment as well as social stabilization and development. As a senior emotion，shame closely related to moral development and it’s mechanism of occurrence and development were great significant to the individual’s development. A lot of achievements have been made in the field of shame research. But current studies about shame mostly focus on (1) the difference between shame and guilt; (2) the methods of dealing with shame; (3) the relationship of shame and mental health; (4) sensibility of shame and its influential factors. Besides, instead of whole range of 6 grades of primary school children, most subjects are within the confines of undergraduates, high school students, high grades pupils and young children. Former research has indicated that affection on one hand understanding underlies emotional communication and social relationship, on the other hand plays a favorable index reflecting individual development and social adaption. The present study was designed to explore (1) how did the ability of understanding of shame developing going with age increase among 1-6 grades pupils; (2) was there gender difference. Two studies were present. In study 1, we collected and verified the shame scenario stories for study 2 from two groups which were randomly selected from 1-6 grades (120 in group 1，180 in group 2，evenly divided between boys and girls) as the measure material for developmental characteristics of the ability of shame emotional understanding. The material includes four scenario stories; each story was set after three settled questions to find out the understanding of feeling of shame, reason of shame of primary school children, and their following behavior. In study 2, we used the measure material made in study 1 to measure the developmental characteristics of 300 primary school children’s ability of shame emotional understanding from 1-6 grades (50 per grade, evenly divided between boys and girls). The results were as follows: (1) Primary school children’s ability of shame emotional understanding had an overall development trend, and in grade 2-3 there was a stage of rapid development. (2) The ability of shame emotional understanding in different scenario stories generally conformed to the whole line development trend of shame emotional understanding. However, there were differences between different grades. There were significant differences on ability of shame emotional understanding among the four scenarios, and children had the highest ability of shame emotional understanding in morality scenarios, followed by being fools in public situation, cheating situation and learning situation. (3) There was no general difference on primary school children’s ability of shame emotional understanding, and there was no significant gender difference in the four scenarios except morality. The conclusions are derived from this study: (1) Primary school children’s ability of shame emotional understanding has an overall development trend with their age, and there was no significant gender difference. (2) In the four scenarios, primary school children had the highest ability of shame emotional understanding in morality scenarios, and boys’ scores were higher than girls’.

Key words: primary school children, shame, ability of shame emotional understanding, development

摘要： 先通过收集和验证羞耻情境故事和情绪词来编制考察小学儿童羞耻情绪理解能力的测量材料，然后对300名1-6年级小学儿童的羞耻情绪理解能力的发展特点进行测查。结果表明：（1）小学儿童的羞耻情绪理解能力随年级增长而发展，并且在2-3年级有一个快速发展阶段。（2）4种羞耻情境中，小学儿童在公德情境中的羞耻情绪理解能力最高，其次是当众出丑情境和欺骗情境，最低是学习情境。（3）小学儿童的羞耻情绪理解能力无显著性别差异；4种羞耻情境中，只有在公德情境中的羞耻情绪理解能力有显著性别差异，即男生高于女生。

关键词: 小学儿童, 羞耻, 羞耻情绪理解能力, 发展