Mahatma Gandhi's Salt March unfolded in 1930 and involved Gandhi and a group of followers marching over 240 miles to the Arabian Sea, where they produced their own salt, openly protesting against British salt taxation in colonial India. The event, which was ultimately successful, had the effect of ‘shaming’ the British establishment into recognizing their own unjust Behaviour. A case where we can argue that the simple but powerful Emotion of Shame had huge impact on the behaviours of a powerful set of actors.
This does suggest that emotion can have a huge role in facilitating change but the extent to which this can be used to shape behaviours in a wide range of societal challenges we face today is perhaps not well understood. For example, is the anxiety we experience of living with the insecurity of cost-of-living increases more likely to mean we take action to protect ourselves? Can we, as some have suggested, look to the emotion of hope to spark action in the face of global warming? In the face of sexual assaults on women is anger an effective tool to spark action? These are questions that many commentators across a variety of disciplines frequently ask or comment on but there often isn’t a deep consideration of the ‘action-tendencies’ of emotion in practice. At least in a form accessible for those involved in behaviour change but also to inform public debate.
We will be looking at this issue in the context of a very powerful emotion – shame. We have selected this one partly because it seems such a consuming emotion but also due to its complexity. In some contexts, it seems to be an emotion that creates action, in others withdrawal. But in addition, in some circumstances shame seems justified while in others we might argue it is something we should be rejecting.
Let’s first look at what we know about emotion and behaviour change.
Emotion and behaviour change
That emotions give us useful information is widely acknowledged, in that they give us information about whether we feel that we have failed or succeeded in attaining our goals but also offer a motivational function by triggering goals or avoiding the failure of things we had desired. As such, it is no surprise that this has long been the topic of examination in the social sciences.
Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud, Konrad Lorenz and Clarke L. Hull historically looked at emotion in terms of innate drives: our emotional states are related to the history of the species itself or to the learned and past history of us as individuals. This ‘classic’ view of emotions implies that our emotions are ‘built in’ templates that ‘fire’ off – so ‘anger’, for example, is a built-in defence mechanism of our animal ‘fight-flight-freeze’ pathways. From this perspective, emotions have developed to play a key role in directing us towards appropriate responses.
More recent ‘constructivist’ theories of emotion offer a more nuanced view of how behaviour is driven by the emotion, pointing to the way choices can only be negotiated between the person and the situation and its structure of opportunities, constraints, and affordances.
Nevertheless, psychologists Katherine Wilson and Erik Thulin make a case for the way emotions are helpful for us to navigate complex environments. This, they suggest, means we can take a ‘functionalist approach’ where emotion is understood to underpin behaviour, pointing to a wealth of academic literature on the properties of emotion and their behavioural consequences.
Linking to behaviour change models
The challenge they identify is less about whether there is a link between emotion and behaviour and more that much of the academic work has yet to be translated for behaviour change researchers and practitioners, linking certain emotions to behaviours. They suggest that popular models of behaviour change fall down in this respect as they either:
fail to explicitly integrate emotion, e.g., theory of planned behaviour
fail to differentiate between emotions, e.g., the capability, opportunity, motivation, and behaviour (COM-B) model
or focus on a single emotion, e.g., protection motivation theory.
It seems that more informed guidance is needed for researchers and intervention designers to understand the way different emotions are most likely to lead to behaviour change, in what circumstances.
Shame over time
It is also worth noting how the currency of shame has been increasing over the last few decades, suggesting that this is something where the ‘currency’ is increasing (judging by a Google N-Gram search).
Arguably this is consistent with the changes in the emotion of shame that historian Peter Stearns notes in his book, ‘Shame: A brief history’ He sets out the case for the way that shame is not the same emotional phenomenon across all time periods and that today is a ‘far more individual, personal and psychological’ experience, whereas previously the emphasis was on social enforcement and imposition on groups.
Taking this historical perspective does allow us to see the way in which we might better understand what therapist and writer Brene Brown calls a ‘silent epidemic’, reflecting a punishing standard of individual performance.
