Abstract
Although shame is largely viewed as a negative, destructive emotion, it is very commonly exercised in collectivistic cultures. Shame, an emotion thought to confront the self, often leading to maladaptive self-defensive actions, has been shown to also harbor a positive potential that can motivate people toward self-improvement. Collectivistic cultures that promote shame appear to rely on this positive potential of shame. This article reviews available literature to explore how and why shame lends itself to personal growth in the collectivistic cultures, contradicting its evidenced tendency to provoke self-defense. An extensive study of the literature uncovered four cultural differences in the perception of self, namely, in self-esteem, self-enhancement, self-concept inconsistency, and incremental belief of self which this article argues lead to self-defensiveness or self-improvement. We also argue that lower levels of self-esteem and self-enhancement observed in collectivistic cultures, as well as the propensity to perceive self as inconsistent and incremental, facilitate the positive action potential of shame, preventing self-defense reactions. We conclude that, while self-threatening shame can be more destructive than adaptive in certain cultures, collectivistic cultures tend to depend on their capacity to avail themselves of the positive potential of shame to ensure successful communal living.
Human emotions are mainly of two types: primary emotions and self-conscious emotions. Self-conscious emotions which include shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride depend on the ability to reflect on one’s self to make an evaluative judgment (Tracy & Robins, 2004). These emotions that make the person appraise the self against social norms about right and wrong behavior are also termed moral emotions as they “help keep us on the moral path by avoiding temptation, inhibiting aggression, and doing the right thing” (Stuewig & Tangney, 2007). Moral emotions, namely shame and guilt, have been studied, widely. Just as every emotion has evolved for a purpose, these emotions are thought to have evolved to help humans be sensitive to possible threats of social exclusion and to ensure that necessary action is taken to secure interpersonal relationships (Tangney, Miller, et al., 1996; Usoof-Thowfeek et al., 2011).
An extensive body of research on shame and guilt reveals the contradicting qualities of these two emotions. In addition, cultural differences in the experience of these emotions and associated behavioral tendencies are also documented (Bagozzi et al., 2003; Breugelmans & Poortinga, 2006; Fung, 1999; Mesquita & Karasawa, 2004). Interestingly, researchers indicate that while the emotion of guilt is relatively more prominent in individualistic cultures, shame appears to be the more focal emotion in collectivist cultures. For example, as early as 1946, Benedict (1946) identified Japanese culture as a shame culture. The significance placed on shame in collectivistic cultures has since been verified by the work of several researchers (Fessler, 2004; Sznycer et al., 2012). In collectivist cultures where individuality is stifled, eliciting shame is practiced as a disciplinary measure to ensure that people learn from a very young age to conform to expected standards of social behavior (Fung, 1999; Mascolo et al., 2003; Obeyesekere, 1984). In fact, in these societies, being a person who experiences shame is normative and appreciated, while shamelessness is viewed negatively (Li et al., 2004; Obeyesekere, 1984).
Although collectivist cultures encourage shame, it is portrayed differently to the psychological literature which defines it as a destructive force that impacts the person negatively (Tangney, 2001; Tangney, Wagner, et al., 1996). In this article, using a thorough evaluation of the vast body of literature on moral emotions, we contest this theoretical belief that shame is destructive. We make the claim that while shame may be destructive in individualistic cultures, where great value is placed on self-esteem; this same pattern may not be observed in collectivistic cultures. On the contrary, we argue that shame may be linked to personal growth in collectivistic cultures. While previous researchers have worked on this premise, explaining that the nature of the interdependent self allows constructive functioning of shame, the article attempts to delineate a more integrated, comprehensive framework to articulate the mechanism through which shame plays a positive role leading to personal growth. The article provides an expanded clarification of how the experience of shame could be susceptible to variations in the self, and aspects of self, such as self-esteem, self-enhancement, self-concept consistency, and incremental belief of self, all of which are shaped by one’s culture. Thus, this article produces a novel and elaborated presentation of the relationship between shame, self, and culture.
Shame as Opposed to Guilt
There is some complexity to be observed in the differentiation of the two emotions. Multiple criteria are identified in the literature to distinguish between shame and guilt. The widely used criteria involve the difference in attribution (behavior/self), nature of the fault (moral/non moral), context (private/public), and action tendencies (constructive/destructive) (Cohen et al., 2011; Sedighimornani, 2018; Smith et al., 2002; Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Tangney et al., 2007). Some research has revealed that shame and guilt do not hold much difference in the types of transgressions involved in eliciting these emotions, and characteristics of the social surrounding (whether others are present or not) also have little or no bearing (Tangney et al., 1994, as cited in Tangney, 2001; Tangney, Miller, et al., 1996). The discussion in this article is based on the difference in self-behavior attribution which we presume to be compatible with the other major criteria distinguishing the two emotions. The article’s main argument questions the validity of the functional–dysfunctional classification.
