[en] We investigate how the mechanisms of nuclear excitations and mesonic currents traditionally invoked to explain the quenching of low multipole magnetic transitions apply to higher spin operators. We find that there is a significant quenching of the low multipolarity spin-isospin operators by Δ-hole polarization, but that this effect decreases for higher multipoles. Conversely, the nucleon-hole polarization which has a negligible effect on low multipoles plays a predominant role in explaining the quenching of higher multipoles. Meson exchange currents provide a significant enhancement of the orbital operators but have only a slight effect on the spin components. (orig.)