Looking at the Google N-gram chart above which tracks the frequency of the use of the word in published books, we can see a resurgence in shame since the early 2000’s. Perhaps we can speculate that this reflects a move away from shame being seen as a tool of social influence on wider customs and norms to something which is an individualised mode of control. Whilst we have no definitive answers here, we can start to examine the way in which shame is currently understood and how we might think about it in the context of behaviour change.
Starting to define shame
We concur with Stearns that shame is an emotion that is not always immediately apparent such as anger or fear. This is in part perhaps because it a ‘self-conscious’ emotion, that along with pride, humiliation, embarrassment depends on a larger cognitive component. They are self-conscious as they need some awareness of the self on the one hand and group norms on the other. This means that self conscious emotions require the capacity to evaluate one’s self in the light of others.
It is perhaps this interface between the ‘me and the we’ that means ‘shame’ is the subject of much cultural, philosophical and literary examination. These sources give us what a constructivist view of emotion would suggest is called for to understand emotion - a good understanding of the situation and its attendant structure of opportunities, constraints, and affordances.
To help with this, we draw on the work of philosopher Alexis Shotwell who considers that shame has an important role in bringing about greater awareness and action in relation to ethnicity and gender. We will take her points and see if these can be applied to a wider range of issues where we are seeking to change behaviour.
The politics of emotion
First, it is perhaps most important to point out the way that shame is very much bound up with failing to meet a set of standards – and while these standards are often personal, they often result from the internalisation of social ones. This suggests an actual versus ideal self-discrepancy - a kind of disappointment concerning the self.
The issue here is, of course, who is setting the ‘standards’ against which a comparison is made. Marginalised groups can easily feel shame for failing to meet the standards set by society and as such there has been much social justice work which refutes the validity of these standards and thereby challenging the emotional response they create. For example, the LGBTQ+ rights movement challenges cisnormativity and heteronormative societal standards and directly shapes the emotional responses within these groups using ‘Pride’ in a way that challenges notions that shame is legitimate. The #MeToo movement also encourages survivors of sexual harassment and assault to share their experiences, thereby breaking the standards around silence and directly challenging the shame that often surrounds such experiences.
In her book ‘The Shame Machine’ Cathy O’Neil talks about the way the US First Lady Nancy Regan – repeated through 1980’s ‘Just say no’ in relation to drug taking. While this sounds like simple advice, to people suffering from addiction it was shaming, framing addiction as a choice and as such inferring they were guilty of making poor decisions. She uses this as an example of what she calls the ‘industrial shame complex’ where peoples feelings of shame on topics such as addiction, health, obesity and finances are monetised by organisations that consider they gain financially by people taking steps to avoid these feelings.
As such, it is important to recognise that shame is an emotion that has political implications – which is why many social justice activists emphasise that individuals should not feel shame for their own shortcomings as they are the result of larger societal structures. For example, poverty is often framed not as a personal failing but as a result of broader economic and political systems.
To help here, some have made a distinction between toxic shame (such as relating to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, appearance and so on) and productive shame. The latter offers a way to change individual or collective behaviour that goes against one's morals, values: here shame offers informational and motivational signalling that a behaviour or action is misaligned with one's standards.
Not that what is classed as toxic or productive is frequently contested ground – an important point here is that psychologists need to understand the political context they operate within. On this basis, if shame is used as part of a campaign to tackle global warming (e.g., if it is used encourage reduce use of private cars) some will see this as productive while others may view it as toxic (e.g., blaming groups of people that have little choice but to use cars to get to work).
O’Neil suggests that productive, or what she calls ‘healthy’ shame can work its magic but can only does so when the oppressed have been able to establish themselves as virtuous defenders of common values - so bed rock values are agreed upon, any indiscretion from these is clear and impossible to deny.
We will of course focus on ‘healthy’ shame and to help us we reference Alexis Shotwell and the way she has explored shame in her book ‘Knowing Otherwise’.
Bringing the tacit to the surface
There are many instances where, as Shotwell points out, we operate based on “Implicit understanding”. This is somewhat different to the way that psychologists talk about implicit – what Shotwell means is by this is our “background, taken-for-granted understanding of being in the world: The implicit is what provides the conditions for things to make sense to us.” She makes a distinction with ‘propositional activity’ which she calls claim-making activity; to put something propositionally is to put it in a linguistically intelligible form that could be evaluated as true or false.
