Shame

00:00:00 I met nurse Sen and director of the center today's pay program is on shame before I introduce the participants I should tell you that the next program in June is on status status and then in September we have a program on roundtable on lying and then we are working on other roundtables including on suicide so I'm going to be very brief

00:00:35 with the introductions the fool bio biography of the of the participant is on the website but they have a printed version here that I can send around and you can just pass it around if you want Joseph Adamson is professor emeritus of English from McMaster University richard shweder is the Harold Higgins Swift Distinguished Service professor department of comparative human

00:01:06 development University of Chicago Michael Lewis is the university distinguished professor of pediatrics and psychiatry wrote a Robert Wood Johnson medical school the program was suggested to me by Kathy O'Neill who is there and she's a mathematician and founder of RCA a so open for you to start well thank you guys so much for coming I can everyone hear me I think

00:01:38 it's very important to speak loudly and clearly and I'm gonna be kind of like the dumbest person here because I am a mathematician and an author and a data scientist I wrote a book about how data science is [ __ ] up democracy and then I decided to write another book about shame and I have really no right to do so and I'm so grateful for these distinguished professors to come tell me what I've got it and wrong about it so I was just hoping that we could start by talking about what we mean by shame the definition and then I would I would love

00:02:12 to jump in and say all the bad ideas I have about it so I could be corrected but uh maybe it will just start by if you guys are into it talk about what we mean by shame and for me it's probably the best to say that I think of Shamus something I am rather than something I did so it's not guilt guilt is something I feel bad about I could apologize and it would be over potentially shame is something that is like a sort of a deeper meaning about my

00:02:43 worthiness am i worthy of something I'm so for me the sort of deep experience of shame probably came from my parents fat shaming me for years and years I was told I was unattractive would never get married would never be I'm worthy of attention from men and that was sort of my first sort of inhabiting of shame which I think of I sort of think of there as being a sort of four stages of shame the first stage is just inhabiting shame feeling ashamed on a daily basis

00:03:15 um not always terribly shamed to like sometimes worse than others but you know just sort of feeling yes I am unworthy that is inhabiting shame the first stage the second stage happened when I was a teenager and I met people who didn't mind my body and thought actually I was I was attractive and sort of sort of like a different context a different group of people around me that didn't have the norm that I was unattractive when I went back to my family and to my high school friends and they shamed me

00:03:45 again for my for my body it provoked a different kind of experience for me which I call outraged outraged in denial I was outraged by that I was like I don't deserve that and yet it did feel make me feel ashamed so it sort of both pushed me back into stage one and also gave me this new experience of stage two and I'll just briefly say my for me the stage three which I call facing the facts is which came much later when I was an adult when I had three children and I had all the sex I wanted from all

00:04:18 the men I wanted and I was like wait hold on a second they actually were lying to me it was wrong on its face the facts were wrong so I that's called three for me like facing my personal facts saying wait a second turn off the noise turn off the Weight Watchers the industry is trying to profit from me the people trying to maintain power because I'm they're attractive and I'm not ignore all that what are the my actual facts at hand and that's what I call stage three facing the facts and then stage four for me is when I ultimately

00:04:51 think I'm it's not about me anymore it's about saying what the what the heck are we doing to people to children by shaming them for their bodies that's when you sort of see it from the outside and I'll stop there because I've already provoked so I'm sure you guys have all sets of it yeah well let me try a definition that I think overlaps with yours and then I'd like to put out a proposition and give an illustration and I also think we're going to have to introduce different kinds of societies

00:05:23 because your description of your experience and relationship to it I think comes from a particular kind of subculture in which creative individualism liberation and a big focus on self is privileged over a lot of other ways of thinking about Society I take it your parents we're actually trying to instruct you in success and status and the norms of society when they were doing that and the capacity to actually reject it it seems to me a

00:05:55 separate issue from an analysis of shame per se I would say shame is something like the fear of being seen as defective by others and it can take many variations and what the defects are can vary I want to propose that shame and perhaps embarrassment are more powerful motivators of behavior than the fear of death and the example I would give would be let's say you know if you go back to 1889 there were the Zulu Wars in South

00:06:25 Africa and the British had machine guns and knew how to fire rifles and they killed a lot of Zulus but those Zulus who went on and fought them for six months would start with a group of five buddies in a village they would create a bond between themselves they actually would vomit into a pit put the bomb it the collective vomit in a gourd which each of them wore around their necks and would run in beautiful coordinated ways into battle 15 miles away to sure death

00:07:00 they knew they were going to be killed and the machine guns were there and mowed them down Gallipoli is another example in which I think the fear of shame or not showing courage or not being there with your buddies is more powerful than the fear of death there are lots of social situations of course in which shaming is extremely powerful Lois Peake who has studied preschools in Japan for example describes the classroom in a you know four and five-year-olds in Japan the teacher walks in the kids are sitting there and

00:07:30 say teacher we are ready to learn mathematics and the teacher could look around and say but someone so doesn't have his book with him today no one can learn mathematics today and that night the mother or parents of that kid who didn't bring his book are going to hear from every other mother around and be powerfully shamed into making sure that they bring that book to school and of course this is one of the ways in which the social order is carried forward people have a sense of shame we don't

00:08:02 want someone to be shameless okay in fact in the community I work in in India which is an Orthodox Hindu temple town to be full of shame is to have propriety to be civilized to understand the rules it's an extremely powerful and positive kind of cultivation of self-restraint for example and an understanding of the stateís structures that are there and a willingness to play

00:08:33 the part within this choreography of a hierarchal interrelated set of statuses and you're going to hear about it if you start deviating from that that anyway that's my first path path you say because I'm working on the mill on the floss right George Eliot there's a little girl focus of the story the novel and cheese who relentlessly

00:09:06 shamed as a child but she's her complexion as their own color her hair is too dark her personality is too big she had very intense emotions and had strong attachments so she's breaking all the norms in that society like Richard Grieco saying and it's it becomes very

00:09:37 crushing for her it's actually an amazing novel in terms of how shame works and how destructive the community although it can be very positive effect to is the correct correct age situation then her her family has an economic downfall sort of social disgrace so it's a kind of piling on a chain for her she's because she's a girl he's

00:10:07 restricted so she's constantly being shamed just for being virgin for her gender the novel ends very tragically because she finally experiences that kind of outrage you're talking about and acts on it impulsively and the lokes with a young man who is you know she's from a lower class she elopes with a higher class gentleman and just

00:10:38 basically the idea she disgraces her family she's ostracized she can find no way of getting out of this impasse in her society and the novel ends quite tragically but there are more positive versions of that story in Eliot to where it is a big motivator a very strong motivator for for what sylvan tompkins calls get you know restoring the good scene

00:11:08 his work quite interesting because he he sees it as the least punishing of the negative effects as long as it's not magnified because it in here in Tennant is a desire to get back to those good feelings though that there's sort of positive feelings and the positive scene so community a remarkable motivating force in human life I think the real problem is when it becomes toxic when

00:11:41 it's relentless and magnified when when someone's growing up then it becomes a problematic because you internalize it and it's very difficult to break that internalization and to find a new way to be so it struck me very much you're the score you were telling they're very much like you might enjoy read I don't know if you've read it Elliott but I have yes yes you don't feel like things yeah well it's a Yogi Berra said it's a

00:12:21 deja vu all over again I was in this room perhaps 25 years ago and the topic was shame so it's a persistent and an important topic I think we're becoming a massive shame culture well and that may be why it's bad well it's suddenly the case I had written a book called shame the exposed self which in the area of

