Shame
Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious and moral emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.
Definition
Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, described as a moral or social emotion that drives people to hide or deny their wrongdoings.Moral emotions are emotions that have an influence on a person's decision-making skills and monitors different social behaviors. The focus of shame is on the self or the individual with respect to a perceived audience. It can bring about profound feelings of deficiency, defeat, inferiority, unworthiness, or self-loathing. Our attention turns inward; we isolate from our surroundings and withdraw into closed-off self-absorption. Not only do we feel alienated from others but also from the healthy parts of ourselves. This inward focus can intensify self-criticism and contribute to further emotional distress. The alienation from the world leads to painful emotions and self-deprecating thoughts and inner anguish.
Empirical research demonstrates that it is dysfunctional for the individual and group level. Shame can also be described as an unpleasant self-conscious emotion that involves negative evaluation of the self. Shame can be a painful emotion that is seen as a "...comparison of the self's action with the self's standards..." but may equally stem from comparison of the self's state of being with the ideal social context's standard. In Western, individualistic contexts, shame is often conceptualized as an internal failure of the self, whereas collectivist cultures may interpret shame as a relational emotion tied to maintaining social harmony or fulfilling obligations to family and community. In some East Asian settings, shame can be experienced vicariously, felt on behalf of one’s social group or family. According to Neda Sedighimornani, shame is relevant in several psychological disorders such as depression, phobia of social interactions, and even some eating disorders.
Some scales of shame measure it to assess emotional states, whereas other shame scales are used to assess emotional traits or dispositions- shame proneness. "To shame" generally means to actively assign or communicate a state of shame to another person. Behaviors designed to "uncover" or "expose" others are sometimes used to place shame on the other person. Whereas, having shame means to maintain a sense of restraint against offending others. In contrast to having shame is to have no shame; behaving without restraint, offending others, similar to other emotions like pride or hubris. This distinction between “having shame” and “being shamed” also function both as a social regulator and as a punitive tool within communities.
Identification and self-evaluation
Nineteenth-century scientist Charles Darwin described shame affect in the physical form of blushing, confusion of mind, downward cast eyes, slack posture, and lowered head; Darwin noted these observations of shame affect in human populations worldwide, as mentioned in his book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals". Darwin also mentions how the sense of warmth or heat, associated with the vasodilation of the face and skin, can result in an even greater sense of shame. More commonly, the act of crying can be associated with shame.When people feel shame, the focus of their evaluation is on the self or identity. Shame is a self-punishing acknowledgment of something gone wrong. It is associated with "mental undoing". Studies of shame showed that when ashamed people feel that their entire self is worthless, powerless, and small, they also feel exposed to an audience—real or imagined—that exists purely for the purpose of confirming that the self is worthless. Shame and the sense of self is stigmatized, or treated unfairly, like being overtly rejected by parents in favor of siblings' needs, and is assigned externally by others regardless of one's own experience or awareness. An individual who is in a state of shame will assign the shame internally from being a victim of the environment, and the same is assigned externally, or assigned by others regardless of one's own experience or awareness.
A "sense of shame" is the feeling known as guilt but "consciousness" or awareness of "shame as a state" or condition defines core/toxic shame. The person experiencing shame might not be able to, or perhaps simply will not, identify their emotional state as shame, and there is an intrinsic connection between shame and the mechanism of denial. " The key emotion in all forms of shame is contempt. Two realms in which shame is expressed are the consciousness of self as bad and self as inadequate. People employ negative coping responses to counter deep rooted, associated sense of "shameworthiness". The shame cognition may occur as a result of the experience of shame affect or, more generally, in any situation of embarrassment, dishonor, disgrace, inadequacy, humiliation, or chagrin.
The dynamics of shame and devaluation appear to be consistent across cultures. This has led some researchers to propose the existence of a universal human psychology related to how we assign value and worth. This applies both to us and to others.
