Shame,and a Challenge for Emotions History

A Decline of Shame

Several decades ago Demos (as cited in C. Z. Stearns & Stearns, 1988, pp. 69–86) got the history of shame off to a sparkling start, with his analysis of a sea change in American emotional history during the first half of the 19th century. Demos highlighted the importance of shame in colonial America, with particular emphasis of course on New England. The emotion supported two crucial disciplinary arenas. For public purposes it was used to maintain order and decorum, by subjecting offenders to community disdain. In advance of the arrival of prisons to American shores, exhibiting miscreants in the stocks or otherwise singling them out for shaming, as in the use of the scarlet letter for adulterers, placed a fear of shame at the core of public response. This public dimension was then repeated within the family, as a primary means of controlling children, calling them out for misbehavior in front of other members of family and community. Indeed, the shaming of children trained them in the wider social standards.

Then came the crucial historical change, as Demos showed how this pervasive pattern was extensively revised during the first part of the 19th century. Shaming was now seen as both inappropriately harsh—among other things as it contravened a new definition of appropriate privacy—and ineffective. Reliance on the emotion receded rapidly, along with the abolition of some of its chief mechanisms including the public stocks. In its stead, again both in public punishments and in family discipline, guilt seized center stage. Here was an emotion that depended on internalization, not community sanction, and it became the emotional enforcer par excellence through the remainder of the 19th century and indeed beyond. Demos’s ability to track changes both in public policy, including the intentions behind the new American reliance on a particular kind of prison system, and in familial childrearing gave added weight to his conclusions about a systematic change.

Inevitably, Demos’s sketch raised additional questions. Shame might decline, but as Demos himself noted it would not disappear—what was the ensuing balance? Did some groups and institutions remain more attached to shame, even after the larger decline set in? Were there any unexpected problems that resulted from this major transition?

Here’s the main point, on the historians’ side: a sweeping, and as we will see impressively accurate initial identification of change was not followed up with fuller analysis, or with links to subsequent historical developments. Key questions went largely unaddressed, while in many larger historical generalizations shame was written out altogether (P. N. Stearns, 1994).

This is not to say, of course, that there was no relevant scholarship. Demos’s work coincided with a number of studies of the decline of honor, including traditional modes of defense such as dueling (Brown, 1986; Nye, 1998), in ways that clearly linked to changing susceptibilities for shame. Reddy’s work (1997) on 19th-century France suggests a more active maintenance of shame than seems to have prevailed in the United States, though the actual comparative application has not been ventured (Cohen, 2013; Vause, 2014). Even more important is the recent work by Eustace (2008) and Wahrman (2004) on the emergence of a more individual sense of self, over more communal identities, in the later 18th century a basic shift that explains the larger American context in which the review of shaming occurred. The fact remains that the most obvious challenge of Demos’s findings—what happened after shame began to decline in the United States—has not been taken up, much less combined with work in other fields.

Contemporary Takes on Shame

In contrast to the paucity of recent historical attention, shame has become a central topic in social psychology, with some attendant interest in philosophy, sociology, and particularly anthropology as well. Indeed, shame researchers are numerous enough to gather occasionally, as in Amsterdam last July, to discuss mutual findings (to date, historians need not apply). Interest is both theoretical, as part of more general attention to what are sometimes described as the “self-conscious” emotions, and quite practical, with findings applied to childrearing and penology (Tracy, Robbins, & Tangney, 2007).

The surge has occasionally embraced historical claims. Thus Pattison (2000) argues that over time shame has moved from largely social implementations and imposition on groups, to being something “far more individual, personal and psychological.” This meshes well with the work of historians like Eustace (2008) on the shifts between an interdependent self—open to shame in the most conventional sense—and a more independent one, the latter presumably emerging more clearly in recent times. Pattison sees a crucial transition in the “broad movement from ‘social’ shame to ‘psychological’ shame,” but he is unusual, in the social sciences, in suggesting a historical dimension; far more work simply picks up on the newer notion of shame without wider analysis (Lansky & Morrison, 1997).