00:12:54 human development and psychology and emotion not I work in it was a and of the synthesis and an attempt to produce a theory a testable theory because the coinage that gets you ahead and in my part of the world is you need to subject this to proof it

00:13:25 could be logical proof but a more and empirical and it's a topic and emotional development which interestingly enough Darwin I just wrote a chapter for someone on Darwin's treatment of shame a new Selden well and only spent the year of having lunch together Sylvan only ate

00:13:56 two orders of coleslaw for the entire year and I also tell you nothing about Sylvan and Damon Runyon the professor who goes to the horse races is sylvan tompkins modeled after him the Sylvan was a wonderful creature he rubbed a tool of the most incomprehensible volumes that I read but

00:14:28 it generated a lot of thought and interest but I really think if we want to from a historical point of view we should go back to Darwin and read Darwin Darwin came close the major problem Darwin had is he could not create a theory of the mind cognition so even in motion he moved to the measurement of blushing which he claimed was a good

00:14:58 measure of it part of Darwin's problems as we know was he had trouble with a gradualism he had trouble going from animals or primates to humans and in fact he toyed with in itself in his time was considered not inappropriate but we do both people of color and people with

00:15:29 intellectual disability he saw as a middle group between great apes than humans and he toyed with that idea about the emotions his major problem was he couldn't distinguish between what he called and I call the self-conscious emotions which we've touched on which includes guilt to lose embarrassment which includes shame and if we like we

00:15:59 could also include the hubris which turns out to be you know in the English language we have one word for pride and that's pride goeth before the fall which is a negative attribute and proud of one's accomplishments which is consider a motivator and positive and we only have one word for it so humorous is probably an attempt of mine to trying to move us away dive two words for the

00:16:31 pride we're talking about it turns out that with in psychoanalytic tradition the confusion between shame and guilt has been enormous and it's probably wasn't until the periods when I was writing and several analysts were writing Nathan said was a derivative I think up but he clearly was catching on to the idea that you had to make a distinction between them in the meeting

00:17:03 that I attended I sort of sat back it's unusual for me and let the analyst talk about what they meant by shame and guilt and of course if we did this with what we mean by shame we would come up with many definitions so we know it's important and we know moreover that there's we have to take culture into account and Darwin had another idea and

00:17:38 he talked about things which he called action patterns so I'm gonna make a ridiculous proposal to just that we don't learn shave chambers in action powder and it's set off by the instigators our thoughts about the self and thoughts about the self are called self attribution and that self attributions of a certain kind are

00:18:09 likely to lead to certain emotional states motivators of action and I think Rick picked up that the idea of shame as an extremely negative emotion it's questionable shame has clearly a very definite function the clearly one of the functions of shame is it stops you dead in your tracks you've suddenly became

00:18:41 suddenly developed a damaged self and you have to do something about that guilt on the other hand does not lead to a damaged self that leads to reparation and so if you wanted to measure it and since I'm interested in how its thoughts I look at children I can measure what a child does when they fail at something they know they've failed and there's

00:19:13 some children who try to repair the failure there's some children who collapse and there's some children who in fact don't show any of these so negative self conscious like emotions but I want to tell you okay what is the action powder said it's hiding well I think getting away from I think you absolutely but it's stopping and there

00:19:44 sovan had some idea he called an interruption but it's not interest interruption is the consequence of the eye that's the secuence of the action pattern is to stop you hiding is another way is part of the stopping so I mean I would certainly agree that hiding we measure it by in fact the collapse of the body which is an attempt to hide the self the

00:20:17 phenomenological experience is I want to die hide and disappear or die so it is clearly a self inhibit but let me give you this example because one of the things that I've discovered 60 years of studying this is a it's very very tricky

00:20:48 and I've come to a much greater appreciation with people trying to think about it in a more dynamic way what when you're studying it you have to stop it and look what just happened so let me give you a story that years ago a patient told me he's driving a car it wasn't like it was on a lonely road or it was raining and very hard to see

00:21:18 anything and as he's driving he hits a dog runs in front of him and he hits that dog he slams on the brake that is less first thoughts or what a horrible person I am I've just killed the dog now he doesn't like to have that thought and the action pattern associated so he says how do I get out of this I mean isn't safe literally but very quickly

00:21:51 he decides one he's not the cause of this after this failure why because it's rainy and it's dark and moreover the older let the dog run wild so all of a sudden he starts up with this powerful self crunching action pattern but given the flexibility that

00:22:23 we humans have we can change our mind we can we we can reinterpret it and indeed what he does is he blames another now the interesting thing if it becomes a personality namely one constantly in a situation in which the self might be injured constantly reinterprets into other attributions essentially it's

00:22:56 either not right for by the way males are much more likely to use it than females on the attribution as it's not my fault I'm sorry it's not my fault females tend to use the attribution it is my fault more but but the fact of the matter is that I think the example characterizes that in front of us is what I call

00:23:31 standards rules and goals these are cultural events that are taught these have no no unique content however when one one has in in the self attribution the capacity to think about oneself that's a whole nother story on the development of that but having that capacity you enter into a chain a

00:24:04 process and depending on the outcome of that process you end up with a kind of action pattern that we're trying to describe so several cases we're going to have to be very clear about the boundary conditions we could about any generalizations we make because the mode of const rule that you just described is not going to be readily available for example in that hindu temple town where i've been working for several decades because

00:24:36 there's not going to be the capacity to blame others or to see yourself as a victim the reasoning is going to be you always reap what you sow in life and anything that happens is a consequence of your prior actions and you come into the world with spiritual debts and what you're doing constantly in life is trying to reduce the spiritual debts you have it's the more spiritual debts you have the more likely you're going to be in the kind of circumstance you described the very fact that it was a

00:25:07 rainy day and someone left their thing out happened to you why did that happen to me it happened to me because of my past behavior and the spiritual deaths that i bring in and so you're constantly trying to reduce those spiritual debts through various means that are available to you it could be living a righteous life can i could read in the correct food but in any case this whole mode of causal analysis of what you say i'm not responsible it's not going to be available as it construal yes there are many problems

00:25:38 with what i've said one of them is a kind of a backward backtracking in cognitive science they've caught on to backtracking the both of you who don't know and years ago people wanted to discover how come an animal eat something and 24 hours later get sick from it and has learned not to eat that thing and the argument is that we can

00:26:11 move time-space in an interesting way forwards and backwards are associated systems allow us to move backwards and forwards in time so it is absolutely the case if we could talk about religions as well a little bit because as a mathematician I think very axiomatically and I think we all

00:26:41 are actually kind of agreeing I want to go back to what you said it's like there's a norm here right you shamed someone's with respect to a norm I was shamed with respect to a body norm what you're describing is when there is no other norm like those people did not have access to a community where it was okay to be fat right you it wasn't fatness that was like this concept of a debt to the gods that if they had let me imagine if some of them had gone on a

00:27:13 sort of a study abroad program my point is I think they were ensconced in this norm group so of course they're not going to see a different way of thinking about it and I just want to say like to another point you made we or maybe you made that we're living in a in a shaming culture so I'm just going to throw on another layer here I also had another experience of shame when I worked in finance I worked at a hedge fund during

00:27:43 the crisis with Larry Summers and I said oh my god we screwed up the world I felt ashamed I quit my job I joined Occupy Wall Street and I attempted to shame the government to to improve financial regulation and that was shame I think shame is great shame is very very useful I'm shaking off I was punching up so I'd like to think of shame as three categories punching up punching down and I think shaming

