journal article Open Access Jan 01, 2022

The evolution of shame and its display

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Abstract
AbstractThe shame system appears to be natural selection's solution to the adaptive problem of information-triggered reputational damage. Over evolutionary time, this problem would have led to a coordinated set of adaptations – the shame system – designed to minimise the spread of negative information about the self and the likelihood and costs of being socially devalued by others. Thisinformation threat theory of shamecan account for much of what we know about shame and generate precise predictions. Here, we analyse the behavioural configuration that people adopt stereotypically when ashamed – slumped posture, downward head tilt, gaze avoidance, inhibition of speech – in light of shame's hypothesised function. This behavioural configuration may have differentially favoured its own replication by (a) hampering the transfer of information (e.g. diminishing audiences’ tendency to attend to or encode identifying information – shamecamouflage) and/or (b) evoking less severe devaluative responses from audiences (shamedisplay). The shame display hypothesis has received considerable attention and empirical support, whereas the shame camouflage hypothesis has to our knowledge not been advanced or tested. We elaborate on this hypothesis and suggest directions for future research on the shame pose.
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Cited By
17
From Envy to Radicalization

Michael Moncrieff, Pierre Lienard · 2023

Evolutionary Psychological Science
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17
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141
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Published
Jan 01, 2022
Vol/Issue
4
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Cite This Article
Mitchell Landers, Daniel Sznycer (2022). The evolution of shame and its display. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 4. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.43
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