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CHAPTER 1
Exploring Shame
The Interdisciplinary Context
Shame, as an emotion, has a core meaning, in relating individuals to wider social groups and norms — real or imagined. Threatening and defining shame is one way many groups help establish identity and enforce or seek to enforce desired behaviors. Shame can also be used to support social hierarchies, both formal and informal. But shame, or fear of shame, is also an emotional experience or anticipation for individuals, as they consider wider relationships. Shame is thus one of the "self-conscious" emotions, along with pride, humiliation, embarrassment, and guilt, that forms or may form a significant aspect of individual emotional life, but that depends on group standards and — to some extent at least — group enforcement.
An initial effort at definition hardly resolves all the shadings that shame elicits. Further meanings emerge as we explore the emotion's history, in comparative context, in ensuing chapters — and even then there is room for debate. Most obviously the gray areas, where shame overlaps with guilt or embarrassment, will continue to condition our analysis. While even a basic assessment of shame's value — whether it has any really positive features at all — must be informed by historical and comparative analysis, it is vital to begin with the dominant viewpoint in the social and behavioral sciences.
This chapter lays out current thinking on what shame means, both to the individual experiencing the emotion and to that individual's relationship to a relevant social group. There is a distinction between scholarly analysis and popular understanding, and we must explore this as well for it links to the broader historical issues we take up in chapter 2. But it is appropriate to make a clear beginning: over several decades researchers in several disciplines, though particularly psychology, have widely, though not uniformly, agreed on what shame involves. And while this must ultimately be seen as (in part) a cultural product — an expression of contemporary but not timeless standards — it does provide a vital interdisciplinary launching pad. There is no need to start from scratch.
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Shame has become a central topic in psychology, with some attendant interest in sociology and particularly anthropology as well. This was not always the case. Freud, for example, was notoriously uninterested in shame, dismissing it as a "feminine characteristic." Since World War II, however, shame has generated massive psychological interest, focused mainly in its deleterious effects. Indeed, shame researchers are numerous enough to gather together occasionally — as in Amsterdam in summer 2014 — to discuss mutual findings. Interest is both theoretical, as part of more general attention to the self-conscious emotions, and quite practical, with findings applied to child rearing, mental health, and penology.
Definitions logically begin with the whole idea of self-conscious emotions, in which shame is part of a larger family of emotions that develop during childhood. These emotions are not immediately apparent — in contrast, for example, to anger or fear. And they depend on a larger cognitive component. All emotions, even the "basic" or instinctual, are filtered through cognition, as part of deciding on appropriately and ensuing strategies. But the self-conscious cluster needs some real awareness of self, on the one hand, and appropriate group norms on the other. Without this — to refer to shame explicitly — there can be no sense of failing or potentially failing to live up to audience expectations, and no sense as well as to what the consequences to self and self-image might be. The self-conscious emotions generally require the capacity to evaluate self in light of others. Many psychologists argue that this does not begin to emerge until age one or so and does not mature for several years beyond this. By age three, consciousness is advanced enough that a child will show real signs of distress when he or she has violated the relevant social standards.
There has been some effort, deriving in part from a Freudian background (despite Freud's inattention to shame, as opposed to his investment in exploring guilt), to see shame as somehow emerging inevitably, regardless of cultural context. The clearest argument here holds that shame first develops in response to failures in toilet training, most obviously in soiling or wetting oneself, which inevitably begin to teach how the self can fail in light of community expectations. But in fact this argument is not widely pursued. Among other things, it may not help resolve the basic dilemma within the self-conscious emotions, about what distinguishes one from the other: after all, depending on the person though also the group, while a lapse in toilet training might generate shame, it might instead generate guilt or embarrassment.
The first point, then, is clear: shame is more complex than a reflex like fear, and requires more learning, though it may be an essentially inevitable product of a child's early interaction with the family community.