00:28:16 someone for their body something that they can't control its punching about the usefulness for shame just for the person independent of cause you are only talking about being shamed or shaming yes but what just feeling of having shame or feeling shame I mean shame as you as you point out it can be very useful for for cohesion in a culture right we ashamed for that matter I shamed my children when they don't do their chores right it's a it's a it's a lubrication to get people to

00:28:48 follow the rules without having to explain the rules every single time and actually have to administer punishment where they don't let me just finish my framework and then I'll let you guys respond I think there's a third type of shame that's getting more and more prevalent in this culture there's punching up shame there's punching down shame the third type I call punching nowhere of shame and punching nowhere shame is when we tried it we sort of performative ly shamed people that will not care and what I'm thinking here emblematic example is when people on the

00:29:21 left because I'm on the left so I own when I go to Twitter I'm on the I'm seeing my lefty friends they're retweeting Trump or Trump's son and saying and sort of saying something to him in their retweet to sort of try to shame Trump it's ludicrous it's ludicrous like do you think they are going to care what you're saying but it's definitely an attempt to shame it's a failed attempt to shame it's a performative thing and my question is

00:29:51 what is the end result of that and my feeling is it's not just a waste of time it's actually a problem and I think the anti-vaccine movement is a largely a product of that and I think the in cells which are the young mostly white men who are misogynistic online talking to each other about how terrible women are and actually going out sometimes and killing people killing women is a very direct reaction to this shaming performative shaming punching

00:30:22 Network ultracold is virtue signaling also weight you see it's that's what I mean by performance I'm performing righteousness by shaming Don jr. everyone retweet me but you know it doesn't actually number one it doesn't shame him and number two it just makes the other people more dehumanized it dehumanizes them it sort of focuses on us versus them well there's a sense in which I think there's a certain picture of shame as

00:30:53 oppressive which comes from people who don't like living in close communities where there are these norms that everyone shares and they feel oppressed by it and they want out it sort of the creative individual who is willing to be transgressive with regard to the norms and they go to New York City okay rather than live in the small community now it seems to me what's happened however is that the surveillance that goes on in small communities which produces shaming of all kind often to maintain social

00:31:24 order and often quite effectively has now returned in the form of Twitter it's now reformed in the terms of newspapers that are constantly looking to invade and get information that people think is private and if they can expose it it becomes now the equivalent on a much larger scale of these small communities and ironically that's what we're doing with the technologies have broken down the private public distinction the idea that you could find an area where you couldn't be shamed because you could

00:31:54 draw the shade you could close the door it was in a private realm where you could be experimental with transgressive behavior and leave it there is no longer possible and that reaches the essentially we found a way to have a technology that turns us into a small community again with all of these kinds of attempts you're describing humiliate people to do with taxonomy of shame but there are anything can shame you if you

00:32:26 have a standard a rule a goal and you don't these are cultural determined although there was some argument historically that ashamed or sharm the german for back or backside was in fact in the early attempts at trying to address it was around toilet training and shame was

00:32:56 having lived a long life when I was six or seven I needed glasses and it was shameful to wear glasses you will call four-eyes now we're not ashamed of wearing glasses there's a as you age there's a hearing loss okay and I wear hearing aids and hearing aids are

00:33:27 designed the technology mostly that they should be in because wearing hearing aids is shameful so we can change readily what what is or isn't shameful the idea to be helpful is there has to be some cultural standard a rule now interestingly enough too you could have a rule to be shameful that is it's good

00:34:00 to be shameful and so you could find many things you might need to sweep away because you would step boy you can't eat a plant that's some root because there might be insects and destroyed so um I don't know how useful it is I think it is useful if we want to go contemporary to look at what's happening in not only our culture but everywhere to begin with when I got a bad grade as the son of

00:34:33 parents born in Europe turn-of-the-century but nonetheless uh I was ashamed for they're ashamed that I didn't get a good grade I was not only ashamed for myself I was ashamed that my parents shame well that doesn't seem much the beaming as much the case anymore but it seems to me that we need to not talk about the different kind let

00:35:07 me just tell you what the observation in these many analyses are one of amount of narcissistic behavior has enormous ly increased any scale or the various scales that supposedly measure it show an increase in this country to an increase in perfectional ISM that is a being overwhelmed by or on the concern for

00:35:42 making an error r3 a decrease in empathy all of these are and an emphasis on what I think these things come about and records incidentally they come they are these things come about because the self has become an increasing object to the

00:36:13 self so that of selfies tattoos communication you learn it's a common knowledge especially and in the age group in this room that you watch a couple sitting each taking a picture of their dish sending it to other people these are very technologically advanced very complex behavior hypothesis the

00:36:44 more you pay attention to yourself the more trouble you ultimately get in it's a pretty safe hypothesis a baseball slump occurs because you start to think that you are in Islam and thus the kind of physical timing that you need to hit a ball a swing at something before as its leaving the hand of the pitcher gets disrupted I have the problem when I have

00:37:16 to share okay well you know I think the quote is if you think you stink that's right so fun the Bedouin baseball owner on a steep hill when I'm driving a shift which I learned to drove most of my life on when I was in you know in Berkeley on on Cedar Avenue which has some steep hills that and now you have to put it in neutral and there's a car behind you and

00:37:47 you got to shift into first at a very steep and you just start to think about I may have trouble shifting you're gonna have trouble shifting the whole point in motor action is to get it out of the operating system because they're better things in your head to be doing with the point is if in fact it is the case that we are become more self involved as a

00:38:18 way to be happy I don't know what the goals are that fundamentally you would get an increase in shame because you're paying attention to yourself and therefore you would need mechanisms to get away from it which is narcissism a very powerful mechanism it's not my fault or I didn't make a mistake defensive mechanisms another round better essentially yes their defensive

00:38:48 mechanism for the increase so that decrease in empathy is it's their fault they're poor it's their falter before a big car hit them they should evolve into shaver in chief in the country you are Darwin thought that like getting a red in the face was meant your shame it's that's too easy it's not about selfies like selfies is narcissistic I just obviously it's vain

00:39:20 obviously I think people who do that are more falling there to shame people who take selfies like just define it that they are more vulnerable to shame but I think the worst aspect of modern social media is are not the selfies so they're just annoying that we're suspect are the self-righteous shamers who are dehumanizing others and who are working actively to decrease our empathy I think the empathy is the key we are

00:39:52 decreasing our empathy to people we don't agree with we were like if you think that you must be a monster and honestly we say that about people with whom we agree 85% of the time but we found the 15% social media helped us find it the 15% where we disagree and we're like oh my god I thought I liked you but you're a monster now I know that's the kind of performative self-righteous shaming that is a problem this is a small thing it's an interesting difference between shame and guilt in this sense because we do

00:40:22 need the cooperation of the other person to feel guilty if you try to you might chain them and hope they feel guilty about something they've done but just simply shame you just need to leave a mark it doesn't need to be reciprocated ever you could anyway the other I would have thought that guilt could be just between you and your ego ideal and if you don't know I mean if you leave the other to confess if that's the way in what you're going to unload your guilt if you're posting online and you want to leave a shame mark on someone you don't need them to reciprocate that's why it goes

00:40:52 on and it goes on despite its utility response is when you would you're that receiver of that if you know that you've 85% agree with the person and they're accusing you'd feel angry you feel outraged and you would say no you're the monster and that's the point it becomes a feedback loop a dynamical system where I guess I was getting it the idea that it doesn't require as much empathy or back-and-forth for you to simply leave a