The self/behavior distinction indicates that shame is the emotional response to a person experiencing a negative feeling about oneself, whereas the emotion of guilt underlies feeling bad about a single specific action of misdemeanor (Cohen et al., 2011; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Shame is associated with a person feeling that the misbehavior stems from one’s malevolency, whereas guilt is from the person’s behavior at the moment of transgression. While the view that shame is experienced when one’s transgression is exposed publicly has been challenged by some researchers, we see the self/behavior distinction account of shame and guilt incorporates the role of others in experiencing shame within it. Even though it may not require the presence of a real audience to experience shame, the intense self-focus of shame involves a feeling of being observed by others (Tangney, Miller, et al., 1996). The self/behavior distinction is also in line with several other secondary aspects identified in the literature to differentiate between the two emotions. Research finds that with shame, unlike with guilt, the person undergoes a deep sense of inferiority (Cheung et al., 2004; Gilbert, 2000; Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Tangney, Miller, et al., 1996). Shame is discovered to be an extremely painful emotion compared with guilt (Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Tangney, Miller, et al., 1996; Tangney et al., 2007; Turner & Stets, 2006), and is also found to be associated with several psychopathological conditions such as depression (Stuewig & McCloskey, 2005; Tangney et al., 1992; Wright, O’Leary & Balkin, 1989), anxiety (Fergus et al., 2010), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Leskela et al., 2002), suicidality (Lester, 1998), and substance abuse (Dearing et al., 2005). All these characteristics (inferiority, pain, and psychopathology) appear to be related to the shame’s attack on the global self.
Shame and guilt, both being moral emotions that are experienced in similar situations, appear to also intersect with one another. This lack of distinction between the two emotions is even more prominent when it comes to collectivistic cultures. In collectivistic cultures where shame is the predominant emotion, the construct is more pervasive and elaborate than guilt (Li et al., 2004). Linguistically, in such cultures a rich vocabulary is available to refer to shame, whereas in many cases there is no term to refer to guilt (Fessler, 2004; Obeyesekere, 1984). For example, according to Obeyesekere (1984), in the Sinhala language (the most widely spoken language in Sri Lanka), there are multiple alternative terms such as pal, baldu, chi, lajjawa, nindawa used to refer to shame. In colloquial Sinhala, the term closest in meaning to guilt is “pasuthawima” which would regularly translate into regret. The closest translation available for guilt in Kota Bengkulu dialect used in Indonesia (i.e., “sesal”) is similarly a term that refers to repentance (Fessler, 2004). Certain guilt experiences are identified as experiences of shame in collectivistic cultures, making the line between shame and guilt obscure (Li et al., 2004; Mesquita & Karasawa, 2004). While more overlap is observed between shame and guilt in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures, research indicates that the ability to discriminate between the two is not completely lost (Bedford & Hwang, 2003; Breugelmans & Poortinga, 2006).
The current article recognizes that available empirical evidence is not sufficient to assume the appropriateness of using the same criteria developed in individualistic cultures, to examine shame and guilt in the collectivistic cultures. When there is already a lot of inconsistency in the characterization of shame and guilt in the literature developed in individualistic cultures, determining the congruence between “shame” of the two cultures certainly becomes challenging. Inconsistencies in the definitions of shame and guilt observed in the Western literature are equally present in the literature produced in collectivistic cultures as well. To determine the cultural equivalence of the construct, research that explores the structure of shame experienced in collectivistic cultures should be reviewed. However, unfortunately, there are not many such studies to be located. In one such study by Bedford and Hwang (2003), a group of Taiwanese were interviewed to explore the authentic forms of Taiwanese shame and guilt. Those identified forms of shame and guilt in the Taiwanese sample demonstrate the self/behavior distinction, providing some evidence for cross-cultural consistency of the constructs in terms of attributional difference. On the contrary, in a similar sort of a study that Fessler (2004) has conducted with a group of Indonesians, shame was identified to be resembled by observation of others and subordinance. However, the identified forms of shame and guilt in Bedford and Hwang’s (2003) study discredit the applicability of the private/public criterion in understanding shame. Except for one, none of the four forms of shame that were prevalent among the Taiwanese community required the presence of an audience to experience them. The existing literature evidently is not sufficient and further studies are needed to ascertain equivalence of the construct of shame across cultures.
However, the central characterization of shame, as an emotion that affects the self (the key concept upon which the discussion of this article is built), appears to be considerably present in collectivistic cultures, as well (Bagozzi et al., 2003; Bedford & Hwang, 2003; Obeyesekere, 1984). Even in the popular Southeast Asian form of shame, lajja, the impact this emotion has on one’s overall self is prominent (Obeyesekere, 1984; Sinha & Chauhan, 2013). In literature, lajja is often identified with self-respect (Mendis, 2017; Sinha & Chauhan, 2013). Sinha and Chauhan (2013) even identify lajja as an emotion that confronts one’s soul (inner self).
The other significant distinction between shame and guilt that we are yet to discuss is the difference in the ultimate behavioral responses they accompany. A multitude of research indicate that shame leads to much socially maladaptive action tendencies such as hiding, escaping, externalizing the blame, attacking others, and self-directed anger, while feeling guilty makes a person react in a more socially apt manner by confessing, apologizing, being empathetic, and making reparative action (Schmader & Lickel, 2006; Stuewig et al., 2010; Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Tangney et al., 2007).
Existing literature point to two key response motives of shame: withdrawal and aggression (Tangney, 2001). More specifically, these two subsequent response processes can also be identified as the active and the passive responses (Tangney, Wagner, et al., 1996). A shame-felt person would be either driven to passively withdraw from the negative event (hiding, escaping) or would tend to react actively to the situation, by aggressively attacking the source or by externalizing the blame. Both these forms of action are maneuvers to self-defend. However, neither of these two self-defensive routes of action is morally or socially beneficial (Stuewig et al., 2010; Tangney, 2001; Tangney et al., 2007).