The next serious definitional step has to center on the distinctions among the intertwined self-conscious reactions. Shame and embarrassment are fairly clearly different in principle. Embarrassment, when one has violated group norms or expectations, is simply less intense and noticeably less durable than shame, and is more quickly forgotten by the same token. A man is undoubtedly briefly embarrassed if he has to be told that his fly is open, but the problem is easily fixed and would be unlikely to linger emotionally: unless it's a repeated pattern, it does not really provoke shame. In contrast, shame often lasts longer — up to forty-eight hours — and its sensations can be revived through community pressure, again, in contrast to embarrassment. It is worth noting the some languages, like Lithuanian, do not have separate words for shame and embarrassment, which however results in a fairly harsh idea of embarrassment in contrast to cultures, as with English, where distinctions are easier to articulate. Finally, the shame-embarrassment distinction does not fully predict why one person might be merely embarrassed by a miscue that would cause others, even in the same culture and certainly between two cultures, to feel shame. Definitional issues around embarrassment are not too distracting, at least in Western culture, but they deserve note.
Psychologists have paid far more attention to the shame-guilt relationship than to any other aspect, and it is here that the most specific definition of shame emerges — along with some key debates.
Guilt, in this widely accepted rendering, is an emotional reaction that highlights acknowledgment of a wrong act, an act against community standards, and a desire for reparation. Guilty people apologize and also take steps to avoid repetition. Shame, in contrast, is a more global emotion, which can emerge in response to the same kind of wrong act and violation of standards. It may develop earlier in life than guilt — guilt requires more cognitive sorting capacity — but above all it emphasizes self-abasement. It is the self that is at fault, not the commission of the act. This creates greater pain and intensity than guilt — a shamed person feels very bad indeed — but also makes it more difficult to escape. Apology may seem inadequate, since the whole individual is in play; reparation may seem meaningless. The shamed person tends to shrink, characteristically seeks to hide, because of the emotional dilemma involved. Often, efforts go into blaming someone or something else for the problem involved, or denying or forgetting if at all possible, or getting angry with oneself or others. Diversions of this sort may be primarily directed toward an external audience, but they can be used as well to reduce internal emotional discomfort. For there is general agreement: shame is a deeply unpleasant emotional experience.
Some authorities argue further that it is possible to identify different childhood origins for shame and guilt. Shame emerges when the child feels that parental love may be threatened or withdrawn. This memory, recalled in later situations when some action seems to jeopardize community approval, creates the anguish that the emotion may entail; it is this that calls the whole self into question. Guilt, in contrast, builds on the memory of punishment for specific acts, with no threats to basic family acceptance. Obviously experiences of being a child can create both situations, which is why shame and guilt so often comingle and why so few individuals or societies specialize in just one of the two. But equally obviously, some societies may encourage parents to emphasize one or the other approaches to discipline, and this may be a vital component in comparative differences in emphasis that loom so large in some contemporary analysis.
Both shame and guilt can be privately experienced: a person can feel ashamed, with all the anguish entailed, even without an audience. But some psychologists admit that with both emotions, though particularly with shame, at least an imagined audience is probably present, even if no actual public is involved. But it's the difference in scope that really counts. Guilt can be constructive, though if not addressed it might lead to shame. Shame is more likely to paralyze, and it is difficult, given the blows to self-worth, to figure out a useful response — hence the greater effort to evade. Psychologist Todd Kashdan puts it this way, reflecting the dominant view in his discipline: guilt encourages people to learn from their mistakes, but "people who feel shame suffer. Shamed people dislike themselves and want to change, hide, or get rid of their self."
The formulation raises an obvious question, as mainstream psychologists also recognize. If the same act can generate shame or guilt, how can one explain why one reaction takes precedence over the other? The answer, apparently, is personality type: some people are simply more shame prone, others more open to guilt.
Not surprisingly, this basic formulation has some critics. A few psychologists still contend that shame and guilt are really the same and that the distinction is moot. A more nuanced effort seeks to identify two kinds of shame, one private and one audience-based (admitting a contrast with guilt). The claim is that people see private shame as equivalent to guilt in suggesting real apology for wrongdoing, in contrast to the more shallow acknowledgment of an external audience.
These ongoing definitional quarrels have not, however, prevented significant additional research that assumes the basic distinction between shame and guilt. One line seeks to distinguish between groups, rather than personalities. Socially dominant groups, more confident, are more likely to experience guilt; shame is the more likely response of submissive groups, or those held to be inferior. Here is an interesting contemporary version of the relationship between hierarchy and shame, which will be vital as well in historical analysis.
