Can Shame Really Be Good for Us?

Shame is enjoying a renaissance—at least if recent articles in The Guardian and Vox are any indication.

When people feel authorized to mock and denigrate people with whom they disagree, fabricate accomplishments and achievements, and act in hypocritical ways, many people decry this shamelessness. People who do not feel shame, the argument goes, present challenges not just to the individuals at whom such shameless actions are directed but to the rest of us who play by the rules, honor and respect customs, and try to embody the values and principles of Good People (whatever that means).

Shamelessness presents a challenge to our moral fabric, which certainly has some stretch and flexibility, but not to an infinite degree. It can be torn. The argument continues that if the fabric is sundered, shamelessness and even moral anarchy will follow. When nothing is out of bounds and nothing is unacceptable, then everything is acceptable or at least fair game. The remedy is to rehabilitate the concept of shame.

Shame's Ancient Roots

Shame has been a topic in Western philosophy since at least Aristotle (384-323 BCE) and in Eastern philosophy since at least Confucius (551-479 BCE). Both claimed that shame plays an important role in moral development.

For Aristotle, shame is neither an emotion nor a firm character state. It is more a feeling and even a sort of “fear of disrepute.” Shame may be appropriate for youth because they’re still developing and haven’t achieved a firm character state. Bits of shame might inoculate against bad actions much like a vaccine against a serious illness. Shame functions as a corrective to bring a person into or back into alignment with accepted standards or practices.

Young people feel shame when they act in ways that older and wiser men would regard as disgraceful. One should feel shame in front of certain others. Shame is all about internalizing the right community’s beliefs and values. One feels shame in doing things she has reasons not to do.

The shameful person is one who does not appropriately or correctly recognize and respond to reasons. Feeling shame indicates that one has failed to live up to standards that one has or should make his own.

Shame involves a person taking her own survey, judging herself as woefully inadequate—even or especially if no actual others do so. Ashamed people pass neither their community’s survey nor their own.

A Warning Signal?

Feeling shame is a warning signal that a person is doing something that those people whom she respects or whose opinions matter would disapprove. If an act causes a person to feel shame, she knows she should not have done it. She knows that she should change her actions going forward. As people mature, they develop this “shame and recalibration” process by internalizing the norms, values, and beliefs of those other people whose opinions or authority matters.

Shaming is always normative; there is necessarily an embedded should or ought. To shame someone is not only to express disapproval of something he has already done but to effect a change in future actions.

A person who internally shames himself should act in different ways so as not to repeat the actions that bring shame. A person who can do this has achieved good or mature shame.

This model has some undeniable appeal, especially in the context of genuinely loving relationships between parents (or other responsible adults) and children. In that context, a parent saying to a child, “You ought to be ashamed of how you spoke to your grandmother,” may mean something such as “You hurt her feelings and I know you love her very much. We don’t talk in that manner to people we love.” Implicit in this are the claims that the child doesn’t want to be the sort who hurts others intentionally but rather wants to be part of the “we people” who do not do that.

As a child begins to internalize this sort of reasoning, the child becomes less dependent on the adult having to explicitly express these judgments aloud. A morally developing child may need to consciously consider this chain of reasoning and then choose not to speak in hurtful ways.

In this maturation process, the child unfurls the chains of reasoning and deliberating that become second nature to her. With more maturation, the need to intentionally reason is replaced with a firm and stable moral character where it seems as if those reasoning steps have already been taken.

The Necessity of Loving and Secure Relationships

If all children had the security of loving relationships in which moral development could be so thoughtfully and diligently cultivated, I would be more willing to accept the claim that shame can play healthy and transformative roles. The reality is that too many children lack that security and too many adults either lack the opportunities for this type of cultivation, have no interest, or simply do not care enough.

Shame Essential Reads

Chronic Shame: The Biggest Problem You Didn’t Know You Have

How Are Shame, Guilt, and Embarrassment Different?

Many people who have been traumatized as children or who have addictions will often describe themselves as feeling terrible, deep, and abiding shame. That shame hinders a person’s ability to participate fully in myriad social and moral practices. Such a person may lack the requisite skills for learning how to correctly and appropriately engage that internal shame mechanism.

For many, the shame mechanism gets stuck in the open throttle position. Shame isn’t so much a socializing emotion but a robust and dark animating living attitude or worldview. So many people meet the world in shame; many of their interactions and ways of being in the world begin and end in shame.

Many traumatized people will have difficulty achieving mature shame. It most surely is a perverse irony that people should feel shame for not feeling shame correctly.