On the contrary, researchers identify guilt as the “quintessential moral emotion” (Tangney, 2001) relegating shame to a mere remnant of evolution (Tangney, Miller, et al., 1996). But it begs the question, if indeed, shame has little relevance in maintaining interpersonal interactions in the face of moral transgressions, and may even be a barrier to social interactions, how is it that it has been shown to be the dominant moral emotion in collectivistic cultures that rely heavily and lay great emphasis on strong interpersonal bonds? This question is fundamental to the framework that is developed in this review.
The Case for the Positive Valence of Shame
In reviewing the current literature, it appears that all the defining characteristics of shame, that are used to differentiate it from guilt, are described in negative terms. More recently, however, researchers questioning shame and the extreme negative connotation attached to it have found that shame in certain circumstances leads to positive responses such as reparation, restoration of the lost self-image, cooperation, and self-improvement in addition to its tendency to elicit maladaptive responses (de Hooge et al., 2010; Gausel et al., 2012; Leach & Cidam, 2015; Tangney et al., 2014). Specifically, shame’s potential trigger self-improvement confirms with the line of thoughts involved with the emotion, though it has not garnered adequate attention in the literature. The cognition/belief that underlies shame is the thought that it would have been better if one was a different person, whereas the thought that one could have acted differently in the particular situation underlies guilt (Niedenthal et al., 1994). Shame essentially involves a thought of being dissatisfied about one’s self and wanting to be a different person. The underlying thought process strongly suggests shame’s potential to direct people toward self-improvement besides its identified tendency to provoke maladaptive self-defensive action. Self-attribution, the core defining feature of shame, has nothing specifically negative or positive in it. Identifying self as the cause for the misbehavior would not essentially cause any harm or benefit. What that matter is how a person takes it and responds it. While self-defense can be one possible response to a criticism of self, an equally plausible response would be to consider it as a signal for positive change in self. Thus, it is discernible that shame, in addition to its much talked about negative tendency, has a unique potential to motivate people to work on correcting their negative dispositional aspects of self, supporting them in being better people (Lickel et al., 2014). Working to improve what one perceives to be the negative aspects of one’s self is a meaningful and enduring response to a failure, as it would permanently remove the offending behavior from one’s repertoire. Therefore, the question remains as to why this very positive motivation of shame that cues the person to change undesirable qualities of self fails to be observed in a large number of studies conducted on self-conscious emotions, which, in turn, result in shame being pigeonholed as a maladaptive self-defensive reaction. One possible explanation for this discrepancy and the continued detection of the “negative” self-defense response is that it may be an artifact of the context in which the theoretical frameworks have been developed. As in the case of much of psychology, a disproportionate amount of the theorization on moral emotion has taken place in the “West,” opening this body of research to criticism of cultural specificity. This is a criticism that has been leveled against the study of many different psychological phenomena (Elcheroth et al., 2019). It is visible in several basic domains of psychological research. Researchers detect cross-cultural variance that precludes the findings of narrow weird samples being generalized across cultures (Henrich et al., 2010). Therefore, it is plausible that shame would have a very different action potential should the cultural context of studies examining shame change. Literature provides evidence to ascertain that the positive potential of shame to support self-improvement is more visible in collectivistic cultures.
Theorists who differentiate between shame’s functioning in collectivistic and individualistic cultures have illustrated that in collectivistic cultures where people are often compelled to adjust themselves according to the social/group norms and expectations, shame results in self-improvement instead of being a source of negative self-defensiveness (Fung, 1999; Mascolo et al., 2003; Mesquita & Karasawa, 2004; Seok, 2017; Sheikh, 2014; Wong & Tsai, 2007). Several other studies have produced evidence for shame functioning more positively in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures, though they have not explicitly investigated shame’s role in motivating self-improvement. But, most importantly, these studies show that those living in collectivistic cultures are less likely to adopt self-defensive approaches when experiencing shame, indicating their openness to the opposing positive motivational path of shame. A study by Bagozzi et al. (2003) reveals that in the Philippines, people show no tendency to self-defend in response to shame, whereas the Dutch strongly tend to rely on self-defensive mechanisms to deal with shame-provoking situations. Instead of engaging in self-defensive avoidance, Filipinos were found to actively restore their social self by repairing the damage caused to relationships. A study by Breugelmans and Poortinga (2006) with two non-Western samples revealed that study subjects associate the need to change future behavior with experiencing shame, indicating the greater potential for shame to function positively in collectivistic cultures. A study by Menon and Shweder (1997), as well as a replication of it in 2003 by Rozin, indicates that people from collectivist cultures are less likely than people from individualistic cultures to associate shame with anger as they perceive shame to be socially constructive and anger as destructive. All these studies support the proposition that collectivists are less driven toward self-defensiveness to regulate the pressure of shame but are more focused on self-improvement in the face of shame. Thus, the question at this point is why this positive motivation of shame has not been detected in the vast number of studies done in individualistic cultures. Why is shame, which is found to have evolved for a primarily positive purpose in studies conducted in collectivistic cultures, seen as mostly leading to negative self-defensive action in individualistic cultures? This article attempts to provide a synthesis of the existing literature to delineate the mechanism explaining this discrepancy.
