Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: you know, we, uh, we all have a lot of
Speaker 1: ideas about what Shane is. Certain images come to mind
Speaker 1: from our own life, from the world of fiction. But
Speaker 1: but we're here to tell you the shame uh is
Speaker 1: spider Man. Shame is spider Man. And let's explain that.
Speaker 1: Let's unpack that because there were that there was an experiment,
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, Indeed, two thousand thirteen study published in
Speaker 1: the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They took
Speaker 1: more than seven hundred persisipents from Finland, Sweden, and Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and they had them view emotion laden words, videos, facial expressions,
Speaker 1: and stories. And then the Protestants self reported areas of
Speaker 1: their bodies that felt diff print following the exposure. So
Speaker 1: then they take they took this information and they used
Speaker 1: to create computer generated silhouettes with the areas colored to
Speaker 1: no areas of increased bodily sensation like red yellows and
Speaker 1: oranges and decreased cold blues. Okay, so the aim here
Speaker 1: was to map bodily sensations in connection with specific emotions,
Speaker 1: and it ends up looking like an infrared image. By
Speaker 1: the way it does. It looks like straight up infrared
Speaker 1: predator imagery of of human body. But but it's not created.
Speaker 1: That was created through self reporting, and really they're quite
Speaker 1: interesting looking. Do check it out. Will include a link
Speaker 1: to the study on the landing page for this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should check it out. Because all of those emotions
Speaker 1: are represented on the body, and the only emotion that
Speaker 1: is a full bodied emotion that self reported is happiness,
Speaker 1: which I think is not too surprising, right, um, But
Speaker 1: the one that we are focusing on today, shame, Well,
Speaker 1: it's represent ended in a way that the person the
Speaker 1: silhouette kind of looks like Spider Man, indeed. Yeah. Whereas
Speaker 1: happiness is like bright yellow face, yellow chest, and then
Speaker 1: red over the rest of the body, Shame is uh,
Speaker 1: mostly dark body, but also some red on the chest,
Speaker 1: red face, and then these big sort of almond shaped
Speaker 1: yellow blotches right where our cheeks would be. But they
Speaker 1: really do look like the large, low almond shaped eyes
Speaker 1: of everyone's favorite comic book Web Slinger. Now, this was
Speaker 1: observed by a comment er on the the actual article,
Speaker 1: which we thought was pretty clever. So we're like, yeah, shame,
Speaker 1: shame does look like Spider Man in the body when
Speaker 1: it's expressed. And anxiety, by the way, to me, looks
Speaker 1: like dark Maul. Let's see, let's see whiche is anxiety? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a definite dark Maul kind of quality off
Speaker 1: of that, kind of like streaks on the cheeks there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sadness looks a little bit like um, like that painting
Speaker 1: the the screen, you know. Well, yeah, I thought that too,
Speaker 1: and I thought, yeah, that is suddness. Although the scream
Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to be some sort of existential terror. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's also sad too. Sadness also kind of looks, you know,
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly like the ghost character on Yogaba Gabba Google. Google. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like Google. I can't believe we
Speaker 1: know that. All right, So obviously we're talking about shame today. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know that that particular feeling that is evoked when say,
Speaker 1: your grandmother says something like shema and you, Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: shema on you. Right. Um, there, there's a whole boatload
Speaker 1: of stuff associated with shame. But first we should probably
Speaker 1: define it. Yeah, and in this we get into the
Speaker 1: basic meat of shame and guilt. They're often thought off
Speaker 1: sort of that's the same thing, but they're different. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're quite different, and it's just really important. Like
Speaker 1: a lot hinges on this. Yes, So what's guilt? Right?
Speaker 1: When do you feel guilt? You feel guilt when you
Speaker 1: you have remorse for something you did, a specific crime,
Speaker 1: specific action. There's this thing that you did and you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: I did that, that that sucks, I'm sorry that I
Speaker 1: did it. But then you have shame. And shame is
Speaker 1: a little different. Shame is if it's attached to an action,
Speaker 1: then it's more like, I can't believe I'm the type
Speaker 1: of person who would do that. It's the painful feeling
Speaker 1: that arises from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improfitable, improfitable.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's almost more tied to there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with me. There's a fault in me, not a fault
Speaker 1: in mere merely in my actions. Yeah. Sociologist burn A
Speaker 1: Brown says, in the simplest term, shame is about who
Speaker 1: we are, not what we've done. It's often lasting devastating
Speaker 1: and makes us feel abnormal and alone. And she gives
Speaker 1: some examples of her own research into this. When she's
Speaker 1: looking at the difference between guilt and shame, says, guilt
Speaker 1: is I did something bad. Shame is I am bad
Speaker 1: or I made a flawed to decision or I am flawed.
