Self -conscious emotions (e.g., shame, pride) are fundamentally important to a wide range of psychological processes, yet they have received relatively little attention compared to other, more "basic" emotions (e.g., sadness, joy)
. This article outlines the unique features that distinguish self-conscious from basic emotions and then explains why generally accepted models of basic emotions do not adequately capture the self-conscious emotion process. The authors present a new model of self-conscious emotions, specify a set of predictions derived from the model, and apply the model to narcissistic self-esteem regulation. Finally, the authors discuss the model's broader implications for future research on self and emotion.Willy Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, experiences such profound shame from failing to achieve the American dream that he commits suicide by the final act of the play. In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is so overwhelmed by guilt after murdering her king, she hallucinates spots of blood on her hands and takes her own life. Oedipus, the tragic hero of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, is plunged into epic shame when he realizes that he killed his father and married his mother. Oedipus refrains from suicide but stabs out his eyes so he will never have to look himself, or others, in the face again. And in Ovid's Metamorphoses, the infamous Narcissus is so consumed by pride that he chooses eternal self-reflection over the possibility of a meaningful romantic relationship.As these four stories illustrate, self-conscious emotions, such as shame, guilt, and pride, play a central role in motivating and regulating people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Campos, 1995;. Self-conscious emotions drive people to work hard in achievement and task domains (Stipek, 1995;Weiner, 1985), and to behave in moral, socially appropriate ways in their social interactions and intimate relationships (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994;Leith & Baumeister, 1998;Retzinger, 1987). Most people spend a great deal of time avoiding social approbation, a strong elicitor of shame and embarrassment. We worry about losing social status in the eyes of others and, as Goffman (1955) noted, our every social act is influenced by even the slight chance of public shame or loss of face. In fact, according to the Cooley-Scheff Conjecture, we are "virtually always in a state of either pride or shame" (Scheff, 1988, p. 399).Researchers have linked self-conscious emotions to a wide variety of outcomes. Guilt, for example, has been found to be centrally involved in reparative and prosocial behaviors such as empathy, altruism, and caregiving (e.g., Batson, 1987;Baumeister et al., 1994;Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Shame has been shown to mediate the negative emotional and physical health consequences of social stigma; victims of physical abuse (Feiring, Taska, & Lewis, 2002) and HIV-positive men (Kemeny, 2002) suffer poorer emotional and physical health if they feel ashamed of their stigma. Shame is also assoc...