What is Shame?

Shame is a truly fascinating emotion that seems to be uniquely human. Perhaps the most fundamental thing that makes us human is our ability to form social interactions and to perform elaborated cooperative behavior. Shame contributes to that because is one of the “social emotions”: those that regulate the interaction between groups. It is also grouped with guilt and pride as the self-conscious emotions, those that form the basis of self-esteem. Shame is a negative emotion and a rather painful and disturbing one at that. Nobody likes to talk about it, perhaps because many of us have an uneasy relationship with our own shame. To top it all, shame seems to have a strange relationship with human sexuality: public displays of sexuality or just being naked are perceived as deeply shameful. No other animal displays this type of behavior.

The sister emotion of shame is guilt. Both of them appear when we meet social disapproval, probably because they evolved to discourage us from antisocial behavior. But then, why do we have two different emotions to accomplish this? What is the difference between shame and guilt? Perhaps they are different aspects of the same basic emotion? That seems unlikely. Brain imaging studies revealed that shame and guilt are associated with the activation of different brain areas. In the case of shame, they are the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and sensorimotor cortex. For guilt, they are the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, posterior temporal regions and the precuneus [1]. Indeed, shame and guilt feel very different and appear in different situations [2]. Guilt shows up when we actively violate social norms in a way that hurts others. In contrast, shame appears when we commit more subtle social transgressions that are not associated with harm to others but to loss of our own status. Shame is often, but not exclusively, associated with failure [3]. It is possible that shame and guilt evolved separately from two of the six basic Ekman’s emotions: joy, sadness, surprise, fear, anger and disgust. Whereas guilt seems to be self-directed anger, shame could be self-directed disgust.

Another important thing about shame is that it is not a cultural creation but a feeling deeply embedded in our physiology. There are clear physiological reactions associated with shame, the main one being blushing [4, 5]. It consists of a visible reddening of the face involving the dilatation of blood capillaries in the skin. Capillaries in the skin of the face are more abundant and have a unique physiology: they are able to dilate in response to the activation of beta-adrenergic receptors [6, 7]. Therefore, what triggers blushing is the local release of the stress hormone adrenaline in the face, which is triggered by the thoracic branch of the sympathetic system [8]. The blushing reflex is involuntary and automatic. It is primarily associated with embarrassment or shame, although it can also be triggered by anger. The fact that blushing occurs in the face, the most visible part of the body, indicates that it is a social signal. Since it is involuntary, other people can read it as a sign of our true emotions. To what effect? Well, if there has been some kind of social transgression or mishap that has interrupted the flow of interaction, we recognize it, we feel embarrassed about it, and we blush. Others can see that we feel that way and that we are not ignoring the problem. Blushing could be a way to say “I’m sorry” in a truly honest way, and that way dispel aggression or social rejection [9].

Are embarrassment and shame the same thing? I think so. In fact, in Spanish there is just a single word for both: “vergüenza”. Embarrassment seems to be a lighter, short-lasting version of shame. However, some brain imaging studies showed that different brain areas seem to be activated by shame and embarrassment [1].

Besides blushing, there are other physical correlates of shame: it tends to be associated with ‘freezing’ — becoming immobile or slowing down our movements. Embarrassment stops whatever we are doing. Our gestures are less expansive, directed towards our own body. Some people become speechless or stutter when they are ashamed. Perhaps one of the more salient indicators of shame besides blushing is the dropping of the head. All of this indicates that shame is a response built into our genes, not learned from a particular culture. However, as it happens with all other emotions, the triggers and some of the specific responses to shame are culturally encoded.

Some of these cultural responses to shame are very dire. In many societies, shame literarily kills. Cultures like the classical Japanese demand suicide (Hara-Kiri or Seppuku) in response to deep shaming. In other cultures shame leads to suicide [10] in more subtle ways: think of the gay teenagers led to suicide by the social rejection of homosexuality. The antidote against that is the opposite emotion of shame: pride. Gay pride probably saved many lives and took people out of the closet to live happier lives.