00:41:23 mark that intends the shame verses to engage someone and to make them feel remorseful right it's like I know you I know you are but what am i that thing yes at that level I'd like to pick up something you Michael just said because I do have this sense that there are certain prepotent areas that it's easier to shame than other areas that it says any arbitrary rule and I'll get to this be this way if

00:41:55 you look at the explanations of illness around the world as an anthropologist why people think they're suffering there are various there's a big three the most frequent thing people do is point to interpersonal influences on themselves like witchcraft evil eye sorcery some things be friends and neighbors who envy me who are making me feel sick and then their end up being moral explanations in which they blame themselves for their suffering and they think they've transgressed in some way and then there of course biochemical explanations which it turns out are not

00:42:25 the most frequent on a worldwide scale the other two are an interpersonal or far and away the most common but and the moral domain when you look at what transgressions lead people to think I did that and that's why I'm suffering right now there's a small number and they end up being sexual food and authority relationships so if you kick your father and six months later you go blind you're not going to fail to wonder whether you're blind because you kicked

00:42:55 your father there's something about those areas of experience in life that somehow our prepotent and I wouldn't be surprised shaming could work that way I think it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis indeed that there may be prepotent that is failures or evaluations of one's behavior these would be some kind of standards unique ones maybe prepotent in fact and and and

00:43:29 there would be good reason to suggest that these should be very important and frequent enough events so that you protect against violating the rules because it really is gonna hurt you one of the problems is that we're gonna introduce embarrassment let me say a word about it if i sat down with anyone in this room and say tell me about

00:44:00 things that embarrass you you would if you know me for a while you would tell me about embarrassing things if I said tell me about the things that shame you you don't and so it's been said that Shane gets you into therapy but prevents you from getting better the less intense well know that there's two kinds of embarrassment there's embarrassment of being the object of other's attention Darwin

00:44:31 talked about it and it is certainly the case I could show you I if for example we the group around the table decided we would all simply point and another person in unison for no reason we randomly selected it that person being pointed to would get embarrassing for example when you're introduced and the introducer says very nice things about you you certainly enjoy it but you were

00:45:02 certainly embarrassed that you could argue you should be embarrassed but I can show you in eighteen-month-old the 24 month old when this embarrassment comes in children play a game of pointing to each other and they tend to embarrass the object of attention turns out to be a very early form of embarrassment also starts to involve body because the early forms is me here so if you point

00:45:35 to a child at 20 Hertz who recognizes itself in mirror by touching its nose and you point to it the child will show you embarrassment if you ask children how many of you have children grandchildren and you and the parent says our children father grandmother loved the new thing you do and the child shows embarrassment why isn't I just changed my form of

00:46:06 change well because it seems by the reporter not to be shameful people have trouble interpreting this is because it also turns out to be an individual difference shy people are in fact those people who over respond to being the optimum very young the object of others attention so there is seems to be a distribution in the population of people

00:46:39 who when they're the object of attention shown in mass but it is a fair thing that people have different thresholds for shade lower higher yes their wire they're wired that way it today it's we're wired that way right yeah and so there must be a usefulness to shame most of the conversation has been about useful shame as a problem that you can shame you gave the example of your school they shamed you and you felt

00:47:11 ashamed about your parents but there must be some reason why we have this emotion of change you know if you do something let's say you're at a dinner party and you your host is going on this won't happen tonight but and you're irritated about something maybe not even

00:47:42 something to do with him and you you lose it you lose your temper right and you you insult you insulted right now you know you know I think a lot of us have done something like that and you feel terrible right the feeling is is you just feel like you're being like there's this sort of sickness sinking

00:48:12 like you you just feel so ashamed of what you've done because you have shamed him well I think more you yeah but more you you've acted in an entirely inappropriate way across the tensions here and and you there and so you you you know we've all done as I've done it you know you go away you feel terrible the next day you go over and you want to make it right I think this is what

00:48:44 Tompkins is talking about when he says that shame in here in in shame is a desire to restore the positive feeling right to restore what he calls the good seat and you apologize and you say I don't you know I you know I behave so inappropriately I'm very sorry you know and so that's that's a that's highly functional because it it it's it's a Highland it'll be more functional if it prevented you from doing what you did well it often does right I mean it often

00:49:14 prevents you from it it you know let's say the person is and they correct themselves before they do it right they control themselves it's a very important mechanism to reduce shame in fashion you say just as you indicated I am sorry I did that he forgive me so clearly there are mechanisms to reduce it one of them is displacement to blame the other and

00:49:45 become angry another is to internalize it and move toward depression I am a worthless creature now and in the future and the other one is to make fun of yourself interestingly enough especially in America socialization techniques designed in some subcultures to induce so for example Heidi Fong has done observations of Children and Families in Taipei in Taiwan

00:50:16 and the mother when she's around other associates or relatives or friends will bring in her young child who has transgressed in some way like you was describing and has them narrate their transgression tell them how bad you were and it's not a confession it's not really there to get rid of some feeling it's there to recapitulate it and to

00:50:46 have this child essentially cultivate a sense of shame by inducing it in a very public way presumably that's going to be relatively effective everyone views it as child abuse and she has to stop showing it because it provokes such a discussion so public shaming was a thing in this country there was a book called so you've been publicly shamed written

00:51:17 by Jon Ronson recently or maybe Ron Johnson I can't remember how he says and he did he did a study about this a sort of you know New England early America sort of Scarlet Letter type stuff and he researched sort of the history of it and it stopped eventually not because it became less useful but because it was so harsh like the public view the few the

00:51:48 people who came to see the public shaming were so into it that it was embarrassing to the authorities that's why they stopped doing it not because it didn't work example is the I lived with a six-year-old daughter and 10 year-old son in rural India for a year and they went to a local convent school and one day my son said to my wife I don't want to go to school today and she explored it why didn't he want to go to school today because he had seen when you

00:52:19 didn't do well on a math exam in that school they pinned it to your back and you wore it all day long around the school that was their technique for public shaming which you know it's a complicated thing we can view that as harsh but he obviously was we come from a subculture where we weren't going to let that happen nevertheless with internally I'll bet those kids are all over the world doing really good math down books that are 25

00:52:49 years all the documents very clearly spare the Royals of spare the rod spoil the child fundamentally the theme to teach moral behavior you teach you will forgive me that you were born in sin okay and that so we have been and questioning the belief you want born in sin it's a different form but welcome

00:53:25 into the world of the long history of transgressions in Prior lives you know you're not you're not going to sin solely that there will be there are techniques which for the most part we've given up as publicly acceptable but in fact are employed how many parents if you watch them with their children and the child does something switches up their nose for those whom you can see my face which is a semi a discuss may

00:53:57 discuss based on food the smell sense what you do that's disgusting you're disgusting disgust is a very very powerful Shaymin listener so we were talking about but I wanted to hear you tie together what you believes the connection between embarrassment and shame before you do I just wanted to add this extra ingredient which is these do all have biological rudiments like disgust expression the early stages of

00:54:28 which embarrassment can be elicited in children etc suggests to me that these potential I would say components of shame start even on a very biological basis before they're co-opted by society and joy Seamus studied divorce in and couples in trouble has pointed out that when one member of the couple exhibits a shame face toward the other person actual or some statement the consequence of that

00:55:01 is either the one receiving the disgust pace chose a depressive reaction or in fact gets angry back you know how dare you Shane Lee yeah so clearly what we're gonna have to worry about Chan publicly but also shame privately there's a shame embarrassment between say hostile that's disgusting and that's you know

