The investigation of university students feelings of shame and guilt in the context of cognitive flexibility and self-efficacy

The main purpose of this study is to determine the predictive power of university students' age, gender, self-efficacy and cognitive flexibility levels on their feelings of shame and guilt. In this direction, data were collected from 840 students studying in nine faculties at Anadolu University in the 2023-2024 academic year. "Personal Information Form", "Guilt and Shame Scale", "General Self-Efficacy Scale", "Cognitive Flexibility Inventory" were applied to the students who participated voluntarily. The collected data were analyzed using "IBM SPSS 23" software. "Stepwise Regression Analysis" was used to analyze the data. When the distribution of guilt and shame levels of university students was examined, it was found that guilt levels were above the medium level and shame levels were at the medium level. When the results of the regression analysis were examined, it was noticed that cognitive flexibility and age were significant predictors of guilt, but self-efficacy was not one of the significant predictors of guilt. When analyzed by gender, it was found that cognitive flexibility and age of female students were significant predictors of guilt, but self-efficacy was not. It was determined that cognitive flexibility of male university students was a significant predictor of guilt, but age and self-efficacy did not predict guilt significantly. When the predictive power of variables on shame was examined, cognitive flexibility and self-efficacy predicted shame negatively, while age did not. When analyzed according to gender, it was concluded that cognitive flexibility of male students predicted shame negatively, but self-efficacy and age did not predict shame.