Whose shame is it anyway?

Sunday 1st November

Welcome back,

Over the last two weeks, we've been looking at shame beyond the individual.

We started by asking who decides what's shameful in the first place, and then considered how those judgements can become attached to particular identities, characteristics and social positions through stigma.

This week, I want to take that conversation a little further because there's something quite interesting about the way we tend to discuss shame in Western psychology. We often begin with an individual who has done something, experienced something, or believes something about themselves, and then ask how they evaluate it.

What happened? What does it mean about me? How do I feel about myself now?

These are perfectly reasonable questions. I've spent a considerable amount of my professional life asking variations of them.

But what happens when the consequences of someone's behaviour extend beyond that person? When an individual's actions affect the reputation of their family, their standing within a community, or the relationships and responsibilities they share with other people?

The very idea that shame belongs primarily to an individual is itself a cultural assumption, and one I see too regularly online. 

The kind of person we're supposed to be

Psychologists Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama published an influential paper in 1991 examining how cultural understandings of the self shape cognition, emotion and motivation.

They distinguished between independent and interdependent ways of understanding the self.

In an independent model, a person is understood largely through their individual attributes, preferences, abilities, values and choices. Being a person involves developing a relatively distinct identity, expressing personal preferences and exercising autonomy.

In an interdependent model, the self is understood more explicitly through relationships, social roles, responsibilities and connections with other people. Who somebody is cannot be separated quite so easily from the relationships in which their life takes place.

Now, these aren't two types of humans. Nor can we neatly divide the world into Western people who value independence and everybody else who values community. People can hold both orientations, different situations can bring different priorities forward, and enormous variation exists within any cultural group.

But the distinction is useful because it invites us to consider something we often take for granted.

What if different cultural understandings of what it means to be a person also influence what there is to be ashamed of?

Imagine somebody making a decision about their career.

Within one set of expectations, choosing a profession primarily to satisfy your family might be understood as a failure to pursue your own ambitions. You might be encouraged to question whether you're living for yourself, whether you're being authentic, or whether you're allowing other people too much influence over your life.

Within another set of expectations, considering your family's wishes may be an ordinary and valued part of making a responsible decision. Your education, opportunities and future may be understood in relation to the people who helped make them possible, and whose lives will continue to be connected to yours.

Neither account tells us whether the person is happy, free, resentful, fulfilled or ashamed, but they do suggest that the same decision could carry quite different moral and emotional meanings.

One person might feel ashamed for disappointing their family. Another might feel ashamed for having allowed their family to influence them.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about while reading for this series.

Independence has rules, too…

I think Western psychological conversations can sometimes treat independence as though it exists outside social expectations.

We encourage people to establish boundaries, develop autonomy, make their own decisions, become comfortable disappointing others, and live in accordance with their own values.

There are good reasons for encouraging these things. Personal autonomy can be enormously important, particularly where somebody has had very little freedom to make decisions about their own life.

But independence is also a cultural ideal, and like other cultural ideals, it can become something people are evaluated against.

Consider how easily we can come to feel embarrassed about needing help.

About still relying on our parents financially, not knowing what we want to do with our lives, remaining in a relationship because leaving would mean losing practical support, being influenced by our families, not being particularly ambitious, independent or self-assured. The list goes on.

We might even feel ashamed of being too concerned about what other people think of us (which is rather funny, when you consider that we've managed to turn not caring what other people think into yet another standard against which we judge ourselves.

Cultural psychologist Batja Mesquita has written extensively about how emotions are shaped by the social worlds in which they occur. Different environments make particular emotional experiences more likely, meaningful or acceptable because those emotions fit with the relationships and ways of living that the environment values.

This matters because independence doesn't eliminate social regulation. It just changes some of the things we regulate.

A society that places considerable value on personal autonomy may disapprove of conformity, dependency or failing to establish an individual identity.

A society that places greater emphasis on relational obligations may be more concerned with neglecting responsibilities, disrupting harmony or failing to consider the consequences of one's actions for others.

We can be very quick to recognise the social pressure involved in somebody feeling ashamed of disappointing their family, while overlooking the social pressure involved in somebody feeling ashamed of still needing their family. Both experiences can involve a person measuring themselves against expectations they did not invent.

When reputation is shared…

Another interesting area of cultural research concerns honour, dignity and face.

Angela Leung and Dov Cohen have examined these as different cultural logics: ways that social expectations, personal values and behaviour can fit together within particular environments.

In dignity-oriented frameworks, personal worth is generally understood as something relatively inherent to the individual, rather than entirely dependent on the opinions of others.

In honour-oriented frameworks, reputation and social standing may be more closely connected to how others evaluate a person's conduct, reliability and willingness to uphold important obligations.

Face-oriented frameworks place particular emphasis on social standing within relationships, including meeting role expectations and maintaining appropriate conduct.

These are not fixed categories that clearly describe entire countries or communities. Nor are they rankings of more or less psychologically developed societies. They are attempts to understand why particular forms of behaviour carry different meanings in different social environments.

Honour, for example, isn't simply about avoiding disgrace. Research also examines its relationship with reciprocity, hospitality, integrity, respect and social responsibility. Concern for reputation can encourage people to fulfil obligations, support family members and behave in ways that sustain cooperation and community life. Of course, these same expectations can become restrictive, particularly when maintaining reputation requires concealing difficulties, conforming to harmful standards or accepting responsibility for another person's behaviour.

I think we need to be careful not to assume that concern for collective reputation is inherently irrational, or that individual independence is necessarily a more enlightened alternative. Both can support relationships and social cooperation, and both can create expectations that are difficult or costly to challenge. Understanding their function doesn't require us to endorse every consequence.

So whose standards are we using?

I think this is where cultural psychology has something particularly useful to offer clinical psychology.

When somebody feels ashamed of depending on their family, disappointing their parents, leaving a marriage or failing to achieve financial independence, we can explore their beliefs, emotional responses and behavioural patterns. But we also need to understand what those circumstances mean within their relationships and social environment.

We cannot assume that autonomy is always the most important value, just as we shouldn't assume that preserving family harmony, reputation or obligation must necessarily take priority over individual wellbeing.

It's also worth examining the cultural assumptions embedded in our own psychological language.

When we encourage somebody to become more independent, what understanding of a good life are we drawing upon?

When we describe someone as overly concerned with their family's opinion, are we identifying a costly psychological pattern, or encountering a different understanding of relational responsibility? Of course these explanations may overlap.

None of this means that cultural context should excuse expectations that restrict someone's freedom, safety or opportunities. Nor does it mean abandoning individual wellbeing in favour of romanticising community. Rather, it means recognising that psychological approaches also operate within particular cultural understandings of what people should value, how they should relate to others, and what constitutes a good life.

Humans may share a sensitivity to social evaluation, but the standards against which we're evaluated, the people whose opinions matter, and the consequences of falling short, are not necessarily the same.

Perhaps that's worth remembering when we find ourselves questioning the expectations of another culture. Some of our own standards may be so familiar that we no longer recognise them as expectations at all.

As always, stay curious,

Shoni

Dr Shoni Marshall-Edwards
Clinical Psychologist · AHPRA PSY0004030165
Alba Psychology · Online · Australia and New Zealand

References and further reading