Speaker 1: So you see the pattern there. Yeah, there are fundamental
Speaker 1: differences here that will will definitely pull apart in this episode, right,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about how powerful this emotion is shame,
Speaker 1: I mean, how we can actually dictate the path of
Speaker 1: your life and how you operate out in the world.
Speaker 1: But first we have to look at one of shame's
Speaker 1: calling cards, also guilt and embarrassments calling cards blushing. And
Speaker 1: we'll look at Papa Darwin here, who in the Expression
Speaker 1: of Emotions and Man and Animals, which he wrote in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two, looked at the movements of expression in
Speaker 1: the face and the body, and was particularly interested in blushing.
Speaker 1: He said it is the most peculiar and the most
Speaker 1: human of all expressions. Now, Darwin suspected that blushing had
Speaker 1: to do with how we appear to others. He wrote,
Speaker 1: mental states which induced blushing consists of shyness, shame, the modesty,
Speaker 1: the essentially element in all being self attention. It is
Speaker 1: not the simple act of reflecting on our own appearance,
Speaker 1: but the thinking of what others think of us, which
Speaker 1: excites a blush, and he was onto something there. Um.
Speaker 1: He also felt like the blushing was directly related to
Speaker 1: the part of the body that the person was thinking
Speaker 1: of or thought was being observed. In part, he thought
Speaker 1: this because he was looking at a physicians account of
Speaker 1: a woman who when she disrobed and her chest area
Speaker 1: began to blush in her chest area. Now he was
Speaker 1: taking his cues mostly from physicians accounts because he wasn't
Speaker 1: going around making people blushing and gathering a bunch of data,
Speaker 1: So that's where he was collecting some of his thoughts from.
Speaker 1: And he also thought that blushing could have been genetic,
Speaker 1: like this idea that the more your ancestors blushed, the
Speaker 1: more robust it would show up or be selected for
Speaker 1: in yourself. Um. That is this the full pick? Sure? No, um.
Speaker 1: And in fact Darwin didn't distinguish between embarrassment and guilt
Speaker 1: and shame um to try to get to the reasons
Speaker 1: for blushing. He just kind of lumped them all in
Speaker 1: one big pool. Um. In eighteen seventy one, he wrote
Speaker 1: to his friend H. Wedgewood. He said, I wish I
Speaker 1: had said more about shame, an awfully complex subject where
Speaker 1: no two persons would ever quite agree, and I hardly
Speaker 1: expect anyone will agree with me. But as yet I
Speaker 1: naw my colors to the past. In other words, here's
Speaker 1: what I've figured out so far about shame and blushing,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's the full picture, you know.
Speaker 1: And indeed the full picture is still kind of lacking today,
Speaker 1: even though there's been a lot more study since that time. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, with blushing, we're we're again. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the involuntary reddening of a person's face due to emo
Speaker 1: emotional stress. That might be anxiety, it could be romance, anger, embarrassment,
Speaker 1: and of course shame. Now the questions arise, though, of course,
Speaker 1: um you know exactly, you know, how is it coming
Speaker 1: about physiologically? What are there different types of blushes? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, we observe things like the mere awareness of
Speaker 1: a blush can cause it to increase. Being told that
Speaker 1: you're blushing when you're not can cause the blush to
Speaker 1: manifest um and and and certainly mileage varies from person
Speaker 1: to person. We can we can all think of people
Speaker 1: who blush more easily than others. Um. But scientists have asked,
Speaker 1: is a blush a single phenomenon or are there different
Speaker 1: kinds of blushing? Like how do you make sense of
Speaker 1: the fact that you have like that sudden blush, like
Speaker 1: like oops, did something embarrassing? Oops, I'm really shamed. Just
Speaker 1: total red face versus the creeping blush that might manifest,
Speaker 1: you know, slowly during the course of a presentation or
Speaker 1: a speech or an increasingly intense conversation. As a psychologist
Speaker 1: Ray Kroizer points out, it's an it's an understuddied area.
