Shame

Definition

Shame is one of the most overlooked emotions, at least among individuals residing in Western cultures. Feelings of shame can have a profound effect on one's level of psychological adjustment and one's relationships with others, but these feelings nonetheless often go undetected. People rarely speak of their shame experiences. Denial and a desire for concealment are part of the phenomenology of shame itself. People shrink from their own feelings of shame, just as they recoil from others in the midst of a shame experience. To further complicate matters, shame can masquerade as other emotions, hiding behind guilt, lurking behind anger, fueling despair and depression.

People's tendency to confuse shame with guilt has helped relegate shame to a footnote in psychology's first century. In professional writings and in everyday conversation, shame and guilt are mentioned in the same breath as emotion synonyms, or (perhaps more often) guilt is used as a catchall term for elements of both emotions. Even the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, rarely distinguished between shame and guilt.

Difference between Shame and Guilt

Numerous psychologists and anthropologists have attempted to differentiate between these moral emotions. Accounts of the difference between shame and guilt fall into three categories: (1) a distinction based on the types of events that give rise to the emotions, (2) a distinction based on the public versus private nature of the transgression, and (3) a distinction based on the degree to which the person views the emotioneliciting event as a failure of self or behavior.

Theorists who focus on types of events assume that certain kinds of situations lead to shame, whereas other kinds of situations lead to guilt. For example, behaviors that cause harm to others elicit guilt, whereas behaviors that violate social conventions (e.g., burping in public, poor table manners, unusual sexual behavior) elicit shame. Social psychological research, however, indicates that the type of event has surprisingly little to do with the distinction between shame and guilt. When people are asked to describe personal shame and personal guilt experiences, most types of events (e.g., lying, cheating, stealing, sex, failing to help another, disobeying parents) are cited by some people in connection with feelings of shame and by other people in connection with guilt. Some evidence indicates that shame is evoked by a broader range of situations including both moral and nonmoral failures and transgressions (e.g., harming others and violating social conventions) whereas guilt is more specifically linked to transgressions in the moral realm, as traditionally defined. But on balance, the types of situations that cause shame and guilt are remarkably similar.

Another frequently cited distinction between shame and guilt is the long-standing notion that shame is a more public emotion than guilt is, arising from public exposure and disapproval, whereas guilt is a more private experience arising from self-generated pangs of conscience. As it turns out, research has not supported this public–private distinction in terms of the actual [Page 871]characteristics of the emotion-eliciting situation. For example, when researchers analyze people's descriptions of personal shame and guilt experiences, others are no more likely to be aware of shame-inducing behaviors than of guilt-inducing behaviors.

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