Another related extension looks at shame proneness as a function of psychological depression, perhaps particularly among individuals who were mistreated or sexually abused as children. Susceptibility is not, here, a personality accident, but explainable through powerful prior experience. Obviously, this research path confirms the self-deprecating and overwhelming quality of shame as a response to bad action, with guilt if not more rational at least deriving more clearly from some inner strength.
Yet another research thrust, building fully on the shame-guilt distinction, elaborates further on the destructive aspects of shame. If guilt, as the basic definition holds, can lead to constructive remediation, then shame not only paralyzes but also can generate counterproductive anger or aggression. This response has been studied particularly among convicted criminals in Germany and the United States, among other countries: guilt is more likely to convince prisoners to avoid crime in the future, whereas shame — though not always generating outright recidivism — produces a desire to lash out against unfair emotional pain and social blame. And this can lead to more bad behavior, not less. The formulations have led some sociologists to claim that shame is at the root of most family violence. The same distinction has been applied to children and child rearing. Just as the criminal justice system should encourage guilt and seek to avoid any encouragement to shame, so parents and teachers should be extremely careful to foster the distinction in their children. Thus if a child cheats on an examination, emphasize the action — "don't cheat on exams" — rather than the individual as a whole — "you're a cheater."
What remains somewhat unclear, of course, is exactly what to do about the emotional distinction, if the problem rests in personality alone. If the same action can generate either guilt or shame, depending on the individual and his or her psychological background, how much emotional improvement can society expect? The scholars who have examined prisoner reactions to shame, for example, see no other wider factor involved in this aspect of emotional response: not religious affiliation, or ethnicity, or immigrant status. The prisoners are shame prone or guilt prone, and while remedial measures should seek to help the former group there is no larger explanation involved. Thus there may be some hope that greater psychological sophistication will lead penologists or parents to handle any hint of shame with particular care, but whether this can override the personality factor remains to be seen.
For several decades, psychologists have been endeavoring to show the bad effects of shame and to differentiate it from guilt as a self-conscious emotion. The emphasis follows a larger Western cultural evolution attacking shame, which is discussed in chapter 4: but this does not make it any less valid. The discipline that dominates the study of emotion clearly defines what shame is and equally clearly reproves it.
One effort even seeks to link the psychological approach to a sense of history — a sense that most psychologists, interested in the here and now, tend to downplay. Thus Stephen Pattison, in 2000, urged that shame not be seen as a unitary emotional phenomenon across all time periods. In his view, contemporary shame, the kind psychologists attack, is a "far more individual, personal and psychological" experience that contrasts with its counterpart in earlier periods, where the emphasis was on largely social enforcement and imposition on groups. Pattison posits a crucial transition in the "broad movement from 'social' shame to 'psychological' shame." I pick up this important argument in the historical analysis that follows. Possibly, in other words, psychologists are correct about the huge downsides of shame in the present day, but their findings cannot fully be generalized to the past.
For the dominant psychological approach raises two problems that the discipline has tended to ignore but that inevitably complicate shame's history. In the first place, as we soon see, more societies have emphasized shame than not, either instead of guilt or alongside it. Does this mean that most societies have been emotionally stupid, as well as insensitive? Are the shame-based societies today, for example in East Asia, clearly inferior to regions where reliance on shame has measurably lessened? Possibly yes in both cases, but most historians would be really hesitant about claiming this kind of presentist and/ or Western superiority. And second: the psychology emphasis is on the shamed individual, without much attention to social context and what shame needs a community might have. These needs, in turn, may explain why shame remains common even today — in ways the psychological emphasis does not fully capture.
Happily, some sociological work on shame helps us out to some extent, in advance of further historical analysis — though it has not been fully reconciled with the psychological approach. Sociologists may well agree that shame is quite damaging, though they also explore some shame settings that may be less harsh than others. Sociologists have contributed studies of shame's utility in improving manners over time. They have examined social groups that are unusually shame prone, here often corroborating psychological findings about the emotion's unfairness. Above all, however, they insist on shame's social dimension, which operates well beyond the experience of the shamed individual.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Shame"
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