Abstract: Totally 305 college students(159 Ss in the shame group and 146 in the guilt group) were asked torecall a specific shame (in shame group) or guilt(in guilt group) event in their life. And then, aquestionnaire which had 26 phenomenological items were evaluated by all the Ss.The results showedthat: (1) Compared with guilt, when Ss were in the shame situations, they experience more painfulfeelings, and wanted to flee from the situation, had more physical. changes(e. g. blush), tried to avoidtalking about the event, and so on. All of these findings were similar to the Western researchers' results.(2) There were no significant differences between the items related with personal capabilities among theshame and guilt groups, which differed from Westerner's finding. (3) Both shame and guilt could beexperienced in the situations with or without other people. In the last part of the paper, culturalinfluences were discussed by the authors, and some ideas of theories related with shame and guilt werealso discussed finally.

Key words: shame, guilt, phenomenological differences, Chinese culture