Speaker 1: It's an understudied area of human expression. Part of this
Speaker 1: is big. The blush is difficult to measure, even with
Speaker 1: our modern tools, even with you know, thermal sensors and cameras. Uh.
Speaker 1: The fleeting blush, especially like the micro expression of blushes,
Speaker 1: is very difficult to study. And the physiology of the
Speaker 1: blush itself is really a complex tapestry that involves the
Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system and its regulation. It involves uh brandy
Speaker 1: kinon of compound released in the blood in some circumstances
Speaker 1: that causes contraction of smooth muscles and the dilation of
Speaker 1: blood vessels. Histamine, nitric oxide, and a number of other
Speaker 1: combined factors uh and plus you can throw into the
Speaker 1: into and you can also throw into the mix that
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other things that can make your
Speaker 1: face flush, not only emotions, but you know, hot flashes, exercises,
Speaker 1: sexual arousal, um, you name it. Well, there's also the
Speaker 1: kind of blush that can arise when you do have
Speaker 1: attention directed towards you. But it's pleasurable, right, Maybe it's
Speaker 1: some sort of positive experience in your blushing, but it
Speaker 1: then can become negative because you're called out for it.
Speaker 1: So there's a changeability to blushing. Um. And there there
Speaker 1: are a ton of different kinds as you say that
Speaker 1: we haven't really gotten to the bottom of, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of different sources for blushing. But I think most
Speaker 1: people can relate to a blushing related to unwanted attention
Speaker 1: at one time or another in your life. Right. And
Speaker 1: in order to get to the depths of the self
Speaker 1: conscious blush, there was a study conducted by Peter D.
Speaker 1: Drummond and Nadia Mirco. This was published in the March
Speaker 1: two thousand and four edition of Psychotherapy, with the paper
Speaker 1: uh titled staring at one side of the face increases
Speaker 1: blood flow on that side of the face. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's figure out what they did here, because I think
Speaker 1: that gives you a clue to at least one of
Speaker 1: their methods. The setup is this. They had twenty eight
Speaker 1: participants who were asked to either sing out loud or
Speaker 1: read out loud. Robert, what would your preference be? It
Speaker 1: comes down to who's uh, who's watching? You know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be more comfortable reading. But but singing is
Speaker 1: a different a different situation entirely. It's a different experience,
Speaker 1: a different communication, a different expression of yourself. Uh. Right,
Speaker 1: Reading is more it's a normative thing, right, Like you're
Speaker 1: talking right now. You can read at the same pace.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of difference there. But singing out
Speaker 1: of context, like when you're not on a stage really
Speaker 1: kind of uh draws a lot of attention, right, says, Hey,
Speaker 1: look at me doing something totally weird out of context. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's why they chose this, and this is what
Speaker 1: they found. Increases in cheek temperature were greater on the
Speaker 1: observed than the unobserved side during both tasks. Okay, changes
Speaker 1: in cheek temperature were symmetrical when the experiment or sat
Speaker 1: next to another twenty three participants and looked straight ahead,
Speaker 1: as well when the experiment or stared at one side
Speaker 1: of participants face through a glass window while the participants
Speaker 1: would sing. However, increases in cutaneous blood flow were greater
Speaker 1: on the observed and the unobserved side of the forehead
Speaker 1: during singing. Okay, there's more blushing going on on one
Speaker 1: side of the face. Um, So I think that gives
Speaker 1: you a bit of a clue as to that unwanted
Speaker 1: attention and how it would act on the body. Okay,
Speaker 1: And of course, as we were discussing before we came
Speaker 1: into record, I imagine this this may differ depending on
Speaker 1: how musical one's family upbringing is, or how how prone
Speaker 1: one is to break into song in their daily life. Right,
Speaker 1: if you were really off key, perhaps you would have
Speaker 1: a scarlet blush, which might even be sort of saying
Speaker 1: I apologize. And indeed, that's a whole other argument that
Speaker 1: that blushing is a signal to your fellow. Your fellow
Speaker 1: primates to to communicate something. Uh. Now, when it comes
Speaker 1: to primate it's it's worth noting and I think I've
Speaker 1: mentioned this in the past when you when you look
Speaker 1: at social and non social primates, the non social ones,
Speaker 1: the loners, that's where you tend to find the really
Speaker 1: crazy looking uh, primate faces, that's where you see, you know,
Speaker 1: a whole lot of colors and and uh and and
Speaker 1: and and just crazy stuff going on, you know, like
Speaker 1: really the eye catching primates. But the social primates, those
Speaker 1: are the ones that are gonna have the planer faces,
Speaker 1: the place that the faces that there's less remarkable coloration
Speaker 1: going on. And that's because the face, as with humans,
Speaker 1: is essentially um a communications array. You know, it's for
Speaker 1: the use of expressions and micro expressions to communicate what