Other definitional work is relevant even so, precisely because of the lack of convenient community markers and the growing emphasis on shame as an internal emotional state. Thus some scholars posit two kinds of shame, one still imposed by an external entity, the other, not dependent on audience, involving deep feelings of self-deprecation. A related question, for the first type, involves what kinds of “feelings” if any are attached to efforts to address outside norms. Yet another interesting formulation emphasizes how shame applies to inferior or submissive groups, whereas dominant groups are more capable of feeling guilt. The central emphasis, however, rests on the strong distinctions between shame and guilt, despite scattered arguments that see the two emotions as commingled, or, in a study by D. Stearns and Parrott (2012), morally equivalent. Guilt, the argument goes, involves a self-critical reaction to certain actions: I feel guilty for having done this or that. Shame, in contrast, emphasizes a more generalized feeling of self-denigration or worthlessness: The fact that I did this or that indicates that I am a bad person. Both shame and guilt usually play against some public audience, in this view, but the emotional experiences are very different, and have different consequences accordingly.

For, because it involves generalized self-deprecation, shame does not encourage a constructive response, whether the subject is a child being disciplined or a prisoner at risk of another arrest (Tangney, Stuewig, & Martinez, 2014). Note that shame, in this formulation, remains primarily an internal experience, though with a sense that something out there—perhaps society at large—is generating a hostile appraisal. But the result establishes no desire to apologize with any sincerity, or to offer reparation for the offensive act—because it is the self, not the action, that is in play. Even more, shame produces a sense of anger and aggression: it’s not fair to have a community make one feel so badly about oneself. There may admittedly be some desire to avoid offensive action in future—criminal recidivism may be discouraged by shame to some extent—but this is likely counterbalanced by the concurrent desire to lash out against the feelings shame entails. Shame may ironically produce more bad behavior, not less. Some sociologists, including Gilligan (1996) and Dutton (1995) have gone so far as to claim that a desire to hide shame is at the root of most family violence. Guilt, in contrast, is usefully manageable: it encourages apology and compensation along with care to avoid repetition. The distinction has huge consequences, of course, to those who deal with children, who are urged to focus on an action—don’t cheat on exams—rather than a generalized condition, like “being a cheater,” but it carries over into other remedial areas as well.

All of this intriguing work remains supremely ahistorical, with one exception. Save for a few bows to evolutionary psychology, the predominant shame experts, understandably focused on current evidence and current conditions, do not speculate on possible differences between past and present, or when and how the patterns they identify began to emerge in American social and intellectual life. Nor do they find significant group distinctions, of the sort that might encourage historical inquiry as a byproduct if not essential component. Thus American shame levels do not, according to this approach, respond to religious affiliation, ethnicity, or immigrant status. Variations occur—otherwise, there might be little shame to uncover, given the clearly preferable condition of guilt—but they are functions of individual personality, shame or guilt proneness, not categories that easily generate historical inquiry. Only one glimmer—the obvious hope that psychological expertise will lead to a more systematic reduction in efforts to induce shame rather than guilt—suggests any clear historical dimension at all: at least for the future, it might prove useful to chart alterations over time. But obviously this process of change awaits its researcher.