We argue that certain aspects of the individualistic cultures are less supportive of the emergence of the fundamental positive process of shame, whereas the collectivistic cultural setting provides the ideal conditions for shame to function in its inherently positive way. The question remains as to what aspects of culture could lead to such a significant difference in the functioning of a single emotion? In the following section, we will investigate the psychological factors associated with understandings of self that differs across individualism and collectivism that likely impact the experiences of shame. Thus, we can illuminate our understanding of the circumstances required for shame to function positively, unveiling its constructive motive.
Sheikh (2014) identifies cultural differences in the valence associated with shame and the response it provokes in others as explaining these contrasting observations. We reason that, besides the social and cultural factors affecting the nature of shame experienced, the inner psychological differences in the shame-experiencing person, which are shaped by the culture, also have a strong influence on how they deal with shame. Culture and self-conscious emotions can both be examined using the concept of “Self.” In the current analysis, we attempt to provide a comprehensive explanation for the existing contradictions in the literature on the nature of shame and its cultural differentiations, by interrogating the aspect of “self.” Simply said, the cultural differences observed in the functioning of these self-conscious emotions can be described and understood with reference to the differences in how self is identified in these cultures. Self-conscious emotions being contingent on an individual’s self-awareness imply that variations in self-perceptions are likely to have an impact on the dependent emotional experience. On the contrary, cultures are indeed discriminated on the basis of their prevalent patterns of self-construal. To paraphrase a vast literature, self in individualistic cultures relates to the discrete individual being who is unattached to others. This is described as an independent self-construal. However, in collectivistic contexts where a group orientation is predominant, self is seen as interdependent and is, therefore, identified with important relationships that the individual shares with the society (interdependent self-construal) (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). The difference in the importance afforded to and the experiences of self-conscious emotions in individualistic and collectivist cultures can be related to the differences in how self is viewed in the two cultures (Mesquita & Karasawa, 2004; Wong & Tsai, 2007). Therefore, these variations in self-perception should inarguably have considerable relevance in the experience of self-conscious emotions. Thus, this should also be the case for shame of which the key defining feature is self-attribution.
This review argues that cultural differences in the perception of self could be one potential explanation for why the positive tendency to self-improve following the experience of shame is more likely to be observed in collectivist cultures. We argue that the fixed and central individualistic view of self does not allow this positive potential of shame to be activated, leading shame to be experienced as largely negative. That is, a certain composition of self-perception would facilitate the process of (a) accepting shame’s reproach of self and (b) improving (or considering to improve) the faulted self-aspect. In the current review using cultural analysis as a tool, we attempt to investigate the criteria of self-perception required for shame’s positive potential to be activated.
Self-Esteem
An important aspect of self-perception is the evaluation one holds of oneself, or one’s self-esteem (Diggory & Rothman, 1961). In individualistic cultures, the average level of self-esteem is reported to be high, whereas the self-esteem levels of the people in the collectivistic cultures are generally lower (Kitayama et al., 1997; Schmitt & Allik, 2005). It is understandable that people in collectivistic cultures who carry interdependent self-construals would be reluctant to maintain high self-esteem as that would not allow them to blend in with the group. Interestingly, in both these cultures, self-esteem is observed to be high among those with high independence scores (Heine & Renshaw, 2002), further evidencing the independence–interdependence difference.
Tangney and Dearing (2002) identify shame as related to feeling small, worthless, and powerless. Shame, where a person experiences a “fairly global negative evaluation of the self” (Tangney & Dearing, 2002), closely resembles low self-esteem. Several studies have found shame to be associated with low self-esteem (Cohen et al., 2011; Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Velotti et al., 2017; Wolf et al., 2010). It is also to be observed that the scales of shame are composed of items that closely relate to measures of low self-esteem (e.g., Test of Self-Conscious Affect [TOSCA], State Shame and Guilt Scale, Internalized Shame Scale). Luyten et al. (2002), investigating the TOSCA, revealed that nine out of the 15 items of it measure shame as referring to negative self-esteem. The stronger association of shame with low self-esteem signifies shame and high self-esteem to be two conflicting opposites that cannot coexist.
Thus, the experience of shame is likely to be a threat to one’s self-esteem (Mesquita & Karasawa, 2004; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). It is also likely that people with high self-esteem would defend against it instead of accepting information to the contrary. Bagozzi et al. (2003) interpret high self-defensiveness observed in participants from individualistic cultures in response to shame as being likely due to their independent self-construal.
The discussion on shame in collectivistic cultures does not perceive shame as imposing a threat to one’s self-esteem. In the interdependent self, which is not directed by the individual desires and achievements but by the expectations of the group, the sense of esteem would hinge on the respect and validation received from the society (Obeyesekere, 1984). For example, lajja practiced in Southeast Asian cultures is identified as an indication of self-respect, which is the value that one’s self earns from the society (Sinha & Chauhan, 2013). Thus, in collectivistic cultures, though shame may not be experienced as a threat to their self-esteem, it would still be a threat to their need for saving and maintaining face (Li et al., 2004). However, these aspects of self-worthiness that are determined by others (externally oriented) are not found to develop a resistance against acknowledging shame. Societies that lay emphasis on maintaining face still consider the lack of shame (shamelessness) as much more disgraceful than failing to earn society’s respect (Li et al., 2004; Mascolo et al., 2003). Thus, unlike the feelings of individual greatness that would tend to suppress the experiences of shame, in the collectivistic cultures where self’s honor is valued, one would rather tend to acknowledge the shamefulness of one’s inappropriate behavior, leading to social integration and self-improvement (Mesquita & Karasawa, 2004).
