Your Flaws Are My Pain: Linking Empathy To Vicarious Embarrassment

Abstract

People vicariously experience embarrassment when observing others' public pratfalls or etiquette violations. In two consecutive studies we investigated the subjective experience and the neural correlates of vicarious embarrassment for others in a broad range of situations. We demonstrated, first, that vicarious embarrassment was experienced regardless of whether the observed protagonist acted accidentally or intentionally and was aware or unaware that he/she was in an embarrassing situation. Second, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we showed that the anterior cingulate cortex and the left anterior insula, two cortical structures typically involved in vicarious feelings of others' pain, are also strongly implicated in experiencing the ‘social pain’ for others' flaws and pratfalls. This holds true even for situations that engage protagonists not aware of their current predicament. Importantly, the activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the left anterior insula positively correlated with individual differences in trait empathy. The present findings establish the empathic process as a fundamental prerequisite for vicarious embarrassment experiences, thus connecting affect and cognition to interpersonal processes.“When we are living with people who have a delicate sense of propriety, we are in misery on their account when anything unbecoming is committed. So I always feel for and with Charlotte when a person is tipping his chair. She cannot endure it.” [Elective Affinities, J. W. Goethe].

The neurobiology of rewards and values in social decision making

“…Similarly, vicarious punishments, such as watching others receive painful shocks 61 or smelling disgusting odours 62 , can trigger neural responses in the ACC and the insula that are similar to those induced by the personal experience of these shocks or smells. Such vicarious activation may even be induced by very abstract punishments, such as embarrassing social situations 63 . Importantly, these vicarious neural experienced values can predict later choice behaviour: activation of the anterior insula (or ventral striatum) in subjects who were viewing other people receiving painful shocks correlated with their subsequent decisions to help (or not to help) the observed person by choosing to endure some of these painful shocks themselves 64 .…”

Neuronal pathways of embarrassment

“…The research area of social neurosciences, which puts a special focus on the dynamics and interactivity of interpersonal experiences, developed only in the last few years. At first, still using rather classical experimental paradigms (see excursion 1), brain activities during the experience of interpersonal emotions such as embarrassment ( [5,8]; Takahashi Due to the limited possibilities in the research laboratories, e. g. it is not possible to simultaneously examine several persons in an MRI scanner, however, an essential component of experiencing "interpersonal" emotions in these studies was missing: namely the actual or felt presence of others within a common interaction framework. By means of innovative experimental arrangements, recent approaches within the social neurosciences try to create common spaces for interaction between two or more individuals in order to approach an authentic experience of these socially conveyed emotions and cognitions (see excursion…”

“…The observed feeling of mishaps made public on the side of the consumers is called colloquially "Fremdscham" and in the scientific literature "vicarious embarrassment" [5]. Vicarious embarrassment describes the unpleasant emotional state that people experience, when they register that a mishap happens to somebody else in public or he/she violates a specific norm or etiquette relevant in this context.…”

“…It is sufficient that empathic persons in the public register that the integrity of the person speaking is endangered, i. e. the person is in a situation, in which his/her social image is concretely endangered. The vicarious feeling of embarrassment thereby has similarities with the empathic experience of pain and it is more strongly pronounced, the more empathic the observers are and the better they are able to put themselves in the emotional state of the person whose social integrity is at stake [5].…”

An appraisal theory of empathy and other vicarious emotional experiences.

“…Activity in the AI or ACC has also been found for firsthand and vicarious disgust (Phillips et al, 1997;Wicker et al, 2003) and firsthand and vicarious social exclusion (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003;Masten, Morelli, & Eisenberger, 2011;Meyer et al, 2013). Research on neural overlap for firsthand and empathic experiences of common emotions such as happiness, sadness, embarrassment, and anger is more scarce, though some studies have examined the AI and ACC as components of an automatic empathy system (Blair, Morris, Frith, Perrett, & Dolan, 1999;Bruneau, Pluta, & Saxe, 2012;de Greck et al, 2012;Krach et al, 2011;Morelli & Lieberman, 2013). Although research finding neural overlap for firsthand and vicarious experiences of emotions would be consistent with mirror neuron and perception-action theories of empathy, we do not think it would rule out other theories because they predict the same thing.…”