In contrast to relative nonchalance over chronology, there has been real concern about geography and culture, and here some interesting fissures in shame research emerge that have obvious potential relevance to an additional historical approach. Some social psychologists, including Furukawa, Tangney, and Higashibara (2012), eager to generalize their findings, are skeptical about significant international differences—arguing for example that undue shame ultimately has the same undesirable effects in Japan as it has in the United States. But the research has encouraged anthropologists who are more culturally attuned. Two recent studies emphasize differences between the low level of shame in contemporary American society, and patterns in other places. Fessler (as cited in Tracy et al., 2007), dealing with a tribal culture in Southeast Asia, notes the importance of shame in preserving community standards and facilitating cooperation. Shame, energized against deviant values or behaviors, discourages risk-taking and creativity, but it definitely serves a purpose when it is highly valued; and, in this condition as well, it does not seem to generate the same kind of destructive anger that the American context apparently uncovers. In fact, in the appropriate cultural settings, it actually seems to promote low levels of crime and violence. A second study by Wong and Tsai (as cited in Tracy et al., 2007), dealing with the far more complex societies of China and East Asia with particular focus on persistent Confucian emphasis on the role of shame in social control, stresses the importance of shame in protecting moral absolutes and, with it, a real sense of community standards and cohesion. Here too, the frequency of shame references, and the emotion’s approved status, contrast clearly with the contemporary United States. Important work on Japan by Kitayama, Markus, and Kurokawa (2000) points in similar directions, again demonstrating that there is no single global approach to shame. Obviously there is implicit invitation here, as on so many emotions topics, for some serious comparative historical work to amplify, and more clearly explain, the anthropological findings, that would explore the differences and identify their emergence over time more fully.

Beyond the opportunity for comparison, dominant recent research on shame raises two clear challenges for historians. The first involves incorporating newer findings into a revived historical agenda, including the destructive aspects of shame or the internal emotional states involved: responses would not necessarily contradict Demos’s earlier work, but they would surely require amplification. The second is more basic still: what could a historian hope to uncover about shame that might interest an interdisciplinary audience, given the relatively clear conclusions that currently rule the field? Shame research proceeds robustly, with recommendations as well as findings: why should historians try to crash the party, and equally important, is it at all likely that they can?

The answer must convert what Demos and other historians of early America have established, but also the emphasis on shame as a psychological state rather than (at least today) the imposition of communal norms, into a set of questions about the recent past. When did shame acquire this primary dimension? What consequences and complications have resulted? Shame, in this view, is a moving target, even in its basic definition—which is precisely the area where emotions historians can contribute to a larger scholarly enterprise. We might even be able to explain more fully why shame now generates the hostility and aggression that loom so large in contemporary responses. And, very gently, we might be able to raise a few questions about current assessments and recommendations.

A real history of shame, in other words, while not at all replacing the specific psychological findings in the field, offers not only context, but also potential explanation and additional evaluation. Like the anthropological approach, a history of shame will deepen and usefully complicate the reigning psychological models, improving overall awareness of the issues involved with shame as an individual and a social emotion alike. At the same time, any renewed historical effort must take the current issues and data into account, building these into the analysis of change as well. Glib assumptions about some easy, relatively rapid transition from shame to guilt must be reassessed in the process, as historians grapple with shame’s persistence while exploring the significant shifts of the past two centuries. The results will address the legitimate question of why nonhistorians, busy with their own approaches to emotion, should add a greater awareness of shame as an experience over time. Several historical steps are involved, combining what we know with areas we need to understand more fully.

Step 2: The Process of Change

History excels in exploring change, in this case not only the decline of shame that Demos has demonstrated, after its deep hold in places like colonial New England, but also the redefinition of the emotion toward internalization. A communal element remains, in the perception of social criticism, but it becomes more diffuse; and increasing resentment accompanies the emotional experience. The process must be complex, if only because we already know that shame’s decline has hardly been its demise: the emotion remains far more alive than many social psychologists would recommend.

The timing of initial change is quite clear. Demos saw the shift toward the mid-19th century, in the new language used in the discipline of children and criminals along with the disappearance of some of the classic shame rituals like the public stocks. Quantitative data largely support this chronology, for the United States. While Google (http://googlebooks.byu.edu) and the New York Times (https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2008T19) materials are very general, they do provide some sense of aggregate change. The Google trend line suggests a brief peak in shame references around 1820—when issues like original sin were under such active discussion in American Protestantism, but then a fairly steady and considerable decline for literally a century and a half after 1825. Times data are largely congruent, showing a peak in references in the 1860s, doubtless associated both with the slavery debate and with military conduct, but then a sharp and steady decline for the ensuing century (Michel, 2010; Michel et al., 2011).

