The damping of collective rotational motion is studied microscopically, making use of shell model calculations based on the cranked Nilsson deformed mean-field and on residual two-body interactions, and focusing on the shape of the gamma-gamma correlation spectra and on its systematic behavior. It is shown that the spectral shape is directly related to the damping width of collective rotation, Γ rot , and to the spreading width of many-particle many-hole configurations, Γ µ . The rotational damping width is affected by the shell structure, and is very sensitive to the position of the Fermi surface, besides mass number, spin and deformation. This produces a rich variety of features in the rotational damping phenomena. * A talk presented by M.M. at