Substantiating the described resistance that high self-esteem promotes against accepting shame, people who are high in self-esteem are also found to adapt aggressive mechanisms to defend against threats to their positive view of self (Baumeister et al., 1996, 2000; Thomaes et al., 2008). Shame is a threat to one’s ego and high self-esteem can make people be more negatively impacted by such threats. However, it is not everyone with high self-esteem that would respond aggressively to shame-induced threat to self. This is especially the case when high self-esteem is accompanied by narcissistic attitudes, that is, it is most likely to create an aggressive response (Baumeister et al., 2000).
On the contrary, those with low self-esteem show greater receptivity to shame. The perception of deservingness associated with the emotion appears to reduce the motivation for people with low self-esteem to take immediate action to get rid of a self-relevant negative affect that an undesirable event produces (Wood et al., 2009). The theory of self-verification (Swann, 1983) best evidences this speculated phenomenon. Thus, while high self-esteem would make a person reject a self-threatening experience of shame, those with low self-esteem when experiencing shame would allow shame to direct one toward self-improvement.
Self-Enhancement
The motivation to self-enhance is said to be a motivation universal to all human beings (Sedikides et al., 2003). However, the cultural comparisons have discovered that the intention to self-enhance is high among those who live in individualistic cultures, while East Asians whose cultures have a collectivistic orientation are reported to be low in self-enhancement motives (Heine & Hamamura, 2007; Heine & Renshaw, 2002). In fact, self-enhancement serves as a mechanism to attain high self-esteem (Brown et al., 2009; Kobayashi & Brown, 2003), and it is not surprising that those who are individualistic in their disposition and whose self-esteem is above average would be more prone to exercising self-enhancement.
This observed inclination in people of individualistic cultures to view themselves positively is in line with the self-construal prevalent in such cultures. The need to self-enhance is supported only by the aspects of independent self, while the interdependent self discourages self-enhancement (Heine, 2003). Viewing oneself as unique and unattached to others validates the individualistic person’s need for self-enhancement. Whereas for those with an interdependent self who are reluctant to identify themselves as different (especially not as standing above others) but value maintaining a similarity and closeness to others, thus receiving their acceptance, self-enhancement would not probably be of interest. People in individualistic cultures, with their independent self-view, are likely to focus on the benefits of personal satisfaction and disregard self-enhancement’s costs on interpersonal relationships (Heine, 2003).
Furthermore, in individualistic cultures, downward comparisons are commonly used to support their need for self-enhancement. Individualists are found to enhance their self-view through evaluating others less favorably than themselves (Norasakkunkit & Kalick, 2002). They also attempt to see themselves as currently improved by identifying themselves as deficient in the past (Ross et al., 2005). Those in individualistic cultures even tend to discount negative feedback received and the credibility of the sources to fulfill their need for self-enhancement (Heine et al., 2000; Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman, 2001; Heine, Kitayama, Lehman, Takata, et al., 2001). Self-serving attributional bias, a mechanism used to enhance one’s self-view, is also found to be high in individualistic cultures (Mezulis et al., 2004).
The association between self-enhancement and shame is quite similar to that between self-esteem and shame. Where creating a favorable view of oneself becomes a central need, shame that makes you feel bad about yourself inevitably becomes distressing. The above strategies employed by persons with an individualistic disposition to self-enhance clearly run counter to the positive action potential of shame, which requires accepting inadequacies of one’s self. Thus, shame would need to be avoided to serve the drive for self-enhancement. For instance, high self-serving bias where the person is inclined to make more internal, stable, global attributions to positive events than for negative events (Mezulis et al., 2004) interferes with shame where the negative events are attributed to an internal, stable, global cause (Tracy & Robins, 2004). In fact, individualists driven by their need to self-enhance tend to keep themselves strongly attached to life events of which they are proud, while trying to distance themselves from that which was shame-provoking (D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2008; Ross et al., 2005). The most difficult thing about shame is acknowledging it, and if a person somehow becomes capable of this, then the person would be able to overcome the destructive response (Tangney et al., 2014; Turner & Stets, 2006). Thus, it is more likely that individualists who are highly focused on self-enhancement tend to be driven toward a maladaptive response in the face of shame, as they would find it more difficult to acknowledge the emotion. However, in collectivistic cultures, as the impulse to self-enhance may not be strong, the opposing force of shame is likely to be acknowledged and be given more control, driving people toward self-improvement. Not only are collectivists low in self-enhancement, but they are also found to be more self-critical (Heine et al., 2000; Heine & Renshaw, 2002). In collectivistic cultures, it is not only that there is no constraint against shame but there is a general inclination to focus on their inadequacies. Hence, in collectivistic cultures, while shame’s positive pressure freely manifests itself due to a weak need for self-enhancement, it is further supported by their motivation for self-criticism.