OPEN IN VIEWER OPEN IN VIEWER

Thus shame has been the subject of real and substantial change in the American past. Anthropological claims that Americans reference shame far less than Asians do are doubtless correct, but this is a product of history, the result of a level of transformation that even nonhistorian researchers should want to know more about. The causes of the gradual submergence of shame references seem to rest mainly in larger cultural shifts. The abandonment of an active sense of original sin in American Protestantism undercut one support, particularly for applying shame to children. The concomitant individualistic redefinition of the self-made shame seems an inappropriate community intrusion. This new cultural context, in turn, heightened awareness of the possibility that shame could prove ineffective, that other social emotions, most obviously guilt, would be more reliable—all in advance, of course, of any systematic psychological findings about shame’s results. Other factors supported the change: the advance of urbanization, and the replacement of rural villages with more anonymous urban settings, further complicated the imposition of communal standards. Growing commercialization reduced, though did not eliminate, concern for reputation in favor of concern for wealth. Political democratization gradually reduced a firm sense of social hierarchy—for example, as applied to women—which weakened that aspect of shaming that depended on dominance (Sennett, 1980).

The change that resulted invites some subtle analysis, despite the various factors involved. Shame references declined but did not disappear; the emotion remained, though relative balance shifted in favor of guilt. More important: it seems quite probable that discomfort with discussing shame increased more rapidly than any actual change in emotional experience. This could mean that shame became harder to handle emotionally, less surrounded by clear community standards, less modified by rituals that would allow social reintegration of a shamed offender. The decline of shame, in other words, may well also have been the beginnings of the fuller internalization of the emotion, with greater resentment encouraged by the lack of familiar language.

The potential disparity between shame in practice and shame in accepted discourse can be explored further by looking both at potential subgroups and at a sampling of the continued application of shame in fact.

Some groups were surely more susceptible to the shift in fashion around shame than others, despite the effort by some social psychologists to talk of differentiations only by personality type. What we know about change in the 19th century, thanks to historians like Greven (1988), would suggest that Evangelicals had more reason and capacity to retain a shame emphasis than many other groups—not perhaps forever, but arguably sufficiently to carry some differential onward for a century or more. More broadly, emotions history does encourage subcultural tracking and explanation, and this can contribute to interdisciplinary inquiry generally.

Attention to pace is crucial: Emotions change of any fundamental sort occurs gradually as well as unevenly, and while Demos allowed for this he did not explore it. The most obvious next step for the historian of shame is to figure out how rapidly a shift occurred once it was launched, and what factors might accelerate or retard it. We have some sense of how long it may take for a new emotional standard really to take hold—to use a classic example, the idea that parents should not use fear in discipline (P. N. Stearns, 1994), which required at least a century even for reliable middle-class internalization. The case of shame will prove even more prolonged, for the emotion remained so useful in many ways despite the growing discomfort it caused when identified explicitly.

Different settings created one clear complexity. If up-to-date families began to move away from traditional reliance on shame by the 1820s or 1830s, schools did not move so quickly. They lacked or failed to develop alternative emotional discipline—witness among other things the persistence of dunce caps. Schools had some ready-made enforcement in the eagerness of kids to rejoice in the humiliation of their peers. They mixed social classes, which involved the hierarchical use of shame when the targets were disproportionately immigrant children or racial minorities. While the subject obviously invites more precise research, and while progressive educators identified new goals far earlier than most actual teachers did, it is not clear that American schools began significantly to reject shame—even if only in principle—until after World War II, which connects this aspect of the timing of change in shame a bit more closely to the findings of the social psychologists. Ultimately, of course, schools would figure very prominently into the pattern of change, at least in principle. Not only was shame finally downplayed according to P. N. Stearns (2004), specific new practices made the emotion visibly suspect, as in the new rules against the public posting of grades that took hold in the 1970s as a means of limiting one potential source or use of shame. The rise of self-esteem movements in the schools not only provided a clear alternative to shame but may have contributed to the construction of new emotional approaches that not only constrained shame but could teach individuals a new level of anger and resentment at the contradictions between any shaming effort and their own self-image. Certainly, many parents became more alert in seeking to defend their offspring against any imposition of shame in schools, a factor that still applies. The history of shaming in the schools thus helps explain how shame persisted despite the decline in the rhetoric, but ultimately may also help account for resentments that shaming could generate.