00:55:33 that that's shameful or shaming the child I think there's a significant difference between well okay you know fear of being perceived as disgusting that's a that's disgusting that's different from your disgusting yeah cuz you ate three yeah yeah it's it's a question of whether you see you should be ashamed of yourself it doesn't seem to me to be as toxic was saying that you you're disgusting you're

00:56:05 a disgusting person yeah because it's disgusting that's very rejecting yes right that's like that's very distancing its we're in Shane there's always a bridge back but how its heard they defend may depend on the child to to a degree I would like to add something a bit different at all he said something a bit different because it is from everything you are saying the implication is that you become

00:56:36 frequently ashamed because you have been shamed off and growing up that's not necessarily III don't think it's the experience of psychoanalyst and generally certainly not my experience some people have more shame some people have left shame and it's not based on to what degree their parents or teachers or the school chained them well it seems to do in the psychoanalytic idea that has a lot not to do moist Sariah you become victimized if you were

00:57:07 repeatedly shamed and becoming victimized means you become the victim and so the report was that I really was chanted shameful not that by parent necessarily did actively indeed what would like to say if we could do such an experiment it's the same in a high shaming family what does the child do when the child finally becomes in charge and the parents are now old we don't

00:57:39 talk about old people being computers but a sweet revenge to a lifetime of being of being change so change that took place let's say from the Massachusetts Bay Colony or 17th century Puritanism and it's morality because I do think in some sense the cyber stocks are back right now and we're very much like that period once again given the

00:58:11 technologies that we have but I do feel that it's important to think about societies that liberate individuals from communal ethics of community type structures and when that happens I think they begin to see those techniques as harsh even though they were effective but here's a triad that think about the following three emotions happiness shame and anger and if I ask you which is most different from the other to happiness shame anger which is the odd one out if

00:58:42 I do that in a University of Chicago class the response is all either going to be happiness as the odd one out is most different or some people will say shame is the odd one out and it's largely based on a hedonic view of the emotions does it feel good or doesn't it feels good they think it's you know or your fault it feels good to be happy okay doesn't feel good to be shamed or to be angry let me finish turrets and and some people say change because they

00:59:15 think that means the ego has been diminished whereas if you're happy and anger you're full of yourself if I do this in the Indian community I work in the overwhelming response is anger is the most different from the other two which is a very rare response in our subculture and for them shame and Happiness are the glue of social relationships and anger is destructive of social relationships and that's a totally different way of viewing it and I think it has correlates in the way in

00:59:45 which their societies is organized on the degree to which individualism versus some form of collectivism is a part of the organization of social life and that puts boundaries on a lot of the generalizations we make about whether something is useful or not what our own evaluative reactions are to it and so forth let's come back to let's broaden it if we can to bring in the other kinds of self conscious emotions which you

01:00:17 were you were starting to do such as I have claimed that there are two kinds of embarrassment one is a very basic early does not require elaborate cognition the child Showzen soon after its thought using personal pronouns like me and mine and managing an individual difference in their reaction to being the object of attention that's easy to do in a laboratory setting you bring the kid in

01:00:48 and you ask the and you start complimenting the child on how pretty they look or how handsomely the local whatever you ask the child to do things like danced or banging the timer and what you see in the children being the object of attention they show embarrassment about a year and a half later when you now start to incorporate the standards the rules of

01:01:19 of your family in the society at large you now have another embarrassment which is embarrassment against some kind of substandard we that starts to move us toward shame but I put to you that the least in the sculpture where we have two words if I asked you to tell me something that advanced you you would have more readily willing to do it than

01:01:49 if I asked you about something that changed you and which is a very intense form of shame right right or mortification which as you might think you mentioned earlier you're dying the chain I mean I think people experience embarrassment of some kind or another every day on a mild form right sure there are certain things that we mean to

01:02:19 fall on you okay so if someone says Michael you you're parallel parking is really atrocious I may not like it I might feel yeah you're right I'm going backwards has become more difficult as I've aged Oh fine except honesty but if they said gee that's your last book is absolutely horrible there was a listen Weingard obviously and uh yeah and I'm going back but it

01:02:52 would certainly elicit more embarrassment shame when the band revealed so clearly there are different aspects of ourselves which are more important I'd be that if you do guys don't mind layer on one more layer to this conversation with um which I'm fascinated thinking about because I we've talked a lot about the individual experience of shame you've talked a little bit about norms within a culture and how that changes it I want to talk about group shame a group shame and I'll

01:03:25 just throw out an example the Catholic Church you you know remember I talked about the phases of shame there's in the shame there's outrage and denial of the shame then there's facing the facts and then they're saying stepping outside and saying this is this is what happens you know I'm just gonna throw that up put the Pope came came out and he started talking about oh you know sexual abuse of children is a terrible thing it's really terrible isn't it terrible he didn't actually say this is what

01:03:55 happened in the church this is what we're gonna do about it he never really cleaned house he never really went through through stage three you kind of jumped to Stage four like you can all forgive me this is an apology quote-unquote of course I'm putting my take on it my point is that I want to talk about how groups inhabits shame how they get outraged by accusations how and how they come to see the true so you face their own facts clean their own house how do they how do

01:04:25 they navigate shame as groups well did they navigate shame was only when we told them you should have felt shame about this then they thought oh yes we did something shameful and possibly did see individual let me give you another example there's a very widespread habit in this country of shaming children when they don't have enough school lunch money and what will happen is that these children will either not be fed they will just be not fed at school or their lunch will be thrown away in front of them and they

01:04:56 sometimes even get branded on their arm I don't have enough lunch money the individuals who work at the lunch rooms sometimes refuse to do this policy and they get fired so I'm not claiming that you know I think of that it's a sort of sort of systemic shame if you will it is created as a policy and it is perpetrated by groups not every single individual in the group has to agree with it as a policy because they might actually find it too shaming and for

01:05:27 that matter I mean obviously lots of priests were doing terrible things but not every priest thought that was a good idea like we can't assume that every it was like a unified attempt right but it at the same time it is a group thing it is a sort of a group navigation of led by the Pope perhaps but like what is happening there and when are we going to actually see them get to stage 3 cleaning house tell us what the consequences are cleaning up their act processes for an individual that's what

01:05:59 I'm I mean you know the the thing about it that is it's good news and bad news it's good news because we kind of understand it it's bad news because well I feel like I'm in stage 4 with gay bashing or fat shaming or race shaming but I can't I can't be in charge of everyone like how do we get the rest of you know how do we pull people in this direction yeah what are you moving

01:06:33 toward an understanding understanding of what well see the examples I just gave her all in the first category you were talking about stages yeah but tell me about stages because I don't know what that means right stages reflect pay of sequence yes either a combination biology culture or or culture or biology so I'm talking about a level of no shame I don't think so but maybe you want what

01:07:06 what what chapter the shame of might on this problem of progress what is what is progress what is progress so what what is the ideal let me put it this way tell me from your perspective what the ideal society would be wouldn't it be shame in it there would not be punching down shame so I was looking to say that the examples I gave sexual abuse shaming

01:07:38 people for being poor shaming children for being not having a school lunch money gay bashing those examples are examples of punching down shame which I claim exists quite a lot there's a lot of power being maintained around punching down shame there's a lot of profit being made from punching down shame and it is I would call it invalid shame and the idea of progress would be to get past it and that would require that people who are seen by it say no well it's not to all be sure when you do