Speaker 1: you're feeling and what you're about to do to those
Speaker 1: around you. And so the argument here is that the
Speaker 1: blush is pretty much the same. Now, if it is,
Speaker 1: then what is a blush saying? Well? According to clinical
Speaker 1: psychologist and author Robert J. Edelman has done a lot
Speaker 1: of work with blushing and shame, He says that it's
Speaker 1: essentially saying, hey, I'm sorry, I'm at fault. I understand
Speaker 1: the gravity of what has happened, I empathize. In short,
Speaker 1: it's signaling that the blushers uh. In short, it signals
Speaker 1: the blushers adherence to societal norms and acknowledges failure, communicates
Speaker 1: appeasement and a nonverbal apology. Um, which which I think
Speaker 1: matches up with a lot of a lot of our
Speaker 1: experiences of shame, you know. Yeah. And I'm just curious
Speaker 1: to know what sort of circumstances cause you to blush. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this earlier when you're talking about
Speaker 1: like positive comments making one blush, Like I I do
Speaker 1: feel like I experienced that if someone says something nice
Speaker 1: about me in the presence of others, I get that
Speaker 1: kind of uncomfortable blush, even though I'm receiving positive feedback.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an embarrassment thing. I mean, it's not shame, right,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a shame. It must be that
Speaker 1: attention thing, you know, it's um and uh yeah. And
Speaker 1: in terms of like straight up shameful blushing, I so
Speaker 1: I do blush about Let's say, if I forget to
Speaker 1: you know, do something, you know, around the house, and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, well, that's you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: I forgot to clean the cat box or something, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I might blush when I admit that, because it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: not only did I not clean out the cat box,
Speaker 1: I'm the type of person who forgets to the cat
Speaker 1: box that's pooping it, um, you know, which is a
Speaker 1: little bit of guilt and shame with that. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a pretty you know, because I guess it
Speaker 1: kind of ties into, you know, how I view myself
Speaker 1: and how I want other people to view me. So
Speaker 1: I view myself as the type of person who wouldn't
Speaker 1: let the cat poop build up your cat box cleaner exactly.
Speaker 1: So if I if I deviate from that, like that's
Speaker 1: like a fault in me. So, yeah, I've thought of
Speaker 1: it before, and it for me oddly, it's when someone
Speaker 1: makes some sort of sexual innuendo. I'm not necessarily embarrassed
Speaker 1: at that. In fact, I'm usually the first person to
Speaker 1: do that. It makes some sort of you know, sexual
Speaker 1: innuendo joke. But if someone else says it, then for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, I yeah, where you're just you're it's almost
Speaker 1: like you're you're embarrassed for other people or you're well,
Speaker 1: I mean even if it's like you're privy to the joke,
Speaker 1: so you were in the culture of the joke, you're
Speaker 1: you're among your fellow primates, and this is the subject
Speaker 1: matter on the table, you know. Yeah, we actually got
Speaker 1: a great email about this. It's called second hand embarrassment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that ties in directly to what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, But embarrassment it's again its own category. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have these long ranging effects that shame does. Before
Speaker 1: we get into the deterrent side of shame or potential uses,
Speaker 1: I do want to point out a couple of quick
Speaker 1: stats here. One study found that of those polls that
Speaker 1: they never blushed alone, which is interesting and it kind
Speaker 1: of backs up the idea that it's about communicating and
Speaker 1: being observed. But then you already mentioned like blushing, um
Speaker 1: while writing engage in a solitary act. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: were talking about this earlier that sometimes from the effort
Speaker 1: of writing, especially from writing some piece of fiction, that
Speaker 1: I come out USh cheeked and blushing. Yeah. And oh
Speaker 1: and I also want to point out that there was
Speaker 1: a two thousand nine study that found that people who
Speaker 1: blush due to some violation are seeing less negatively eve
Speaker 1: they blush, So uh, the idea of being that that
Speaker 1: again we're potentially communicating authentic shame over something. And then
Speaker 1: when when we receive that signal from another of our
Speaker 1: fellow primates, we say, oh, well, they're really sorry, they
Speaker 1: really feel bad about it, So I'm going to be
Speaker 1: less hard on them because there's the blush. Well, and
Speaker 1: that's an aspect of vulnerability to write. All right, So
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about blushing, do check
Speaker 1: out Josh Clark's article why do people Blush? It's really excellent. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: when we talk about shame versus guilt as a deterrent um,
Speaker 1: we've got some interesting findings here, especially if you start
Speaker 1: to think about your mom, what her her modus operandi
Speaker 1: was growing up to she shamey or did she guilt you?