Destructive responses of shame result from the agony of seeing one’s self as malevolent (Turner & Stets, 2006). Thus, destructive responses such as attacking the other, blaming oneself, and escaping are all efforts made by the person to overcome the pain of a threat to self. The pain of an attack to self would be reciprocal to the value and importance one places on one’s self. Thus, when “self” is not focal, which would be indicated through lower levels of both self-esteem and self-enhancement, resistance against shame would be muted. Therein lies the case for the positive action potential of shame, that is, self-improvement driven by shame in collectivistic cultures.
Consistency of Self
A third dimension of our understanding of shame’s positive potential is consistency of self-concept. Collectivists tend to differ significantly from individualists in this aspect as well. The self-views of collectivists are quite variable, while individualists have constrained, fixed views of self. This malleability of self observed more strongly among collectivists is manifested through their variation in self-perception across situations. Studies reveal that East Asians are more inconsistent in their self-views across relationship contexts (English & Chen, 2007, 2011; Suh, 2002), indicating that their self-concepts are able to accommodate incompatible information (Choi & Choi, 2002). Inconsistencies in self-concepts are strongly related to the importance people lay on how the self is viewed by others (Suh, 2002). Instability of self appears to be normative in collectivistic cultures where adjusting one’s self to fit the differing expectations of the others is emphasized. But in cultures where individuality is central, strongly communicating one’s identity by maintaining a stable and consistent self-concept is highly valued (English & Chen, 2011). English and Chen (2011) found that East Asians’s observed variability of self across situations does not indicate a lack of authenticity nor a diminished relationship quality as were for those from Western backgrounds. On the contrary, it allows the individual fit across different situations. Whereas in individualistic cultures people who are consistent across situations are more positively evaluated by others, consistency is not a factor that determines how well a person would be liked by others in the collectivistic cultures (Suh, 2002).
We suggest that malleable views of the self enhance the possibilities to respond to the emotion of shame positively. An attack on a unitary fixed self-concept that one maintains is difficult to endure. Whereas when one’s view of self is inconsistent and not rigid the impact of a confrontation against the self is diminished. Seok (2017) explains that unlike for individualists who do not see self as malleable, in the collectivist cultures, where external situations are believed to govern and shape the self, people are more resilient to and find it easy to cope with self-critical confrontations of shame as they do not need to take on the full accountability for misconduct. According to Tracy and Robins (2006), in the experience of shame, where we put the blame on self, we feel the cause of the transgression to be internal, stable, and controllable, whereas with guilt, the attributed cause is perceived to be internal (my action) but unstable and controllable. The difference in the level of stability and controllability of the attributed cause, which distinguishes between shame and guilt, appears to be a strong determinant of the behavioral responses that we make in the particular situation. Stability refers to whether the identified cause would continue to influence the person’s life repeatedly without change. Attributing the cause to the stable and consistent self makes shame an unbearable confrontation. On the contrary, in the experience of guilt where the person sees the incident as caused by a transient (unstable) action of theirs (internal), the person can easily overcome the negative effect. However, for someone with a collectivistic orientation, who views the self as relatively inconsistent and unstable, unlike in individualistic cultures, attributing the cause to self would not be felt as hostile as to necessitate a defense with aggression, avoidance, or externalization.
As other researchers explain in the experience of shame where self is accused, people make an attribution which is internal, stable, and global (Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Tangney et al., 1992). Instead of the controllability factor, specificity/globality of the attributed cause is considered in distinguishing between shame and guilt. It is this global focus in self-attribution of shame that gets most strongly challenged by the inconsistency of self as observed in collectivists. Usually, when experiencing shame, with the cause being attributed to self, you feel the misconduct as being definitive of who you are generally (i.e., global). For example, a person who appears selfish in a specific social context, if experiencing shame, would tend to feel that this selfishness is globally present in themselves and that it affects all relationships, making the person think that he is a “generally selfish person.” As Abramson et al. (1978) explain, these kinds of attributions (internal, stable and global), in the face of failure, develop in a person a chronic and intense sense of helplessness. Thus, it is obvious that the person feeling shame who attributes the cause to self which is viewed as global and stable would become helpless and respond maladaptively to the emotion, while being oblivious to an adaptive resolution to their feelings. However, in collectivistic cultures, the self-attribution of fault in shame would hardly lead to this sort of negative, stable, or global assumption as their self-characteristics are situationally adapted and are often inconsistent across contexts.
The stability of a cause is more or less determined by the controllability of it (Tracy & Robins, 2006). Thus, more about the effect of self’s stability on experiences of shame could be understood in the next section where we explore the controllability aspect of self, as the functions of the two factors in determining the response motives as well seem to overlap.