01:08:09 those sleep well when did those things that people are doing just punch down I characterize punching down Sheamus when you are well shaming someone either who has no choice who has either no choice or no voice but I either have no choice to conform to the norm or they have no power to explain themselves work I don't quite have a picture of that as it happens in more than half the school districts in this country you know what why is it shaming and what is it what

01:08:42 form does it take what said what you are refusing you do not given food ok that's a number why you're not given food you're deprived of food you're considered you're basically label is unworthy of food it is the most basic form of shaming and they were branded and you were its public it is like hey your parents didn't pay for food you're not going to get food everybody knows it in the school lunch even if I can't afford to give the money of course if they're children I mean just to be clear this is children it's their

01:09:13 parents that are supposed to pay today no power yes right yes exactly mm-hmm to know of sauce well half the school system okay I'll give it you like that's hard to believe it is hard to blow it's outrageous actually I mean of the optimist the terrible bad that people are capable of perpetuating is it does is not surprising so whether we

01:09:47 want to call it up or down and punching which is fine it's a you know a way of taxonomy he applying there's a good shame or a matching if my child comes back with a paper or something they've done and they've not done well or what are you gonna tell parents or the tiger moms as they call you shouldn't be doing that what I mean I

01:10:22 how can we disagree with people doing these things to children I mean this can't be in the laws against the child here so I think we can disagree about specifically about Jamie I mentioned that you were fat shamed yeah does that mean that you are more prone to shame as a result of that or does that mean that you are no more prone to shame than

01:10:53 anybody else in other words is the implication that that kind of shaming lives rather serious marks on the person that is indelible or is it that some people react one way some people react one way something kids react the other way and some grow up without much shaming by anybody and they're more pondus to shame and some don't that's a good question I mean my parents shame me I think because they were fat so they were sort of propagating a

01:11:26 certain of kind of type of shame on to me I have not done that to my children but that's because I've thought a lot about it you know like I went through these stages I'm trying to describe I that's one of the reasons I came up with this taxonomy of shame is to understand when is it unfair when is it possible or you yourself more prone to shame then let's say your husband's shame more aware but got more thrown in that was you don't more easily than somebody else I would like to hear what instead of I

01:11:57 mean I don't know no I'm only asking because it seems to me from my perspective and my in my experience the the kind of outside shaming is not what often or necessarily leads to a fondness to shame later but rather certain developments in the in the strength of the person's self in their self-esteem in their view of them selves is what contributes to how they

01:12:28 feel later interesting let me see love life working in Pediatrics and we've been doing a stunning the fellows we have a fellowship program and and I just in charge of the research and there is a fellow who is studying the siblings of children who have ASD who are autistic on the spectrum and the idea being what

01:12:59 does a sibling feel about having a sibling who is demonstrable a different and the interesting finders so far is that there are a good number of the people who end up taking care of handicapped kids or kids with disabilities are in fact from

01:13:29 families from which they had a close number as well as just the opposite so that indeed supporting what you're saying it that in fact an experience can have very different consequence one is a social good there are people committed to working with these children boo until now we don't have much you know resource to improve but that they were working

01:14:01 with them versus those who probably develop I get it and if you don't do it you are born out of it right yeah but you know after spending 40 years at a medical school of my my thoughts about the biology of our bodies of that you

01:14:32 know we're not all the same temperament however we may conceive abut there are different things my my eye on my side the daughter of 50 year olds but when they were babies and I would you know toss them up you never prove in the air but you know just look another girl baby the younger she loved it and and she loves the rough-and-tumble she goes in shark cages and in cages protect you

01:15:05 from shock my son who was in terror of it in fact my mind around your question about groups and how did they react and I go on it I guess I need some clarification because when you say how does a group deal with its own shame yes do you mean they have in fact done something which everyone would agree is shameful or do you mean they have been shamed by some

01:15:35 powerful group telling them that do what they're doing is shameful so for example we have many examples in colonial domination situations let's say you believe the West is best and it's view of gender relations it's view of X Y Z is closer to the truth than those primitives or backward peoples of the world and you start going it dominating those groups and telling them then what they're doing with regard to gender relations how they raise their children all this is shameful now is that the kind of question we're dealing with how

01:16:06 do those groups then react as we know that some groups identify with the Colonials and quickly become colonial eyes we know other groups have rebellions against it and have all sorts of resistance we have revival movements that go on but these are power dynamics that are very different from the way you framed it you framed it with examples in what you're inviting us all to agree that's shameful what they did not that some group is shaming another group from its power position and those are very different situations and I'm just

01:16:38 wondering what what you enough did you answer we will go to questions okay great yeah I mean I think it's a great question and I wanted I'm not sure I've this scrupulously careful about the examples but I what I really want to focus on is changing norms probably it's a best way of saying it and maybe the a good example in in that context is the me to movement so the me to movement is a movement because we are changing our norms we never actually thought it was okay to it assault women we never

01:17:09 thought that but the norm was that we the women kept quiet the norm has changed and now there's a lot of group shame among the men who now feel like oh what I used to be doing was inappropriate that's that's an example of group shame and I'm not saying they're all actually a feeling like I should feel ashamed some of them are outraged that the these norm has changed under their feet and how dare is that norm change I was perfectly comfortable and now I'm a bad guy so that is but

01:17:42 it's a group nor a group shaming and I'm my theory is that it goes through the stages of shame similar to the way I laid them out and I might be wrong about that it's I don't mind being wrong I just because I'm a mathematician I'm trained to just be happy to be wrong I love shame as a mathematician is that you say something and someone says you're wrong you're like thanks for not like I won't waste my time on it but like it's useful even if it's wrong I believe to understand group shame as it

01:18:14 evolution through stages similar to the individual okay we'll go for questions so there is the mic and magnet work step I hope [Music] was very very interesting here today listening to everybody some of the

01:18:45 things that we did not talk about today what about people like we everybody knows Martha Stewart who was incarcerated for a period of time she was shamed and then she was released from jail and Martha Stewart just picked up right from where she left off and she's on TV and she's selling her merchandise and just recently we have Anthony Weiner who was in some sort of

01:19:16 the halfway house for pornography and all that now he's was just a Anthony Weiner was released and he's thinking about going into politics again so I'm just using a couple of extremely that we did not talk about today thank you who wants the response sounds like closing banishment part of the problem is that shame is I think it fits with

01:19:53 the change in and empathy and by the way of rules manners we haven't gotten to which it would be a very important part of the discussion the idea of letting it all hang out as opposed to a rules governing our behavior so the writer thank you note for dinner whether you liked it or not and now that it would be

01:20:24 called live and so poll issue and the change in social protecting the feelings of others have given way to to be a authentic that indeed the election we only hinged on the fact that even though he was a terrible man he was at least authentic where's she he was inauthentic and so is so the fact is that we are allowed we have no shame

01:20:57 about being shamed is in fact what's what's occurring okay yet I just wanted to comment on individual versus institutional shame you brought up the example of the Catholic Church and why as in the Pope felt more shame institutions make political and financial decisions they can't be shamed away individuals are but my question is to the prophetic I see some agreement

01:21:29 here my question is to the professional psychologists among you and this concerns the most prominent shame or the shame or in chief do you feel that this is more strategic and purposeful than he's given credit for or on the other end of the spectrum does he suffer from a pathology forty forty five forty

01:22:01 percent of the people believe that he has done nothing wrong that is to say we're back to facts even though you can demonstrate that he says he hasn't said something and you have a tape of him saying that he would just call it fake news so one of the things that narcissists can do is that they changed the rules the Normand of the normative