The way we operate on this basis is often ‘unspoken’: we are guided by values and attitudes that are often unstated and unexamined. This certainly is consistent with the much vaunted ‘say do’ gap where our propositional position as captured in surveys is one thing, but our behaviour seems to be in opposition to it. This would suggest that although there are many values in common with regards to something such as global warming, Shotwell suggests we choose not to look too closely, so that things we are uncomfortable with can be ignored and essentially become invisible.
Shame is, however, one of the ways these unspoken points can come to the surface by the discomfort it creates – it never feels good. As Shotwell puts it:
“Shame seems to stick to our skin, seep in through our pores, run along our veins. It feels as though it is part of our body and our being.”
The visceral nature of it means it is something that we cannot avoid – it consumes our attention and explains why so often people are motivated to avoid the feeling of shame (Gilbert 1997, Fessler 1999).
Disfluency
Shotwell suggests we do not automatically know what to do with the feeling of shame which means we have a gap open up for something new and different to happen. As she puts it:
“Shame can provide a gap in practice; it can stop the conceptual habits we comfortably use to navigate the world. It has a disruptive function.”
Shame can therefore make things which otherwise go without notice ‘viscerally present’, moving from an implicit to a propositional knowledge. This feels very close to the way we discuss the importance of ‘disfluency’ where we seek to introduce friction into intuitive decision-making process to encourage people to reflect and consider their decision making in a more reflective way, creating space for change to happen
The interpersonal nature of shame
Shotwell suggests that not only does shame surface things that we have failed to properly examine but it always relates to others. This is the case regardless of whether there is an actual other person present at the moment of shame— it can arise even when we are alone.
Regardless of whether alone or in the presence of others, it is whether the view of others around some standard is seen as being influential to the individual that creates the conditions for shame to be experienced. Otherwise, if the view of others does not matter, their perspective can be simply dismissed or ignored. Hence, shame highlights something about the relationship that calls for sympathy and solidarity in particular. Shotwell talks about this in relation to marginalised groups and this is an important consideration – whilst implicitly we might choose not to look at experiences of marginalised groups we do not belong to, and ignore, their experience of shame – recognising the shame experienced by others requires us to examine our own views. It highlights where our views or expectations around the views from the standard may be evoking shame in certain groups and offers a chance to more overly consider this. .
Again, this is backed up by psychology research of ‘vignette experiments’ in the United States, India, and Israel that demonstrate beliefs about what actions are shameful closely track how negatively someone would feel if others found out they engaged in the action. Behavioural economic game experiments find that it is precisely this devaluation from others, rather than the wrongdoing itself, which evokes shame; shame avoidance is calibrated to avoid social judgment rather than wrongdoing.
Identity
Shotwell suggests that shame can be thought of as a moment of contradiction in the multiple selves that we comprise, a confrontation between the self one has been and various selves one wants to have been. In other words, we challenge the identity we have that has led to the feeling of shame.
Interestingly this links through to a huge literature on identity which, as we have explored previously, has significant implications for how we behave – if shame is a way in which we can encourage people to enact certain identities and stop others then there is clearly potential for driving change. Shotwell highlights this dissonance in competing identities in relation to racism:
“The experience of shame implies a repudiation of who one was then, and carries the sense that one also was not, inherently, that shamed self. In other words, the experience of shame in the face of racism—one’s own or other people’s—discloses both present racism and also potential for antiracist praxis, embedded in the desire to deny the racist self.”
Action tendencies
Does shame actually create change? This is a hard one to be definitive about – as Stearns points out, some groups may be resistant to shame. He suggests that in the US efforts to use shaming publicly to curb bloated executive salaries have failed to date and people even used information about other executive’s salaries to demand more for themselves. Not exactly a resounding success.
Nevertheless, careful psychological work has shown that shame is associated with a range of actions including inhibition of wrongdoings, prosocial behaviour, and motivation for self-change. Ilona de Hooge and colleagues found that shame activated both a motivation to restore one’s threatened self-image, and a protect motive to avoid further damage to one’s self-image. Both motives, when acting together, encouraged positive behaviours such as developing new skills or redoing one’s performance.