Speaker 1: Because because one is far more effective in the other. Um.
Speaker 1: And this sort of power of shaming, by the way,
Speaker 1: goes back way way far right, because um, there there
Speaker 1: is a power to it. It dates back at least
Speaker 1: to the stockades of colonial times here in the United States.
Speaker 1: But the question then becomes does public shaming work as
Speaker 1: a deterrent to crimes or even unwanted behaviors and George
Speaker 1: Mason psychologist June technique. She wanted to answer those questions.
Speaker 1: She suspected that shame would be less effective than guilt
Speaker 1: in deterring for future crime. So think of the example
Speaker 1: of guilt equals I did something bad, right in Shane
Speaker 1: equals I am bad. Okay. Now, what she did is
Speaker 1: she recruited more than four hundred inmates at a local jail,
Speaker 1: all recently incarcerated on felony charges. She administered a standard
Speaker 1: assessment to identify which inmates were prone to guilt feeling
Speaker 1: feelings or shame feelings, and it also identified those who
Speaker 1: most who were most likely to blame others for their problems,
Speaker 1: because that's key here too. Then the inmates served their
Speaker 1: time and they were released. About a year after the release,
Speaker 1: Tagni and her colleagues followed up to see how they
Speaker 1: were doing, and they used several different measurements, including self
Speaker 1: reports and public reports, to come up with a recidivism
Speaker 1: score for each inmate. And by recidivism, what we mean
Speaker 1: here is a relapse into criminal behavior that might land
Speaker 1: them in jail again. Yeah, So her prediction was that
Speaker 1: shame from intimates would be more likely to return to
Speaker 1: crime after they were released, and her initial findings seemed
Speaker 1: to support this. Shame seemed to cause former inmates to
Speaker 1: blame others for their misfortune, leading to to to repeat crimes,
Speaker 1: but those who felt guilty were less likely to repeat
Speaker 1: their crimes a year out. So again placed directly into
Speaker 1: do you do you feel like you're actually guilty or
Speaker 1: is it something deeper? Right? But but then further study
Speaker 1: revealed that this is a little more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: UH found that shame led to is m only when
Speaker 1: the humiliated inmates blamed others, but when shamed individuals accepted
Speaker 1: the blame themselves, they didn't suffer an increase in recidivism.
Speaker 1: So in some cases we can see shame might hold
Speaker 1: you back. Other times it could give you a certain
Speaker 1: amount of strength to give you a springboard to make
Speaker 1: some changes. UM. One of the key ways here UH
Speaker 1: that the technique points out is that shame can make
Speaker 1: you withdrawal from others, and it kind of depends on
Speaker 1: who you're withdrawing from whether that's a good move or bad.
Speaker 1: So if you means you're when withdrawing from enablers, from
Speaker 1: other criminals, from addicts, well then that might be a
Speaker 1: step in the right direction. That kind of with withdrawing,
Speaker 1: withdrawing from people would give be like a springboard for change.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if you're withdrawing from positive influences,
Speaker 1: if you're withdrawing from family in people that you feel
Speaker 1: ashamed in the presence of, or you're withdrawing from other
Speaker 1: important UH structures in your life. Say say church is important,
Speaker 1: you end up withdrawing from church because you're ashamed of
Speaker 1: what you did. If you're withdrawing from you know, other
Speaker 1: other resources that could help you out, then that's that's
Speaker 1: bad news. You just go into that that shame spiral
Speaker 1: away from the UH, the the latter that could pull
Speaker 1: you up. That's right, And particularly if you're withdrawing because
Speaker 1: you blame that person or that institution or that thing.