01:22:33 behavior so while on you're having now of men who did things that they shouldn't have done and now feel our movement to get them to feel there is also this movement of there's nothing to be ashamed that was something of the zone you can make dogs you can go any way you want for them you know under or behind mask by his behaviors which are defensive mechanisms is toxic shame yes

01:23:07 if you read anything about his upbringing his background he has massive chain affiliation these are all as narcissism almost always is I have a paper that says the fence of Mecca is a bad be avoid he attacks right those are his two device it nice to it what shame is so intolerable no changes facts he changed until dawn but you mentioned earlier blames others

01:23:39 you know what both of you talked them about an idea the idea I don't think he's aware that he has I don't think he'd never admit or is aware that that's why he's doing it it's a pathology yeah exactly it's a pathology you go talked about anger as being a reaction to be accused to be shamed by others to respond with anger and I think you very wisely Kathy especially mentioned that in this purposeless shaming I think one of the

01:24:09 reactions of the the parties that are shames they get angry and unfortunately get mobilized this is what the this shame shame er and chief relies on that if you try to shame me and I don't want to accept it I'm gonna get angry out there you try to shame me and that mobilizes a lot of the the populace okay next question so I just want to get back to it's not my fault first of all my question but to you would be to please elaborate on why you

01:24:40 stated that men usually say it's not my fault more than women but before you answer that it in terms of it's not my fault I've always been on the impression that a person that cannot take criticism or it's not my fault they say that because they've been criticized quite a lot either by their their parents or so I don't know if that has

01:25:11 anything to do with it's not my fault that defensive mechanism but that goes into not being able to even take criticism I didn't do it it's not my fault and it's it's very pathological if you so the question though really is why metals and women okay understand why that's important if you win the lottery you don't feel proud you feel very happy because it's a chance you didn't hawser

01:25:42 although some people will say I went to a particular store and I know that that was so they give themselves causality and they can feel pride because it's negotiable here so a winning the lottery an event you don't you like to eat most people do not feel proud of winning a lottery because it's chance it has nothing to do with you causing it so

01:26:13 believing that you caused it or not cause it is a very good mechanism to move you around these self-conscious motion if it's not my fault then I can feel anything I want that's appropriate and so you can manipulate or it's not my fault so I'll do do some manipulation now the sex difference there are many explanation I'm an American era in which you can look at when parents are

01:26:43 teaching children in the laboratory tasks to do and the child doesn't succeed what does the parent say and it turns out that parents make these performance or global attributions more to girls than they do to boys that is the same when the child is supposed to be able to do a puzzle and the child can't do it and you asked and you you listen to what

01:27:14 the child says a parent could say under the extremes oh you're so stupid why don't you get that and say these things or they could say it's very hard problem why don't you try again and give them a strategy it turns out that giving strategies rather than making global attributions are more likely for mothers now to give this to the boy child than

01:27:45 to give it to the girl child how why I don't know why it is but I can only tell you what we think may be going on but let me give you another I really think it's another reason I think girls are much more that is the womankind are much more concerned about their bodies they're men that I don't know how broad it is I can say that in most cultures that I've been to if it's a four or more

01:28:18 formal occasion the women are better dressed than the men the only place that might not be true is is Italy in India certainly my is not always true but indeed the attending to the body is a necessity given that a menstruation which so a normal essence parts with you have to be concerned with your body men

01:28:49 don't go don't have that concern then the researcher pre-adolescent you ask boys what do you feel about the fleshiness under your arm or the thickness of your thighs have a nine year old boys they don't have anything to say about it they've never thought about it and nine-year-old girls are already telling you oh I think this is too much and so there is a concern for the body so

01:29:20 the question is why is that one solution women have said that the object sexual objects for men and so they become objectifying that's a reasonable hypothesis but an alternative one where's this not my fault link how's that linked to that okay it's if you attend more to yourself and that's where temperament would come in if there's more information that you are deriving out of your body sense that information

01:29:52 is more likely to make you think about yourself and therefore more likely to move toward the attributions if something went wrong why cause question a little bit Martha Stewart was that your example whose example is that Martha Stewart she never would have been prosecuted if sure a man doing exactly what to that it's it's the it's the expectations of society that villainize her in the first

01:30:22 place good for her for going back to work that's what I say I would also like to keep an eye on the Trump officials that get blamed for their terrible behavior as Trump officials like Kirsten Nielsen and Sarah Sanders what about all the guys like we accuse women in we shame women it much more much more often and much much more than we have shame men and I say I say that as a person

01:30:52 who's written journalistic essays for Bloomberg I get unbelievable hate from the commenters as a woman just unbelievable it is completely documented so I'm just saying it is socialized to a large extent and of course one last thing dieting guess who diets girls guess why they're told to diet it's by their parents so it's not it's very very good data that this is socialized the

01:31:22 Justice doesn't like it when people lie to public officials and Martha Stewart was not sent to jail because of the insider trading accusation inside of trading itself is a very complicated area and it's gone through lots of changes but when you lie when you're being interrogated by the FBI they don't look at your gender that's like a fundamental principle for them whether you like it or not I don't like it I don't like I agree with you about Martha Stewart good for you and I

01:31:53 think it was unfair to just nail her on the procedural things but they do that all the time and they do it to men and women I have a somewhat different view than Mike I would be really skeptical of a generalization of that gender in this area because I think a really fundamental principle of action is the note premise that all human beings have is that there's a relationship between action and outcome you know I might I swing an axe something happens well everyday life is built on the

01:32:25 fundamental premise of an relationship between action and outcome and that's the default that's what you start if you're going to move away from it there are special cases in which you might you might have a conception of something the world being simply a lottery it's a horrible notion if you really think about it that way because you're losing control of your life it's if it's that way and the relationship of action outcome has all sorts of manifestations for men and women and I would bet you can find areas where men might be one way in women another and just the

01:32:55 opposite in some other domain but I'd really be surprised if the most fundamental premise was good what you're at you and what you do has consequences and you're responsible for my in my limited experience because it's only from within my office it's not it's not based on extensive research but in my experience it I do not see a distinction but what I do see is that the harder the person is on themselves the more they're

01:33:26 tempted to say it's not my fault when they're confronted with something the more the person is willing to accept that they have done something wrong the less they are willing there they need to say oh no it's not my fault that's that's a complicated question because it involves all sorts of developmental issues yeah I'm overcoming

01:33:57 my public speaking shame by doing this thank you thank you my question is I've always thought of guilt as being really the almost like the intro ejected parental figure telling us what to do and shame or as being part of the death Drive as aggression towards ourselves so I think that in my own opinion to get over shame we can sublimate that aggression outwards into more it's socially acceptable in positive ways

01:34:28 what are your views on that I would recommend that everyone go back and see the movie for feathers done by kurta and movie for feathers done in the 1930s in which you were in a military family in England and they're going off to the Sudan to fight and one of the buddies decides he's not going to go and he the four feathers are the feathers that you receive being accused of being a coward in this case by his fiance and his

01:35:00 buddies and the rest of the movie is about his attempt to do incredible things of courage to be accepted back into this having been shamed so powerfully and that seems to me is a kind of typification of how shame works in a society that has statuses as clear goals has notions of the good and when you fall out of it and you are cold on it it's an incredibly powerful set of

01:35:30 motivations that go on and the movie is what worth seeing if you want to see let's call it the pre-modern view of how this whole thing operates and it doesn't fit that definition friend of mine lass I told me which has some truth in it that guilt is an afterthought guilt is an afterthought is that you commit the act then you say oh I feel terrible about it right it rarely stops you from

