Article 03: The Social Side of Shame - Approach vs Withdrawal

• studying the extent to which shame motivates a preference for social withdrawal versus a preference for social approach
• people experiencing shame to prefered to be together with others (social approach) over being alone (social withdrawal).
• preference for social situations was unique to shame, and not present for guilt
• In the current research, we induced shame and subsequently gave people the choice between being alone or being with others, revealing a preference for either social withdrawal or social approach

Experiment 1:

• independent variable is Shame, Guilt or Control group
• dependent variable is the withdrawal/approach choice
• they ASKED the particpants to write down a personal experience where they felt ashamed. Is this really a good way of getting a participant to feel ashamed omega

Experiment 2:

• participants were organized based on Shame vs Control, and Knowledge of Shamefule Event (yes or no).
• dependent variable is the withdrawal/approach choice
• did a performance test on a computer, and induced shame by publicly revealing their score to the other participants

Results from both experiments were consistent and revealed a preference for the ‘together task’ among those feeling more shame. Shame experiences are associated with a preference for social approach, more than with a preference for social withdrawal

Questions:

• would culture or self-construal have any affect on how people choose to deal with shame
• wouldn’t the testing environment affect responses
• is there a difference between shame and embarassment
• would the shame emotion from Experiment 1 be persistent or last long enough to fill the questionaire?

Limitations:

1. Experiment 2 used a performance failure to induce shame, and did not include other types of shame experiences.
2. Inconclusive whether results hold for not only shame, but for negative emotions in general.
3. The approach in the experiments were relatively neutral tasks.