Are shame, guilt, and embarrassment distinct emotions?

Abstract

182 undergraduates described personal embarrassment, shame, and guilt experiences and rated these experiences on structural and phenomenological dimensions. Contrary to popular belief, shame was no more likely than guilt to be experienced in ,'public" situations; all 3 emotions typically occurred in social contexts, but a significant proportion of shame and guilt events occurred when respondents were alone. Analyses of participants' phenomenological ratings clearly demonstrated that shame, guilt, and embarrassment are not merely different terms for the same affective experience. In particular, embarrassment was a relatively distant neighbor of shame and guilt, and the differences among the 3 could not be explained simply by intensity of affect or by degree of moral transgression. Finally, participants generally were their own harshest critics in each type of event, evaluating themselves more negatively than they believed others did. Shame, guilt, and embarrassment are common-albeit generally unwelcome-emotions that are well known to most people. Nonetheless, because our use of emotion language can be imprecise, both psychologists and laypeople may find it difficult to differentiate these three types of affective experiences. For example, just now in writing this article, the first author felt guilty for her procrastination after her coauthors diligently completed their work; she felt embarrassed by an elementary grammatical error that had slipped by in a previous draft; and she felt mild shame after barking at her 2-year-old daughter, who reset the computer in the middle of a particularly difficult paragraph. On the other hand, did she feel embarrassed by her procrastination, shame over the grammatical error, and guilt over

Self-Defining Memories of Body Image Shame and Binge Eating in Men and Women: Body Image Shame and Self-Criticism in Adulthood as Mediating Mechanisms

“…Body image has been identified as a particularly important source of shame because it represents a dimension of the self that can be easily assessed and scrutinised by others (Duarte, Pinto-Gouveia, Ferreira, & Batista, 2014;Gilbert, 2002;Goss & Gilbert, 2002;Tangney, Miller, Flicker, & Barlow, 1996). In fact, the display of a body image with valued features has always 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 played an important role in the interplay of others' and self evaluations (Strahan, Wilson, Cressman, & Buote, 2006).…”

Guilt enhances the sense of control and drives risky judgments.

“…While previous research has posited that guilt involves appraisals of personal responsibility (e.g., Smith & Ellsworth, 1985) and action tendencies to atone for wrongdoing and make amends with those harmed (Frijda et al, 1989;Sheikh & Janoff-Bulman, 2010;Tangney et al, 1996;Tracy & Robins, 2006), the present work is the first to empirically demonstrate that the experience of guilt increases the sense of control.…”

Dispositional self-forgiveness, guilt- and shame-proneness, and the roles of motivational tendencies

“…This latter usage carries different meanings and implications from the behavior/self distinction used here. & Barlow, 1996;Tangney et al, 2007;Tracy & Robins, 2006). As argued by Tangney et al (2007), this difference is subtle but important, reflecting the degree to which the self and/or behaviors are seen as the source of transgressions.…”