Contents
Shame on others: Why do we feel embarrassed by others?
Psychology
This feeling appears when we see another person in a situation that we consider inappropriate and embarrassing.
La embarrassment it is a “very ours” thing, so much so that finding a translation for it is difficult. The closest thing we can find is the German word “fremdschämen”, with a definition similar to our “a lipori”, a term with the same meaning of what we colloquially call someone else’s shame.
It is difficult not to have ever experienced this sensation, although there are those who do not have a name for it. The shame of others is, as ifeel’s psychologist Rafael San Román explains, a feeling of discomfort, inadequacy, modesty, rejection and disapproval that we feel in the first person before an act of another person that we consider laughable, deplorable or pathetic. It even goes further: even if the person who is “being exposed” is not ashamed, we can
feel it.
The psychologist Laura Palomares, from Avance Psicólogos, points out that the fact of being social beings influences that we give great importance to the judgment of others. «The shame of others is the emotion we feel when imagining or emulate the shame or fear of being judged by the other“, He says. For this reason, in some way, we have so internalized the fear of ridicule that we can even assume that of others.
“In general, anyone can feel it, but they will do so according to their particular threshold: the more things in the world that they consider to be pathetic or shameful, the more often they will feel it; the more liberal and compassionate a person is, the less they will experience it, ”says Rafael San Román. Likewise, the professional remembers that shame is not a “basic” emotion, but very cultural and learned, and that is why the perception of it varies so much from one person to another.
Feel alipori
What makes “feel alipori” something so special is that, somehow, we appropriate during a rare an emotion that is not ours. Laura Palomares explains that when we empathize, specific areas are activated in our brain –the insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex– whose function is to emulate the sensations and emotions of others. But, although empathy is a mechanism that in some way can influence this emotion, we must take into account something else: our own ego. Psychologist Rafael San Román comments that embarrassing ourselves for others often serves to protect our self, our identity. “We can think:” If I am able to detect pathetic behaviors in other, judge them as such and feel discomfort, then it means that I am not like them, “says the professional.
For this reason, Rafael San Román considers that we must separate empathy with the feeling of shame of others, since the only thing they have in common is that both experiences appear with the activation of our emotional world from what happens to another person. “Feeling someone else’s shame towards someone takes us away from that person, while empathy -by definition- brings us closer to them and leads to a good relationship,” he explains, although he warns that “you shouldn’t assimilate someone else’s shame to a mockery either” .
We must distinguish it from mockery since shame is something we live in private, and it is not necessary to verbalize or explain that we experience it, while teasing is a behavior, something external and perceptible. “It is something we do, not something we feel: we verbally humiliate a person.”
How society influences
Finally, Laura Palomares talks about the influence that the context and the society in which we live have so that she develops more or less the feeling of shame. He comments that a society always imposes rules, and when we skip them, the “sense of ridicule” arises. “The sense of ridicule For fear of the opinion of others and the shame of others they have to do, they are related and it is precisely the concern for the image before others, which generates the feeling of shame before the other and for the other, “he asserts.
“The more socialized a person is, the more fear of ridicule they present and the greater their capacity to feel shame of others”, says the psychologist and concludes: “In this sense, a society excessively dependent on the image and very rigid in its canons, it can lead us to worry more about what they will say ».