All of these add up to a powerful argument for, in Shotwell’s words, for “shame’s potential capacity to hold open, to not freeze, affective space.” It builds on Williamson and Thulin’s argument that we need to understand the ‘why’ of the relation between emotion and behaviour allowing us to then think of ways we can use this for behaviour change activation. This helps, at the very least, to create hypotheses for design and investigation – and which emotions are relevant to instigate change for which sorts of behaviour.
Shame in behaviour change campaigns
Shame was arguably a component of the recent ‘Say maaate to a mate’ campaign launched by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, aiming to take on sexism. The campaign was developed with David Fanner, a consultant at Ogilvy’s Behavioral Science Practice division. There has been a lot of debate over the semantics of ‘mate’; the decision to place responsibility on the friend, not the perpetrator; and whether the campaign trivializes the issue.
Whilst there are a lot of complex issues at play here, we could see that this does offer a means by which behaviour change can be encouraged by friendship groups effectively shaming one of them for misogyny. This emotion is not cited as the premise behind the campaign but nevertheless we can certainly read it with this in mind.
Other campaigns that we could consider used shame as a means for encouraging pro-social behaviour include Drought Shaming where neighbours see another person or business using water when water restrictions are in place, and report them to the authorities. Whether this is really shaming is debatable –it is set up in an antagonistic way so it could easily be seen as ‘punching down’ resulting in conflict and anger rather than identifying and agreeing a common set of values. An alternative to this comes from the South East Queensland region of Eastern Australia which experienced severe drought, raising concerns about potential water shortages. To remedy this, the Queensland Water Commission (QWC) launched the Target 140 campaign, which aimed to reduce average per capita water consumption from 180 to 140 litres per day.
A more helpful approach might be to crystalise the way that water stress is impacting other people in the community, reinforcing the interpersonal nature of shame. And then helping people to locate and activate more socially responsible identities – this is exactly what the Target 140 campaign did very successful in Queensland Australia, reinforcing that a good Queenslander saves water, and is ‘Water-Wise’. Across the different activations used, there was a targeting of people’s identification as ‘Queenslanders’. In this way it redefined what it meant to be a good Queenslander: a good Queenslander saves water and is ‘Water-Wise’. Instilling a sense of common civic values, beach cities ordered the public sand-washing shower stations turned off and fountains were quiet. To not participate and fail to follow the social norms would arguably incur a sense of shame, given the social identities are so strong.
Note that caution is likely the watchword here. Stearns cites law professor James Whitman who worries about giving free rein to crowd psychology around this topic – suggesting that public opinion can be unstable and he suggests that this would be tantamount to the government turning over its authority “to a fickle and uncontrolled general populace”.
In conclusion
There is so much that can be unpacked here, including the way that some groups that exert power over others may cite themselves as victims of widespread criticism – and as such position themselves as shamed – Cathy O’Neil cites the incel movement as an example of this sort of act. So, it may be more difficult than ever to identify instances of ‘healthy’ or ‘productive’ shame – the definition of this will surely depend on who you are talking to. As O’Neil points out, a sense of shared norms and a sense of trust are important otherwise the shame will be bullying, ineffective or both.
Perhaps a more productive route suggested by O’Neil is from the work of psychologist Donna Hicks concerning the subject of ‘dignity’. Hicks is an expert in the field of international conflict resolution and emphasizes the importance of recognizing and honouring dignity in all human interactions, both in conflict resolution and daily life. Dignity violations perpetuate shame, so by thinking about how to help people to retain their dignity then we can avoid a situation where shame is such a dominant emotion. O’Neil suggests that one of the most powerful ways to do this is to give people the benefit of the doubt – ‘represents the first step toward dismantling the shame machines’.
Emotions do not sit outside of a social, cultural and political context – and as such psychologists need to cast their nets wide if they are to properly understand the way in which they might be deployed to encourage change. The example of shame is one which illustrates the potential complexity of this – and how emotion is not something to deployed without understanding the potential for failure or indeed even making the situation worse. Nevertheless, with the challenges facing the world increasing, there is a need to call on change strategies that can operate at scale. Shotwell and O’Neil have pointed out that, in the right hands, shame surely has the potential to be a force for positive outcomes as much as it has been, and continues to be, the opposite for many.