Behavioural expression
Physiological symptoms caused by the autonomic nervous system include blushing, perspiration, dizziness, or nausea. A feeling of paralysis, numbness, or loss of muscle tone might set in making it difficult to think, act, or talk. Children often visibly slump and hang their head. In an effort to hide this reaction, adults are more likely to laugh, stare, avoid eye contact, freeze their face, tighten their jaw, or show a look of contempt. In another's presence, there's a feeling of being strange, naked, transparent, or exposed, as if wanting to disappear or hide.The Shame Code was developed to capture behavior as it unfolds in real time during the socially stressful and potentially shaming spontaneous speech task and was coded into the following categories: Body Tension, Facial Tension, Stillness, Fidgeting, Nervous Positive Affect, Hiding and Avoiding, Verbal Flow and Uncertainty, and Silence. Shame tendencies were associated with more fidgeting and less freezing, but both stillness and fidgeting were social cues that convey distress to the observer and may elicit less harsh responses. Thus, both may be an attempt to diminish further shaming experiences. Shame involves global, self-focused negative attributions based on the anticipated, imagined, or real negative evaluations of others and is accompanied by a powerful urge to hide, withdraw, or escape from the source of these evaluations. These negative evaluations arise from transgressions of standards, rules, or goals and cause the individual to feel separate from the group for which these standards, rules, or goals exist, resulting in one of the most powerful, painful, and potentially destructive experiences known to humans.
Collectivist and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Shame
Shame is experienced and conceptualized differently across cultures. So far, the focus has been centered around a Western, or individualistic perspective, where shame is primarily defined as an internalized feeling of personal failure or inadequacy. In collectivist cultures, shame is tied with social harmony, family honor, and group reputation. Chinese cultures are influenced by Confucian values and experience shame as a tool to regulate moral conduct and social cohesion. Japanese individuals, similiarily, encounter both personal shame and shame felt for the actions of others within their social groups, highlighting the communal aspect of shame in collectivist contexts. Differences still exist among collectivist cultures. Analyses of language corpora from multiple cultures demonstrate cross-cultural variation in how shame, guilt, and embarrassment are conceptualized and expressed. Even within East Asia, semantic and philosophical interpretations of shame diverge. Korean shame is very closely associated moral failure and the protection of family honor, with an individual's shame reflecting throughout their household. In Japan, shame is tied to maintaining social harmony and fufilling expected social roles, and resulting in feelings of embarrassment or proxy shame when group norms are disrupted. While shame may be a universal self-conscious emotion, it can operate as a social function depending on the cultural norm.Comparison with other emotions
Distinguishing between shame, guilt, and embarrassment can be challenging. They are all similar reactions or emotions in the fact that they are self-conscious, "implying self-reflection and self-evaluation."Comparison with guilt
According to cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict, shame arises from a violation of cultural or social values while guilt feelings arise from violations of one's internal values. Thus shame arises when one's 'defects' are exposed to others, and results from the negative evaluation of others; guilt, on the other hand, comes from one's own negative evaluation of oneself, for instance, when one acts contrary to one's values or idea of one's self. Shame is more attributed to internal characteristics and guilt is more attributed to behavioral characteristics. Thus, it might be possible to feel ashamed of thought or behavior that no one actually knows about, and conversely, feeling guilty about the act of gaining approval from others.Psychoanalyst Helen B. Lewis argued that, "The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done is the focus." Similarly, Fossum and Mason say in their book Facing Shame that "While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one's actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person."
Following this line of reasoning, Psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman concludes that "Shame is an acutely self-conscious state in which the self is 'split,' imagining the self in the eyes of the other; by contrast, in guilt the self is unified."
Clinical psychologist Gershen Kaufman's view of shame is derived from that of affect theory, namely that shame is one of a set of instinctual, short-duration physiological reactions to stimulation. In this view, guilt is seen as a learned behavior consisting primarily of self-directed blame or contempt, and the shame that results from this behavior, making up a part of the overall experience of guilt. Here, self-blame and self-contempt mean the application, towards one's self, of exactly the same dynamic that blaming of, and contempt for, others represents when it is applied interpersonally.
Kaufman saw that mechanisms such as blame or contempt may be used as a defending strategy against the experience of shame and that someone who has a pattern of applying them to himself may well attempt to defend against a shame experience by applying self-blame or self-contempt. This, however, can lead to an internalized, self-reinforcing sequence of shame events for which Kaufman coined the term "shame spiral". Shame can also be used as a strategy when feeling guilty, especially when the hope is to avoid punishment by inspiring compassion.