Restore and protect motivations following shame

Abstract

Shame has been found to promote both approach and withdrawal behaviours. Shame theories have not been able to explain how shame can promote such contrasting behaviours. In the present article, the authors provide an explanation for this. Shame was hypothesised to activate approach behaviours to restore the threatened self, and in situations when this is not possible or too risky, to activate withdrawal behaviours to protect the self from further damage. Five studies with different shame inductions and different dependent measures confirmed our predictions. We therefore showed that different behavioural responses to shame can be understood in terms of restore and protect motives. Implications for theory and behavioural research on shame are discussed.

The social side of shame: approach versus withdrawal

“…It is possible that shame motivates social approach when such interactions are neutral to or positive for the damaged self, but that shame motivates social withdrawal when interactions would further harm the damaged self. This converges with recent findings that shame motivates restoration of the damaged self, but that this restore motive decreases when situational factors make it too risky or difficult to restore (De Hooge et al, 2010. Neither of our studies were specifically designed to address these issues, so it might be interesting to address these in subsequent, more targeted research.…”

“…Interestingly, a recent line of research has focussed on the potential positive consequences of shame, suggesting that it would motivate positive interpersonal behaviours to restore one's threatened self (De Hooge, Zeelenberg, & Breugelmans, 2010. Indeed, empirical research has repeatedly demonstrated shame to be able to induce prosocial behaviours, such as donating, cooperating, or gift giving, notably in situations where people are together with others towards whom they feel ashamed (De Hooge, 2014;De Hooge, Breugelmans, & Zeelenberg, 2008).…”

A Comparison of the Inherent Adaptivity Perspective and Functionalist Perspective on Guilt and Shame

“…Further, they have found that shame activates an approach motivation when it appears to be possible, and not too risky, to affirm and restore a positive self-view [87,88]. Along these lines, Leach and Cidam found in their meta-analysis that the single best predictor of an individual having a constructive approach orientation after a shame episode was the degree to which the failure was more reparable [53].…”

Dispositional self-forgiveness, guilt- and shame-proneness, and the roles of motivational tendencies

“…Decomposing shame-proneness, we expect NSEs to deter self-forgiveness directly (as painful self-focused cognitions facilitate negative selfdirected reactions) and indirectly (as people respond to NSEs by withdrawing). However, given that shame has been inconsistently associated with both decreased (Howell et al, 2012) and increased de Hooge et al, 2010) repair-type responses, it is unclear whether repair may play a clear mediating role. The mediational prediction is depicted in Figure 1. …”

“…Conversely, shame is associated with offenders' attempts to protect self-images (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). This includes avoidance (e.g., withdrawal, secrecy; DeLong & Kahn, 2014;Yi, 2012) as well as behavior change (but only when doing so mitigates self-image threat; de Hooge, Zeelenberg, & Breugelmans, 2010).…”