Speaker 1: And we see parallels with the study and alcoholism. Dr
Speaker 1: Tony Webb, who holds a PhD in trans disciplinary research
Speaker 1: at the University of West Sydney, has has looked into
Speaker 1: this and he says that internally generated shame turns into
Speaker 1: shaming something done to us that violates our sense of
Speaker 1: the fair go and not unnaturally we tend to react
Speaker 1: against this by attacking others, um blaming as as we discussed,
Speaker 1: hiding as we also discussed and hiding from ourselves, he says.
Speaker 1: And so this plays into a kind of social and
Speaker 1: ecological apathy, as he says, and a wide range of
Speaker 1: addictive behaviors have a common root, and what he says
Speaker 1: is unacknowledged shame. So let's look at a study here
Speaker 1: that looks a bit more into It's from two thousand
Speaker 1: and thirteen from the Clinical Psychological Science by Jessica Tracy
Speaker 1: and Daniel Randall's of the University of British Columbia, and
Speaker 1: they looked at drinking and health outcomes and a sample
Speaker 1: of newly sober recovering alcoholics. They used measures that assessed
Speaker 1: both self reported shame and shame related behaviors. And these
Speaker 1: this becomes really important by the way the self reported
Speaker 1: versus the behavior. So the behavior might be a narrow
Speaker 1: chest and slumping shoulders, and the researchers took that information
Speaker 1: and they hypothesized that participants would be less able to
Speaker 1: voluntarily control their behavioral displays of shame and that would
Speaker 1: be their tell. So in the first session, participants were
Speaker 1: asked to describe the last time that they drank and
Speaker 1: they felt badly about it, and the responses were videotaped
Speaker 1: by the researchers. In a second session about four months later,
Speaker 1: participants were asked to report their drinking behaviors and they
Speaker 1: completed questionnaires about their physical and mental health at both
Speaker 1: of these sessions. Now Here are the findings people who
Speaker 1: displayed more shame related behavior were likely to be in
Speaker 1: were more likely to be in poor physical health at
Speaker 1: the time of their first session. But more surprising, though,
Speaker 1: was the finding that behavioral displays of shame predicted whether
Speaker 1: participants would relapse after the first session, not the self
Speaker 1: reported but the way they were behaving with their their
Speaker 1: body postures and Tracy and Randall says how much shame
Speaker 1: participants displayed strongly predicted not only whether they relapsed, but
Speaker 1: how bad that relapse was. That is, how many drinks
Speaker 1: they had if they did relapse. So they could take
Speaker 1: that information, they could take this, this outward expression of
Speaker 1: shame through the body and predict whether or not that
Speaker 1: person would would fall into say that recidivism, so to speak,
Speaker 1: of alcoholism, that relapse. It's interesting this uh reminds me
Speaker 1: a little bit of the implicit association tests that we
Speaker 1: discussed in our last episode, you know about weeding out
Speaker 1: are self reported UM ideas about self and others versus
Speaker 1: what we're feeling and and what and what we're thinking
Speaker 1: below cognition, right. I mean this requires you to identify
Speaker 1: your feelings is either shame or guilt in order to
Speaker 1: begin to understand how to change the behavior, right, because
Speaker 1: if you're unaware of it, you have an implicit bias,
Speaker 1: right that's working under the cover about how how this
Speaker 1: shame is manifesting in yourself. Um. And so that's that
Speaker 1: would be one of the things that that you would
Speaker 1: have to confront if you wanted to change yourself, because
Speaker 1: if you think I am this, I am a bad
Speaker 1: person as opposed to I have exhibited some bad behaviors. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the difference between change and just staying mired in
Speaker 1: that mindset. Indeed, and this this all stacks up really
Speaker 1: well with UH what I was reading from University of
Speaker 1: Alberta researcher Jessica van Villet UH two thousand nine study
Speaker 1: where she looked at positive shame and problematic shame, which
Speaker 1: you know we've been discussing here on the positive level,
Speaker 1: of shame can be that springboard. It can it can
Speaker 1: force us to make changes that that that help us
Speaker 1: to protect our relationships and preserve that fabric of society.