Not only differential pacing, but outright countercurrents must also be explored, as we understand how shaming remained a vigorous, though partially reproved and therefore confusing, emotional option. New problems and new groupings could rekindle uses of shame, even as overall disapproval of the emotion solidified and urban conditions made definition more difficult. Let me suggest, tentatively, a few examples that can easily be expanded into the 20th century:

– The need to form a new “boy culture,” to help identify issues in masculinity in a changing environment, clearly depended heavily on shaming. Boys in the 19th century tested each other over emotional and physical performance, and eagerly imposed shame on those who fell short (Rotundo, 1994). New terms like sissy were implementations of shame, not guilt, designed to enforce group norms and, by identifying deviance, help new groups gain and maintain coherence. The related growth of athletic teams also created new opportunities for taunting and shaming, as a means again of establishing identity and cohesion but also promoting performance standards. (Shame in modern sports more generally suggests new uses for the emotion, at both individual and collective levels, to sanction inadequacy as well as bad behavior.) These examples underscore the high probability that key communities seek to use shame to retain or recreate a sense of interdependence, even in a larger culture that moves toward more independent personalities.

– The heightened importance of certain issues created new pressures to use shame, even amid the overall and more negative evolution. The perceived need to enforce sexual conformity for “respectable” women intensified claims on shame in this category, and both fiction and popular art dramatized the shame that premarital sexuality and pregnancy could bring to individuals and families alike. (Some feminists now refer to this approach as “slut-shaming,” a practice that clearly persists.) Guilt here might be intertwined, but shaming was too obvious an emotional resource to relax, given how vital it was to establish new bases for sexual discipline in a changing environment. Implicit shaming plays an obvious role today, for example in the abstinence-only sex education, with its comparisons of sexually active teens to equivalents of chewed gum. The same extended use of shaming would begin to apply, at least by the early 20th century, to homosexuality, another problem that was both redefined and given anguished new attention.

Other modern developments might spark reliance on shame. The recent work on France (Vause, 2014) suggests that modern issues with credit and debt formed yet another arena in which shame could be pressed into renewed service. On another front, American entry into World War I, in 1917, even brought the government into the shaming business, though without using the word: men who did not show up for military registration had their names published in local newspapers, and the whole recruitment rhetoric bristled with barely veiled shame enforcement (Keene, 2003).

There are several basic points here. In theory, we need to be open to countercurrents even when, as in this case, a basic and long-term direction of change is established. Shame persists not just because of the hold of tradition, but because of new uses and needs, and this is an area where historians can work actively with other disciplines to help identify and explain ongoing complexity. The same perspective also encourages attention to shame beyond individual reactions to “bad acts.” Shame must be seen in its role in creating or maintaining group cohesion and in pushing for performance and broad conformity even in areas—like team sports—where guilt does not clearly apply. The rest may cause inner turmoil and resentment, in shame’s newer meanings; but the communal element remains, which helps explain the tension between the ongoing decline in acceptable reference and the actual experience of shame. Attention to the complexities in the pace of change is a standard historical concern, and in this case it has clearly interdisciplinary implications.