Self-Improvement
The lack of rigidity that is associated with the self-consistency would also be associated with the ability to change oneself. Therefore, we argue that in the case of shame, the motivation to self-improve is dominant in collectivistic cultures. Collectivists continuously attempt to meet the required standards of performance which they have failed to reach, instead of quitting or giving up (Heine, 2001; Heine, Kitayama, Lehman, Takata, et al., 2001; Heine & Raineri, 2009). This closely represents the functioning of shame’s positive motivation: a shame-experiencing person who feels distressed about himself for not being able to meet social standards would simply try to resolve it through striving to achieve the standard of behavior instead of trying to avoid or defend against negative self-related information. Whereas self-enhancement entails more costs for those who value strong interpersonal relationships, self-improvement appears to be more efficient (Heine, 2001) and thus is a well-desired response. Self-improvement can be identified as an alternative to self-enhancement in collectivistic cultures. Collectivist cultures rely on self-improvement to cope with one’s failures, instead of being driven by self-enhancing motives (Heine, Kitayama & Lehman, 2001). The function of both motivations is to help the person feel good about himself (Heine & Hamamura, 2007), and in general, everyone regardless of culture appears to be benefited by being driven by the relevant self-motivations their culture promotes. The cultural difference in the application of and the benefit of self-enhancement and self-improvement depends on the differences in the criteria the cultures use to judge the self. In the individualistic cultures, the perception of good is attached to high self-esteem, which is one’s own judgment of one’s worthiness, whereas for collectivistic cultures, being good is not dependent on one’s personal valuation of one’s qualities or skills but essentially being seen as good in the eyes of the others. Thus, collectivists opt for self-improvement which is more effective over self-enhancement which is of little relevance in meeting others’ standards of evaluation (Heine, 2003; Heine & Hamamura, 2007). Studies reveal that for people of interdependent cultures, focusing on improving one’s weaknesses in a self-threatening condition is related to improved psychological well-being, whereas in independent cultures, people are less benefited by these self-improvement motivations in stressful situations (Tsai, Chiang, & Lau, 2015; Tsai, Lau, et al., 2015). Moreover, people of interdependent cultures compared with people of independent cultures are not comfortable with self-enhancing actions such as downward comparisons and externalization in face of such stressful situations (Tsai, Lau, et al., 2015). Thus, it suggests that in a shameful experience, enduring it and attempting to better oneself through continuous effort would be a less distressing task for collectivists than it would be for individualists.
These tendencies to self-improve or to self-enhance are also driven by the malleability of self-views. When the self is viewed as fixed importance is laid on maintaining a positive view of the unchanging self, this can be approached through self-enhancement. Looking to improve one’s self would have no bearing on this. It has been found that shame would function positively and lead to self-improvement, would there be the opportunity to correct the failures of oneself (e.g., redo the failed task; Leach & Cidam, 2015). However, the cause of a transgression that provokes shame is attributed to “self,” which, in general, is perceived as hard to be repaired. Thus, the shame-experiencing person, instead of attempting to perform better, could be more drawn to respond maladaptively, unlike in the case of guilt. Thus, it is those who hold more malleable self-views or more specifically incremental beliefs of self that would look for ways for self-improvement in the face of shame-provoking transgression (Tsai, Chiang & Lau, 2015). Therefore, the motivation to improve self is driven by incremental beliefs of self (Heine, Kitayama, Lehman, Takata, et al., 2001). People in collectivist cultures are more likely to believe aspects of self as improvable and not predetermined (Heine, Kitayama, Lehman, Takata, et al., 2001). For a person who believes that self-traits are incremental and subordinate to effort, weaknesses of self that shame unveils are not as distressing as would be for a person who has minimal confidence in the process of self-improvement. Lickel et al. (2014) suggest that belief in self-improvement is a key factor deciding between the negative and the positive motivational potentials of shame. For example, religious ideologies practiced in collectivistic cultures like Confucianism that sees self as malleable and encourages people to strive for self-improvement have allowed shame to assume a more positive role (Li et al., 2004; Mascolo et al., 2003; Seok, 2017). But for the individualists who have little belief in self-improvement, shame would be quite distressing and would lead to its avoidance, at all costs.
Dweck (2006), who stresses the importance of harnessing incremental beliefs of self over personal qualities “carved in stone” in her book “Mindset,” validates how a person who believes in self-improvement (growth mindset) can function more adaptively when a failure threatens the self. As she explains, when self is seen as fixed and as not changing or improving, every situation demands that you prove your worthiness avoiding the possibility of being judged as deficient. If you are a person who believes your personal qualities to be fixed, a failure to prove your goodness would call you to defend yourself against it, acting maladaptively, instead of making it an opportunity to better yourself. Pathological responses like depression that shame leads to are also found to be associated with the hopelessness that is generated by attributing the fault to an unchanging aspect of self that would remain a constant (Tangney et al., 1992).
For one stricken by guilt, there are many ways to assuage the emotional stress and one can easily overcome the emotional burden by simply engaging in an action like extending apologies, whereas it is not so easy for the shame-stricken person to deal with the unpleasant state of mind (George, 2010; Tangney et al., 2007). This makes guilt the more adaptive moral emotion, and shame, a less supportive one. George (2010) further explains that the courage to respond positively in the face of shame is so hard and that the easiest way to overcome the bad feeling is by defending oneself through denial and externalization. This might be true if self—the cause—is considered to be stable and uncontrollable. But it appears that for collectivists who believe to have more control over self, shame is by no means harmful or less moral.
Conclusion
The vast majority of studies conducted in North America and Europe show that shame leads to self-defensive actions such as avoidance and aggression. Shame also has a less explored motivation to direct people to improve negative aspects of self. We argue that culture holds the key to when this positive potential of shame is activated. The self-construal of collectivist cultures that heavily depends on shame to maintain social order likely supports the positive motivation of shame, discouraging its negative self-defensive responses. We conclude that the collectivist view of self, leading to low self-esteem, low self-enhancement, high inconsistencies in self, and proneness to self-improvement, supports the positive potential of shame, in several ways.
