Shame displays : beneficial or not?
Our ancestors’ survival greatly depended on their social relationships. According to an evolutionary perspective, shame’s function is to reduce the likelihood of losing social value in the eyes of fellow group members; however, certain accounts hold that shame may not be functional: it is related to psychological maladjustment (ex., depression and aggression). It is hypothesized that the two views are not conflicting; they can be reunited under a functional account. In other words, being shameful is beneficial under certain conditions (when a transgression is known to others) and costly under other conditions (when no transgression has been committed). Participants (n = 294, Mage = 42, SD = 13.423) were randomly assigned to read a vignette describing a transgression (stealing money or insulting a colleague) or no transgression, then exposed to a photo of an actor displaying either shame or no emotion, and then they rated the actor on 17 items including desirable traits (ex., friendly) and undesirable traits (ex., selfish). Through an exploratory factorial analysis, items were grouped into two factors (benign evaluations and absence of undesirable traits) in order to simplify statistical analyses. The hypothesis was not supported: shameful actors received lower scores on benign evaluations and absence of undesirable traits regardless of the presence or absence of a transgression. However, further analyses indicate that the consequences of displaying shame are more complex. These results suggest more research is necessary to examine whether the shame display remains functional today.
Shame Non-verbal display Transgression Social consequences Expression non-verbale