The Contemporary Challenge

The modern history of shame enters a major new phase from the 1960s onward. Two trends intersect. The first maintains many of the themes established during the previous century, but with significant embellishments. More efforts to combat shame combine, on several fronts. At the same time, opportunities to deploy shame gain ground as well. Basic characteristics may have shifted, toward what Riesman, Glazer, and Denney (2001) called other-directness, with new sensitivities to the opinions of others—an obvious opening for new kinds of shame. A bit later, technology changes added in: social media began to provide unprecedented opportunities to convey shame. Finally, building on these developments, various groups sought to reestablish communal standards, and shame could be central to such efforts (Salovey, 1991).

The result of the two trends—new attacks on shame but also new employments—was a surprising increase in the sheer quantity of deliberate references to shame, as it moved out from a century of submersion. Various interests at least implicitly sought to counter the previous gap that had opened between willingness to discuss shame and the persistence, and increasing internalization, of the emotion.

For the quantitative data suggest an important shift in the process of the American redefinition of shame that invites an interdisciplinary focus: again granting the great generality of Google or New York Times materials, it is clear that that process of reducing references to shame ended in the 1960s–1970s according to the Times or the 1980s–1990s according to Google. An ensuing increase did not reach early 19th century levels; there was no return to an emotional old regime. But something was going on that requires attention, whether the goal is a better sense of contemporary emotions history or a better understanding of why shame continues to pose problems. The interdisciplinary importance of good emotions history obviously intensifies when, as in this case, a fairly recent change can be identified.

OPEN IN VIEWER

OPEN IN VIEWER

The rapid growth of research on shame in recent decades, particularly in social psychology, plays some role in the about-face, while obviously maintaining the earlier interest in reproving the emotion; references increased as a result. Even more significant is the trend among therapists and popularizers like Brown (2010), who specifically urge people to call shame out by name in order to defuse it psychologically: in TED talks and other media, Brown and her colleagues contend that talking about shame more means experiencing it less—whether the focus is on the communal or on the internal variety. A third contributor to the interest in combatting shame by citing it more explicitly involves the various groups that, since the 1960s, have been working to reverse historical levels of shame as part of new claims on rights—as in the rebellion of American gays against longstanding stereotypes. In this vein, queer theory has devoted considerable attention to the emotion (Halperin & Traub, 2009), in what amounts to a rebellion against the use of shame in dominance. Overall, references in this category seek, essentially, to make it even more shameful to try to shame, bringing the term back into growing usage in the process (Sedgwick, 1985).

But the second source for new attention to shame seeks to use the emotion to express or reestablish various community standards, in a period in which cultural divisions in American society became increasingly obvious. Trends here are more novel, though they certainly adapt earlier concerns for example about sexual behavior, as noted previously with regard to slut-shaming. After virtually a century in which prevailing views sought to submerge shame, often in favor of guilt, the emotion may be emerging as a source of new, if largely implicit, conflict.

Several categories contribute here. One source of new interest in shame involves many of the new immigrant groups that had never abandoned shame in the first place: many American Muslims, for example, have commented on the importance of shaming in keeping order in enforcing standards in their communities (Khan, 2010). Growing religiosity among many native-born Americans may encourage more open use of shame as well. Political clusters may also use shame to express or enhance their group standards. A number of conservatives, not surprisingly, are more comfortable with shame than is the population as a whole, as with jurists who have recently been mandating shame sentences, requiring public appearance with a poster describing an offense, instead of jail time. But the Times data, particularly, may suggest more liberal interest in shame as well, to designate offenses such as police brutality or neglect of the poor; according to Byrne (2012), participants in the Occupy movement readily shouted “shame” in response to law enforcement tactics, to take one example. Finally, shame continues to gain even new targets, for instance in campaigns by school systems against childhood obesity; many observers have noted the increasing effort to associate overweight with shame (plus a bit of guilt), and state programs that deliberately single out children who fail a body mass test assume that peer shaming is a suitable tactic. Precisely because community ties in many respects seem to be fraying, shame—in its communal, and not simply psychological, sense—may seem an essential component of attempts to emphasize shared values.

