The+Self-Conscious+Emotions


 * The Self-Conscious Emotions**

Notes from Class

Embarrassment, Shame and Guilt
 * Recognition of self (awareness of the self)

The Same or Three Distinct Emotions?
 * What distinguishes embarrassment, shame and guilt from each other? How are they similar and how are they different?
 * Embarrassment - short term, not a self-reflection, laugh it off
 * Guilt - look for a way to make a mends/fix situation
 * Embarrassment causes people to feel bad for you and forgive you for your mistake
 * Guilt is repentance, repairing the situation
 * Shame is developing a moral code, making yourself feel smaller (shrink or hide) attempts to deny, hide, or escape situation
 * These emotions help inhibit undesirable behaviors
 * Shame and guilt are moral emotions
 * Shame - feel bad about yourself/bad person
 * Guilt - feel bad about a transgression
 * Guilt and empathy go hand-in-hand
 * Shame interferes with an empathetic connection
 * Shame-prone individuals are prone to feelings of anger and hostility, they are also prone to blame others
 * Guilt-prone individuals are pro-active and constructive, more likely to fix situation
 * Individuals prone to shame had more immoral behavior
 * Individuals prone to guilt lived more moral lives
 * Shame-proneness is consistently related to psychological problems, where, guilt is not related to psychological problems.
 * Guilt is the moral emotion of choice
 * Guilt-prone people were more likely to participate in community service
 * Shame-prone people were more likely to participate in bad behaviors (drugs, unprotected sex, etc.)

Pride
 * Is pride adaptive?
 * Distinguish between authentic pride and hubristic pride?
 * Proud people are more likely to be dominant and more likely to be liked by group members (study)
 * Part of pride is being compared to others
 * **Authentic pride -** feeling good about yourself because you did well
 * There are cultural differences in pride (collectivist cultures vs. individualistic cultures)


 * Chapter 11**: The Self-Conscious Emotions


 * The emotions in this chapter are an appraisal of the self

Embarrassment, Shame, and Guilt: One emotion or three?
 * Experiences of embarrassment, shame and guilt overlap
 * Embarrassment need not imply that you did something morally wrong. It occurs when you are suddenly the focus of attention because of an understandable mistake
 * Shame is most common when you fail to live up to expectations
 * Guilt arises when you do something that hurts someone

Embarrassment > motivating submissive behavior that should appease other people
 * __**Embarrassment**__ – the emotion felt when one violates a social convention, thereby drawing unexpected social attention and
 * Embarrassment helps repair awkward social situations
 * Embarrassment diverts people’s anger only if they think your transgression was an accident
 * **__Empathetic Embarrassment:__** when you are embarrassed in sympathy for someone else who is embarrassed.

Experiences that Evoke Embarrassment
 * Three situations that evoke embarrassment:
 * making a social mistake
 * being the center of attention
 * being in a “sticky situation”
 * Empathetic embarrassment – being embarrassed in sympathy for someone else who is in an embarrassing situation
 * One study of patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration found that those patients show less embarrassment

Facial Expression of Embarrassment
 * Most people avoid eye contact and hide their face, either by covering their eyes with their hands or by turning their head down and usually to the left when they feel embarrassed
 * People who feel embarrassed often smile but their lips tense up
 * Blushing is also a distinct expression of embarrassment
 * __**Blush**__ – temporary increase in blood flow to the face, neck and upper chest

Individual Differences in Embarrassment
 * Scores on embarrassment questionnaires correlate highly with scores on neuroticism questionnaires
 * Susceptibility to embarrassment also correlates positively with social anxiety, shyness and loneliness
 * People who feel confident about themselves in social situations do not become embarrassed often
 * Most research indicates that there is no difference in amount of embarrassment between men and women
 * Infants and very young children don’t experience embarrassment
 * At age two they show evidence of self-conscious emotions, right around the time they being showing signs of self-consciousness
 * Embarrassment peaks in the teenage years and occurs less and less often during adulthood

Shame and Guilt > the transgression > repeating the transgression
 * The expression of shame/guilt includes lowered eyes and hunched posture
 * An ashamed person does not smile and may turn down the corners of the mouth in a display more like sadness
 * __**Shame**__ – the emotion felt when one does something wrong and focuses on one’s own global, stable inadequacies in explaining
 * __**Guilt –**__ the emotion felt when one fails or does something morally wrong, but focuses on how to make amends and how to avoid
 * Shame-prone people tend to have more problems with relationships than guilt-prone people. They experience more anger and social anxiety and feel less empathy
 * Shame-prone people tend to attribute their own negative outcomes to global, stable inadequacies, over which they have little or no control. They feel a strong sense of other people’s disapproval, but they feel that this disapproval is unfair which results in anger.
 * Guilt-prone people take more responsibility for their individual actions and feel more control over whether they will repeat those actions
 * Shame and guilt appear to be variants of a single emotion

Guilt and Repentance > reason why the other person died instead of me”
 * Guilt serves a useful social function: it punishes a mistake and motivates efforts to repair the damage
 * __**Repentance –**__ state of feeling bad about one’s misdeeds and seeking forgiveness
 * If you can’t apologize or undo the damage, people often punish themselves in some way
 * __**Survivor’s guilt –**__ a feeling of guilt about going on with life after other people close to you have died, because “there is no logical

Pride > concept
 * __**Pride –**__ the emotion you feel when you accept credit for causing a positive outcome that supports a positive aspect of your self-

Expression of Pride
 * The expression of pride is when a person tilts his head back slightly, sits or stands tall, and puts his arms above the head or hands on the hips. It also usually involves a small smile.

Cultural Differences in Embarrassment, Shame and Pride
 * Americans are more individualistic than people in other countries in the world
 * People feel embarrassed or ashamed when they fail to meet society’s expectations, but these expectations vary from one culture to another
 * Pride is considered a good thing in the United States. Most societies, frown on too much pride though.
 * Americans are much less shy about celebrating their individual accomplishments

Jealousy and Envy
 * Envy and jealousy both refer to resentment at someone else’s good fortune
 * Jealousy and envy can trigger aggression


 * __Articles__**


 * Pride by Lisa A. Williams and David DeSteno**

Overall in the study wanted to see if pride manipulation should force a short-term cost for the purpose of gaining long term rewards. The study had a group of three people, someone in the pride condition, someone in the neutral condition and someone as the confederate. They performed different tasks - the pride candidate was told they were in the 94% and the neutral candidate did not find out how they did. Then these three people were apart of a problem solving task together. As expected the pride manipulation was successful. The people with more pride also were more dominant in the problem solving task - dominance could be linked to level of pride.
 * Pride is an adaptive emotion
 * Pride has been viewed as both virtue and vice
 * It has noble characters and part of the seven deadly sins
 * Pride from doing well and succeeding in a task can lead to distinct behavioral and social outcomes that are beneficial to the individual
 * Pride can be a motivational force to increase their status and attractiveness to partners
 * Pride can play an essential role in the development of leadership and social skills