Therefore, it seems that shame is a genetically encoded physiological response associated with social mishaps and failure [11]. It also seems to be so important in our species that it can threaten survival. Taking into account all that, we could define shame as an emotion that serves to signal our loss of social status [3, 12]. This could be explained using the logic of evolutionary psychology.

The human species is between 250,000 and 300,000 years old. During most of that time we lived as hunter-gatherer tribes. Only during the last 10,000 years, after the Agricultural Revolution, we have lived in agricultural or pastoral societies that allowed the development of cities and technology. Therefore, evolution has optimized us to live in hunter-gatherer tribes and that’s where we should look for clues of the natural selection pressures that made us what we are. One thing that distinguishes us from the other apes -chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans- is that we don’t forage alone, we share our food. By working together we have become more efficient in hunting big prey and gathering and processing food. We also distribute the task of getting food: men hunt and provide protein-rich meat; women gather vitamin-rich vegetables. Then food gets shared and everybody gets a balanced diet. Similar cooperative endeavors ensure shelter, raising children and protection against predators. However, for the system to work effectively, everything has to be shared fairly: there can be no slackers and free-riders. In a small tribe, where everybody knows everybody else, social pressure can ensure that. Those who fail to contribute their fair share lose social status, while those that are most successful in contributing to the common good see their status rise. Therefore, the opposite emotions of shame and pride evolved as the indicators of social status, motivating us to act for the good of the tribe. Without them, cooperation becomes impossible, because the short-term appeal of self-interest (“eat this food now”, “sleep instead of helping built that hut”) would override the long-term drive to strive for the common good. But if we are shamed when we are selfish and lazy, and we are praised when we accomplish something that benefits everybody, that becomes our main motivator. Indeed, social status acts as the main evolutionary pressure for individuals, because high status ensures access to food and desirable sexual partners, while low status put us at the end of the line for everything. In times of famine, that could be deadly. That explains why shame and pride are such strong psychological drives in the human psyche.

One important thing about shame and pride is that they are largely determined from the outside. It’s the people around us who make us feel ashamed or proud [3]. Yes, we can interiorize those feelings to a certain extent, but if we are surrounded by a social group that does not support our internal pride, the only way we can maintain our self-esteem is by isolating ourselves from the group. However, social isolation and exclusion from a group also cause shame. And, in a tribal society, being an outcast is not an option.

The emotions of shame and pride work together with other emotions that help maintain social cohesiveness. I have already mentioned guilt, but there is also our sense of fairness and the indignation we feel when it’s broken. Indignation triggers the behavior of altruistic punishment [13–15]: getting angry and fighting against the person or the circumstance we perceive as unfair, even if that goes against our own interest. However, anger and punishment are extremely socially disruptive, so in a species that survives thanks to cooperation it makes sense that other emotions have evolved to fine-tune social interaction. Shaming provides a way to punish somebody without having to resort to physical violence. And this doesn’t have to happen in extreme circumstances. In regular life, the social status of an individual is subtly modulated by another peculiar behavior of human beings: gossip. Praise for some deeds and indignation for others goes from mouth to mouth, building social consensus. The concerned individual is finely attuned to that by his or her own sense of shame and pride.

Contempt is another emotion related to shame since it acts as a trigger for it. Many other emotions seem to be closely associated with pride, such as dignity, honor, arrogance and hubris. Although we often project these emotions into other animals (lions appear proud, hyenas appear ashamed, pigs seem to lack dignity), it seems unlikely that they exist in other species, at least in the complex and highly developed form as we found them in humans.

References:

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10. Lester, D., The role of shame in suicide. Suicide Life Threat Behav, 1997. 27(4): p. 352–61.

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12. Gilbert, P., The evolution of social attractiveness and its role in shame, humiliation, guilt and therapy. Br J Med Psychol, 1997. 70 ( Pt 2): p. 113–47.

13. Fehr, E. and S. Gachter, Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 2002. 415(6868): p. 137–40.

14. Boyd, R., et al., The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2003. 100(6): p. 3531–5.

15. de Quervain, D.J., et al., The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 2004. 305(5688): p. 1254–8.