Destructive behaviors that shame entails are often said to be associated with the extreme pain it generates (Stuewig & Tangney, 2007; Tangney, 2001). The differences in the collectivists’ perception of self strongly contribute in eliminating the extreme pain that the emotions self-blame could produce (Seok, 2017). On one hand, the individual “self” being less central and less treasured in collectivistic cultures helps mitigate the harshness of the challenge posed by the experience of shame. On the other hand, seeing self as not fixed and malleable to change makes shame less painful for the collectivists, as it does not distress the person in response to the threat it poses. Even if not for the reason of pain, these same reasons of self being less prized and being seen as improvable simply limit the need to defend against shame’s attack on self and facilitate accepting it to change for the better. The experience of guilt offers several ways to effectively regulate the negative emotion (i.e., apologizing, making reparative action, etc.) while there is no real solution for shame (Tangney et al., 1992, 2007) in the individualistic context other than denial and withdrawal. For instance, the person who has no confidence in self-improvement would have to defend against shame not only because it is painful, but because there is no other way for them to cope with the situation. Similarly, the person who self-enhances also has to defend against shame because it is against their primary self-motivation. But for the collectivists who are comfortable holding opposing self-views, the inclination to self-defend is less present. Indeed, these self-perceptions and self-motivations practiced in the collectivistic cultures help deal with the emotion in the most productive way—accepting the self’s deficiencies and putting effort to correct it—unveiling shame’s positive motivation for self-improvement.
We conclude that shame has a unique potential to direct people to change themselves for the better, as clearly signified by the cognition that underlies shame. But oftentimes, acknowledging defects of oneself and having confidence in the possibility to overcome those become a perilous task. The destructive action tendencies are evoked when the positive action process appears too risky or challenging for a person (de Hooge et al., 2010; Leach & Cidam, 2015). It appears that people in individualistic cultures with their particular self-view find it hard to lend themselves to the self-improving motivation of shame. Whereas self in the collectivist context functions in a way that the harsh but positive action process of shame is perceived as not arduous enough to be denied.
This review provides a new and more nuanced understanding of the functioning of shame. It takes into account culture as a variable that creates very different response patterns to experience of shame. It can have considerable impact on how different cultural practices around moral transgressions are used in different spheres such as mental health services and education. For example, it may help shed light on child-rearing practices in collectivistic cultures that may rely on inducing shame in situations of moral transgressions. It is common for a child in collectivistic culture to get bombarded with expressions such as “shame on you,” “aren’t you embarrassed of yourself,” “aren’t you ashamed?” “how come I have such a child,” “chi (dirty) child” following a misconduct (Fung, 1999; Obeyesekere, 1984). Adults would reveal the child’s misbehaviors to outsiders in front of them (Obeyesekere, 1984) and even physically distance the child (Fung, 1999) to make them feel ashamed about themselves. If these practices were judged purely on the existing understanding on moral emotion, such child-rearing practices would be summarily dismissed as harmful to the child’s well-being. However, the analysis and framework provided in this review would allow for the detection of some of the positives of these practices and approve a more culturally sensitive approach.
Future steps in relation to this framework would naturally involve the empirical testing of this framework to detect how cultural factors drive a positive action potential in shame-inducing situations. Although previous research suggests self-improvement motivations to be attached with shame in the collectivistic cultures, most of them do not provide any empirical evidence. While the researchers need to focus on producing empirical evidence on this area of study, we also suggest the future research to take a more elaborated cultural perspective in exploring this topic. While the discussion of this article has limited its focus to the difference between the collectivistic and the individualistic cultures, it is difficult to obtain an accurate understanding of the culture’s impact over moral emotions by limiting to such broad cultural categories (Fischer & Poortinga, 2018). It is needed that future researchers take the discussion of this article further to explore its validity across different other cultural dimensions (e.g., Gelfand et al., 2011; Hofstede, 2011; Triandis & Gelfand, 1998), which would demarcate further cultural variations that lie beneath the broad dichotomous classification that we have considered in this article. Such effort has been taken by Young et al. (2019) in his work where differences in experiences in moral emotions across dimensions of horizontality-verticality of social relations were examined, alongside the collectivistic–individualistic division.
This also calls us to reconsider the limitations of confining the explanations of psychological entities to studies on narrower populations (Henrich et al., 2010). The discussion of this article focused on the intricate interplay among variables demonstrating that variability exists in psychological experiences. It calls into question “the one truth” of moral emotions. This implies that the prevailing dominant views of shame might not be the single essential truth, but that there could exist multiple truths. The positive propensities of shame might not be solely a story of collectivistic cultures. The scattering of articles that reveal the positive aspects of shame that is present in individualistic cultures (e.g., De Hooge et al., 2010; Leach and Cidam, 2015; Lickel et al., 2014) suggests the complex multiplicity of the emotion of shame that future researchers need to consider. The diversity of the self-construal, which is now observed to expand beyond the simple independent–interdependent division (Vignoles et al., 2016), stresses the need for more culturally inclusive studies to precisely understand the shame–self-improvement relationship.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
