There's one thing Hoogendoorn's supervisor, Professor of Health Psychology Joost Baneke, would like to get out the way first: shame is not a useless, annoying property. In fact, a small amount of shame is essential to be able to sense when you are about to go too far. `It is essential for group formation, only higher mammals have it.' Hoogendoorn: `Shame is also essential for moral development.'
Baneke heads a long-term research project on shame and his lectures on personality studies prompted student Hoogendoorn to examine not only gender but also religion. No fewer than 954 students from all types of high schools in Haaksbergen, Enschede and Utrecht - most of them fifteen or sixteen years old - answered her questionnaire.
Previous scientific research showed that there are clear gender differences in shame, but Hoogendoorn thinks that conclusion was a consequence of the make-up of the population. In her thesis she writes: `Research on shame has been conducted mostly on forensic populations and populations with primarily psychopathological problems, which would generally predict too much or too little shame. This could have created a distorted image.' That is the reason why Hoogendoorn used a more or less average non-clinical population for her research.
Her conclusion on gender differences and shame? They exist, she claims. `Throughout the group girls clearly have a higher sense of shame than boys.' Although women tend to accept the feeling of shame, men have the tendency to reflect that shame in an effort to preserve the self image. Hoogendoorn also concludes that feelings of shame are more prominent for teens with a higher level of education, especially with boys. There is no gender difference among pre-university-level students.
That is all very interesting, according to Baneke and Hoogendoorn, but the most remarkable result to them is that Islamic girls feel less shame than their non-religious classmates. `We predicted that the feelings of shame of Muslim women would be more prominent than for non-religious girls. Concepts like honor, shame and pride are after all more important in that culture than in ours. But interestingly: the opposite turned out to be true. They claim to be proud and living sincerely by the rules of the Koran.' Baneke adds: `And as long as they behave properly, they have no reason to be ashamed.'
Remarkable is that the young Muslims indicated feeling depressed more often. Hoogendoorn: `You'd expect that to be the other way around, since there is a positive correlation between shame and depression. The cause? The answers show at that Muslim women feel they are not respected enough and feel discriminated against more often.'
Hoogendoorn, originally a biochemical analyst, has caught the research bug. She hopes for a PhD position. `I would like to expand on this research.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
