10 Facts About Shame

Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.

Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, described as a moral or social emotion that drives people to hide or deny their wrongdoings.

Shame can be described as an unpleasant self-conscious emotion that involves negative evaluation of the self.

Shame, devaluation and their interrelationship are similar across cultures, prompting some researchers to suggest that there is a universal human psychology of cultural valuation and devaluation.

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 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.

Shame is more attributed to internal characteristics and guilt is more attributed to behavioral characteristics.

Shame can be used as a strategy when feeling guilty, especially when the hope is to avoid punishment by inspiring compassion.

Shame's then went a few minutes without talking to the baby.

Shame campaign is a tactic in which particular individuals are singled out because of their behavior or suspected crimes, often by marking them publicly, such as Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.