Acute Threat to the Social Self: Shame, Social Self-esteem, and Cortisol Activity

Gruenewald, Tara L.; Kemeny, Margaret E.; Aziz, Najib; Fahey, John L.

doi:10.1097/01.psy.0000143639.61693.ef

Cited by 420 publications

(378 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…It is unlikely that these mood reports reflected demand characteristics, as women who were primed to feel shame uniquely demonstrated a rise of cortisol levels following the mood priming. The unique effect of shame on cortisol reactivity is consistent with reports indicating that emotional responses to threats that undermine the social self are associated with HPA activation (Dickerson, Gruenewald, & Kemeny, 2004;Gruenewald, Kemeny, Aziz, & Fahey, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Anger and shame elicited by discrimination: Moderating role of coping on action endorsements and salivary cortisol

Matheson

Anisman

2008

Euro J Social Psych

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Discrimination often elicits anger, and yet group members typically do not take actions to confront their situation. It may be that other emotions that run contrary to action-taking also arise (e.g., shame), limiting the active expression of anger. Indeed, Study 1 (N ¼ 36) revealed that, using a failure feedback paradigm, women expressed greater shame when their failure was due to discrimination, compared to a lack of personal merit. In contrast to anger, self-reported shame was not associated with action-taking. In Study 2, women (N ¼ 91) were emotionally primed to feel either anger or shame (vs. a no mood prime control), and the moderating influence of coping styles on the link between emotions, actions, and salivary cortisol levels following discrimination were assessed. Among women primed to feel anger, problem-focused coping predicted reduced self-reported shame, lower cortisol reactivity, and greater individualistic confrontational action endorsements. In contrast, priming shame increased cortisol reactivity, but diminished the relation between particular coping styles and their capacity to facilitate action. Findings are discussed in terms of the interactive influence of emotions and coping on responses to discrimination. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The predominant emotion elicited by overt experiences of discrimination is that of anger, particularly when the situation is viewed as unjust and the ingroup as strong (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000;Swim, Hyers, Cohen, Fitzgerald, & Bylsma, 2003). Feelings of anger typically serve as a catalyst for action (Frijda, Kuipers, & TerSchure, 1989), including confrontational strategies on behalf of the group (Gill & Matheson, 2006;Mackie et al., 2000;van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004;Yzerbyt, Dumont, Wigboldus, & Gordijn, 2003). Yet, actions to overcome the disadvantaged status of one's group are not, in fact, common (Louis & Taylor, 1999;Wright, Taylor, & Moghaddam, 1990). The factors that attenuate the relation between feelings of anger and group members' willingness to act on them remain to be fully elucidated.Due to pressures to take personal responsibility for negative events (Garcia, Horstman Reser, Amo, Redersdorff, & Branscombe, 2005;Stangor, Swim, VanAllen, & Sechrist, 2002), group members might not simply feel anger when they encounter discrimination, but may also experience feelings of shame (Tangney & Dearing, 2002;Tracy & Robins, 2004). Feelings of shame, in turn, might militate against the use of confrontational actions (Frijda et al., 1989). The present investigation evaluated women's emotions, particularly anger and shame, and their relation to action endorsements when women experienced gender discrimination. Further, inasmuch as discrimination may function as a stressor, individuals' coping propensities might serve to moderate the impact of anger and shame on behavioral responses to a discrimination event. As well, particular emotional responses, and especially shame, have been linked to physiological stress reactions, su...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Anger and shame elicited by discrimination: Moderating role of coping on action endorsements and salivary cortisol

Matheson

Anisman

2008

Euro J Social Psych

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“…The shame-causes-devaluation link seems unlikely. The experimental manipulation of criticism and publicity reliably boosts shame (23,38,62,63). In contrast, displays of shame or embarrassment attenuate an audience's devaluing response when the audience and the offender share common knowledge about the discrediting act (35,64,65).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Shame motivates one to avoid behaviors that could cause devaluation and to conceal damaging information (31). When damaging information is discovered, the shamed individual withdraws (32), accepts subordination (33,34), shows appeasement behavior (35), increases cooperativeness (36,37), and upregulates cortisol (38) as well as proinflammatory cytokines to defend against infection (39). This is accompanied by a stereotyped nonverbal display (22,40,41).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures

Sznycer

Tooby

Cosmides

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

203

206

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We test the theory that shame evolved as a defense against being devalued by others. By hypothesis, shame is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition, motivation, physiology, and behavior in the service of: (i) deterring the individual from making choices where the prospective costs of devaluation exceed the benefits, (ii) preventing negative information about the self from reaching others, and (iii) minimizing the adverse effects of devaluation when it occurs. Because the unnecessary activation of a defense is costly, the shame system should estimate the magnitude of the devaluative threat and use those estimates to cost-effectively calibrate its activation: Traits or actions that elicit more negative evaluations from others should elicit more shame. As predicted, shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation in the United States (r = .69), India (r = .79), and Israel (r = .67). Moreover, shame in each country strongly tracks devaluation in the others, suggesting that shame and devaluation are informed by a common species-wide logic of social valuation. The shame-devaluation link is also specific: Sadness and anxietyemotions that coactivate with shame-fail to track devaluation. To our knowledge, this constitutes the first empirical demonstration of a close, specific match between shame and devaluation within and across cultures.shame | emotion | valuation | culture | evolutionary psychology I n all known foraging societies past and present, humans have lived embedded in dense networks of cooperative and competitive interactions, a condition that is believed to have prevailed during the evolution of our species (1-3). Individuals in such social ecologies suffered or prospered depending on the summed effects of the choices of others-such as when and how often to share food, to provide care for another's child, to defer in conflicts, and so on. Ancestrally, the difference between an individual reproducing successfully, struggling, or dying early would have depended (in part) on the degree to which others traded off their own welfare for the welfare of that individual.Over the last fifty years, evolutionary researchers have identified a number of selection pressures that favored the evolution of decision systems that regulate welfare trade-offs between individuals, including kin selection (4), reciprocity/exchange (5, 6), risk-pooling (2), parenting (7), mating (8), externality management (9), and the asymmetric war of attrition (10). These theories, in turn, led to the empirical discovery of various choice architectures that evolved to produce best-bet welfare trade-off decisions given the information available to the actor about a potential recipient [e.g., how to respond to cues of genetic relatedness; how to respond to cues predicting the recipient's ability to effectively assert and defend her or his interests; how to respond to cues indicating a potential partner tends to cheat or free-ride (11-16)].In short, favorable valuation by others was a critical resource for our anc...

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“…Even without an audience, preparing and giving a speech could be a very difficult task, which might cause at least some psychological stress (Gruenewald et al, 2004), so it is quite likely that it would cause physiological responses different from a rest (no-speech) condition. However, the previous studies did not compare the speech condition without an audience to a rest condition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, they found that the actual physical presence of evaluative others produced greater cortisol responses than the presence of a video camera. Gruenewald, Kemeny, Aziz, and Fahey (2004) tested a hypothesis suggested by the Dickerson and Kemeny (2004) meta-analysis: namely, that the HPA system will be activated by threat to the social self. They conducted speech and mental arithmetic stress tasks with social evaluation present or absent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological and Salivary Cortisol Responses to an Improvised Speech Without an Audience: Comparison to a Rest Condition

Oda

Kikuchi

2013

PSYCHOLOGIA -An International Journal of Psychological Sciences

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Although it has been reported that making a speech without an audience does not cause a significant cortisol response, there is no study that compares no-audience speech to a rest condition. We randomly assigned Japanese female participants (n = 81) to three conditions: (a) making an improvised speech in front of an audience (audience condition); (b) making such a speech without an audience (no-audience condition); (c) merely listening to such a speech (rest condition). The no-audience condition elicited stronger negative psychological responses to the speech than the rest condition, but these response changes were smaller than those of the audience group. Salivary cortisol levels in the audience condition increased, but that of the no-audience condition decreased to levels not significantly different from that of the rest condition. These results showed that making an improvised speech without an audience causes psychological stress to some extent, but the response of cortisol is similar to the rest condition.

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Acute Threat to the Social Self: Shame, Social Self-esteem, and Cortisol Activity

Cited by 420 publications

References 40 publications

Anger and shame elicited by discrimination: Moderating role of coping on action endorsements and salivary cortisol

Anger and shame elicited by discrimination: Moderating role of coping on action endorsements and salivary cortisol

Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures

Psychological and Salivary Cortisol Responses to an Improvised Speech Without an Audience: Comparison to a Rest Condition

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