Speaker 1: Again getting into that idea that that we feel shame
Speaker 1: and because we've fallen out of step with societal norms. Uh.
Speaker 1: But then there's the problematic shame where you know, the
Speaker 1: shame spy or withdrawing from others, withdrawing from the very
Speaker 1: things you need to pull yourself out of the pit. Right.
Speaker 1: And her research shows that people who feel debilitated by
Speaker 1: shame tend to again internalize and over personalized that since
Speaker 1: the situation and uh, and they seem to feel like
Speaker 1: they cannot change things, they cannot pull things around. Uh.
Speaker 1: So she has a few suggestions here that I think
Speaker 1: are are very valid and really stack up well we've
Speaker 1: been discussing here. She says, step back from the problem
Speaker 1: and view the picture in a different light. She says,
Speaker 1: possibly identify external factors that contribute to your actions or situation,
Speaker 1: break the hopelessness, and realize that there are steps you
Speaker 1: can take to make things right again and make connections
Speaker 1: to people, uh, individuals, to humanity itself or even even
Speaker 1: in some cases depending on your particular worldview to a
Speaker 1: higher power or a more noble idea, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think this is particularly important in this the sort
Speaker 1: of environment that we are in historically with the Internet culture,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of shaming, right, and so we're
Speaker 1: absorbing the on subconscious levels. And so I think that
Speaker 1: you even have to uh cultivate an awareness and that
Speaker 1: aspect too. It's not just your own behaviors or how
Speaker 1: you operate in the world, but the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that you are exposing yourself to you or even participating
Speaker 1: in virtually online. And I'm talking about dog shaming here. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the someone's dog has done something bad
Speaker 1: like knock over a plant, and then they essentially show
Speaker 1: them ashamed with a sign that says I knocked over
Speaker 1: my master's potted plant. Yes, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: dog shaming sites, including dog shaming dot com. And just
Speaker 1: as you said, it could be like a dog looking
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, like it's been reproached and it's
Speaker 1: got those baleful eyes, and it might say I tried
Speaker 1: to make a sandwich, but I don't know how, and
Speaker 1: then it's got a bunch of pieces of bread stacked
Speaker 1: up on its head because they because they've as we've
Speaker 1: discussed in u in some of our past episodes about
Speaker 1: dog and human relationships, they take on that submissive pose
Speaker 1: which we often project shame and apology and always feels
Speaker 1: sad over what he did, when in reality, it's it's submission.
Speaker 1: It is And um, if if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about that, that episode is really interesting. UM. I
Speaker 1: think it's called Your Dog Doesn't Love You, but it
Speaker 1: talks about the coevolution of humans and dogs and how
Speaker 1: dogs eye tracking evolved with humans because it was so
Speaker 1: important for them to try to clue into what we
Speaker 1: wanted from them and what we were thinking so that
Speaker 1: they could get the scraps of food from us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course it's interesting to think back on that and
Speaker 1: then look at this episode where we dismantle a human
Speaker 1: display of emotion and uh and when you when you
Speaker 1: start really taking it apart, like is it that different
Speaker 1: from the from this display of obedience and submission on
Speaker 1: the part of the dog that we classify as as
Speaker 1: being who I'm sorry, And then we're talking about blood
Speaker 1: vessels welling up in the face and it's basically saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I stepped out of line. It's it's in a way,
Speaker 1: it's kind of its own uh signal of submission. The
Speaker 1: difference here, though, is the dog is not saying I
Speaker 1: am a bad dog. I mean the dogs like, all right,
Speaker 1: what do I need to do to get to that treat?
Speaker 1: What sort of Oh you want the bailful eyes? Okay,
Speaker 1: here you go, there you go. Yeah, the human human
Speaker 1: complexity changes everything. All right? Well, hey, you want to
Speaker 1: check out dog shaming, You want to check out that
Speaker 1: episode on whether your dog Loves You? You can find
Speaker 1: all of that on the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: And that is it's Stuffable your mind dot com. That's
Speaker 1: the mother ship. That's where we find all of our videos,
Speaker 1: podcast episodes, blog post, you name it. And if you
Speaker 1: have feedback on this on guilt shame, embarrassment um, you
Speaker 1: can send us an email at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: house to forks dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com