The decline and redefinition of shame over the past century and a half remain the most important historical point, but increasing contemporary complexity must be factored in as well.

Evaluations and Impacts

Impressed with the gap between modern American emphasis on downplaying shame, and the results of the remnants of Confucian tradition in Asia, Fessler (cited in Tracy et al., 2007) has wondered if modernization will ultimately eliminate shame, as global standards replace earlier community cohesion. The image might please historians and psychologists alike—historians because it highlights the sweep of change, psychologists because it offers hope that ultimately a bad emotion might yield. But the model is too simple: the recent history of shame highlights the capacity for redefinition, despite the decline of communal rituals, as well as the social uses of shame even against widespread disapproval. Inclusion of historical analysis in the larger interdisciplinary assessment of shame is vital precisely because the very real patterns of change do not yield to any simple schema.

The historical approach may suggest some caution in the evaluation of shame as well, a final possible contribution. In part because efforts to downplay shame have not succeeded in uprooting the emotion, a fresh look may be desirable—while granting in the main the predominant wisdom that sees certain kinds of shame as often unproductive, even counterproductive. A historical perspective suggests two final issues.

The first, already noted, involves the capacity for developing new uses for shame, even amid declining acceptance overall. This process clearly continues, for new communal efforts as well as old ones. Thus shaming plays a central role, though not always successfully, in the attempt over recent decades to implement new global criteria in human or environmental rights, as an emotional anchor for so-called world opinion. Amnesty International depends heavily on shame, using appeals to the emotion to help enforce still-fledging international standards. Amnesty leaders themselves have long recognized the importance of emotional enforcement: as its founder Peter Benenson noted in 1961, “If these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.” While guilt may be the preferred emotion in punishing crimes against humanity, the threat of shame may be more compelling in preventive efforts (P. N. Stearns, 2005).

And from this possibility of new uses for shame even in changing contexts, the second issue: to the extent that shame or acceptance of shame do continue to decline, can we be fully comfortable in claiming that the results are unambiguously good? Most contemporary historians are somewhat wary of whiggish optimism, particularly applied to such a complex area as a major emotion. But in this case, this sensitivity, including greater awareness of the positive functions shame may have served in the past or elsewhere, is heightened by other social science findings outside the emotions field. It’s an organizational anthropologist, for example, who argues that the reduction in openness to shame has contributed increasing unaccountability among a variety of international elites. Wedel (2014) points to the blurring of lines between politics, business, and philanthropy in the activities of people like Tony Blair, or the blatant arrogance of financial leaders who lead one operation to bankruptcy and quickly turn up heading another. Obviously, shamelessness at the top is not brand new, but it may indeed be increasing, to the public detriment. It was an international lobbyist, Edward von Kloberg, who proclaimed, “Shame is for sissies,” and arguably behaved accordingly. This might suggest that shame has indeed declined, losing much of its bite, but also that no satisfactory replacement has as yet been found. Again, the historical approach helps provide a broader perspective.

Conclusion

This article obviously invites renewed historical attention to shame, adding the analysis of complex patterns of change to the other vigorous interdisciplinary findings. Historical focus on shame will itself improve with attention to current interests in other disciplines, but by the same token the historical range – for example, the capacity to trace shame over time and to examine social as well as personal parameters, will benefit interdisciplinary inquiry.

But the invitation goes further, as the introduction suggested. Without at all advancing a single formula for emotions history, it is clear, as the study of shame indicates, that greater sensitivity to wider work in the emotions field will pay off for historical study and for the now-largely-lacking inclusion of historical analysis in the most engaged discussion of how emotions operate. Psychologists, for example, should be as aware of temporal connections and explanations as they are of geographical comparisons: both enrich theory, and both have implications even for practice. The explosion of historical interest remains a huge asset, but some of it can be harnessed more effectively.