01:36:01 committing the act it seems to me shame is a basic is one of the emotions we have we have lovely I have shame we have all those things so I don't think that any to do with that drive or anything it's just an emotion that humans have and I guess some animals are the challenge I think of guilt and regret as having some spatial connection because the focus is on how to correct the wrong whereas in shame

01:36:36 the self is attacked thus very powerful so I think that that definition that distinction is probably a one from a behavioral point of view and also from a general theoretical point of view that kind of distinction is worth having but is it building simply moral shame in morality shame plus fear because guilt

01:37:07 involves fear of punishment to where well you know I guess so I mean there's a lot of ones I'm not quite sure what they mean I think in fact that means that you've made you've never discretion there is a vast literature of which are not much of a corner which in fact looks at weather when it's around achievement but it's very relevant is you can look

01:37:41 at your performance or you can look at the task and for example Carol Dweck has made a very big a whole career based on this distinction I can focus and say gee I'll give you a perfect example you write a paper then you send the paper into it these are the kind of activities I do and back comes the paper and it's

01:38:16 rejected and there's a whole set of criticisms I can do one of two things depending on what it elicits in me this failure I can look at what they criticized and focus upon that this will cause me a set of actions to try to repair or save the paper if in fact the result is a damaged self I put it in a

01:38:49 draw and I forget about it and when you work with graduate students and and fellows in medicine one of the things to try to teach them and then his teachable that's interesting from a therapeutic point of view is in fact I don't want to hear about you what a lousy scientist you are I want you to go home that I want you to list each criticism separately and write some response do I

01:39:20 have to do another analysis do I need to read more focusing them on the task gets them to stay in the game and try to correct the failure if in turn you think you're a lousy scientist you will want to forget it one way of coping with bat shape is to forget it and so you put it in a drawer and and exactly what you

01:39:51 said and it in fact you want a mechanism that stops you in your tracks it is sufficient that you can't do this except a great cost to yourself esteem if you like whereas in guilt you fundamentally water a parent and and you can actually see it and behave you can see that these children would you want to repair it in shame too if

01:40:27 you're if you do something in a social context it's inappropriate shame yourself in fact whatever share it you want to go and say I you know I'm so sorry I behaved so you know also represents okay let's go to the next question public shame but my question is something that hasn't been discussed here so I read in this book that shame is one of the main pillars of one of the

01:40:58 pillars of loneliness so what do you guys think about that I just want to understand from you know I'm gonna jump in and and tell you how I understand shame and this is for a lot of reading it's not my definition and I'm trying to remember the person's name whose book is from but it's it's this idea of a disintegration of self that you basically have this connection with your caretaker when you're a child and it's it's a good feeling and then at

01:41:28 some point they are disappointed at you they shame you and it feels like you do not have a self and you're so desperate to get back into that connection that you would literally do anything and if you can't get back into that connection you feel completely float it you feel disintegrated like you do not have a connection to your mother or whatever in that I mean of course that elicits loneliness so I think there's a very strong connection with that definition of shame which might maybe isn't the only one but that definition of shame is

01:42:01 is loneliness it is in fact the definition of being alone when you're disconnected from everything else sort of feelings are shameful and so you can be ashamed of being guilty but you can't be guilty about being ashamed and you can be ashamed about being lonely now the question is if you feel lonely can you be ashamed thank you so clearly if you are believed that you

01:42:36 should be a part of the social group there are people who interestingly we don't have a lot of social interaction much prefer to be on their computer than to go to a party so on that loneliness may not be chained 'full because they don't have a value that they should be socially integrated Asperger is a perfect indication because many part of

01:43:06 the iceberg or personality is in fact there they're interested in things more than people okay last question I I am wondering about the relationship between shame and the stability of a society because it seems to me that in very very stable societies whether it's a family or a larger society like our nation shame is sometimes weaponized

01:43:37 when the society changes and perhaps it's a function of fear of the change and shame is used whether to put down a racial group or women or to impose certain standards these things really ramp up when the society is changing really to maintain the stability of the society so it's almost yeah I mean I I'm

01:44:08 gonna echo you that I think we can look at our society and see that norms are changing very very quickly and and I would even argue that people think they're changing faster than they actually are changing because we have this artificial sense of accomplishment on social media when it looks like in our tiny little corner of Facebook that we all agree that such and such is true when in fact it's a very small corner of Facebook I think we actually are being misled by our intuitions around social norms and we think things are changing

01:44:40 faster but that goes to your point which is that if if some people think the norm is now you have to ask three times before having sex with someone and they you know and other people think no you don't even have to ask you know it's not surprising that conflict emerges and when conflict about what we thought we already knew about norms that's that is ripe for shame that is what shame is for right shame is for coercing people into

01:45:11 the norm so if if they if they got it wrong actually 95% of people are getting it wrong what the [ __ ] is wrong with this these people you know it's because we actually think we've accomplished more norm changing than we have and that's what's happening right now and we have I think you made the point one of the norms that we're seeing change is the idea of being authentic rather than factual right are honest that is itself a norm that is ripe for shaming because it's exactly the point the point of that norm is that people who follow that norm

01:45:43 who are in that norm group are exactly the people that are going to be shamed by people who are like no we haven't agreed to that change in the norms right you are actually supposed to be an honest person not a shameless person so there's there's so much going on right now it's a it's chaos honestly with respect to changing norms when there's chaos with the changing norms there is an uptick if not an explosion of shame it makes sense to think about the

01:46:15 balance between the private and the public in society and when you're thinking about social change there needs to be some kind of balance between those two the domain of the private is a way in which you can't be shamed because what you're doing with people who you're close to or intimate with or you know trust you it's not something you would necessarily do with anybody and now what's happened is the anybodies of the world are in that private domain exposing it and now your reputation your

01:46:46 career is affected because of something you happen to say in private that someone was able to eavesdrop on or leak so basically our leaks and the irony of our free press because our free press are a bunch of snoops they're trying to dig into the private realm all the time they're encouraging people to leak information which would normally be in an insolent area where you couldn't be shamed and they're shaming all sorts of people and I think the media movement in fact has brought us back to the 17th century cyber stocks that's why I use

01:47:20 that notion we have the stocks going all the time now I don't think it's healthy for our society and to the extent we continue to erode the private domain it's an area where creative and he can go on transgressive experimentation complete take place in miniature some of that stuff is truly load some others ends up being creative stuff that then filters out more broadly into the society I think you know guys are correct I think that's a commonality and in that idea but I think there's another

01:47:52 thing there is the owning of happiness and we haven't gotten to happiness is was interesting that you brought it up as one of the best I have to tell you the story so my I think I mentioned my father was born in the nineteenth century so I mean in the twentieth century at the beginning of the 20th century and he believed that if you did something well you would be happy and we now believe you if you are happy you will do

01:48:24 something well our focus has moved which is part of the self focus on our happiness so in in another in another round table the discussion of happiness and they are there some wonderful books of how searching for happiness is made us miserable is is really the theme so not only are some of the main the

01:48:57 changes in technology we support some of this mainly I can I walk down I live in the I walk down the streets and I'm a little old man and a big towering person is walking toward me reading they're reading their phone and I have to say excuse me or he's gonna run me down and and if we said oh well we used to have people walk down the street reading

01:49:27 books that was not the case people didn't walk down the street really books but what so I think but there is a shift to this happiness to this idea that the self deserve certain things and I think it's important to climb in in empathy and indeed a rise in narcissism we have

01:49:59 done by the way around table unhappiness but thank you very much [Applause]