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Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency
08:01

Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency

Published on: October 28, 2020

Vicarious shame.

Stephanie C M Welten1, Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger M Breugelmans

  • 1Department of Social Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, NL-5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. S.C.M.Welten@tilburguniversity.edu

Cognition & Emotion
|January 31, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People can feel vicarious shame due to group identity threats or empathic perspective-taking. Both processes link others' shameful behavior to a threat to the self, explaining variations in this emotion.

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Area of Science:

  • Social Psychology
  • Emotion Research
  • Self-Conscious Emotions

Background:

  • Vicarious shame involves experiencing shame for another person's actions.
  • Two primary explanations exist: the group-based emotion account and the empathy account.
  • Understanding these processes is key to understanding social emotions and self-identity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine the group-based emotion and empathy accounts of vicarious shame.
  • To determine how these processes explain the occurrence and variation of vicarious shame.
  • To integrate findings into a functional account of shame.

Main Methods:

  • Three studies were conducted.
  • Methods included autobiographical recall and experimental inductions.
  • Participants' experiences of vicarious shame were analyzed.

Main Results:

  • Both the group-based emotion and empathy accounts successfully explained vicarious shame.
  • Findings illuminated situational factors influencing vicarious shame.
  • Variations in vicarious shame experiences were observed and explained.
  • All forms of vicarious shame were linked to a threat to the self.

Conclusions:

  • Vicarious shame arises from distinct but related psychological processes.
  • Both group identification and empathy play crucial roles.
  • A unified functional account of shame can integrate these findings.