Chapter 11: Negative Self-Conscious Emotions
Vocal Changes
Table 5
Emotional stories utilized in Simon-Thomas et al., (2009)
| Emotion | Emotional Story |
|---|---|
| Embarrassment | Someone discovers that you have made a social gaffe |
| Guilt | You know that you have done something (morally) wrong that has hurt another person |
| Shame | You feel like you are a bad person |
Below, tables 6 and 7 display the findings for basic and self-conscious emotions. For self-conscious emotions, a significant number of participants did not label the vocal sounds correctly. For the embarrassment, guilt, and shame vocal sounds, 1/3 participants selected the label “no emotion!” Looking further, for these self-conscious emotions, some participants selected the emotion sadness – which is fascinating! So, whatever sounds were selected for shame, guilt, and embarrassment conveyed sadness to the participants. Maybe these self-conscious emotions are simply sadness that we experience when we disappointment the self!
A few other interesting findings unreacted to self-conscious emotions. Most participants labeled the fear sound (presumably a scream or gasp) surprise – and much work suggests that fear and surprise are often confused. When participants heard a contempt sound they labeled this sound “no emotion.” This parallels the CAD triad (Rozin et al., 1999) findings in which people also labeled community violations “no emotion,” instead of the correct labels “contempt.”
Table 6
For basic emotions, % participants who selected each emotion label for the vocal sound.
| Correct Label for Vocal Sound | % Selected Each Vocal Sound (correct answer bolded) |
|---|---|
| Anger | 79 Anger
6 Fear |
| Disgust | 83 Disgust
6 No Emotion |
| Fear | 46 Surprise
37 Fear |
| Sadness | 64 Sadness
16 No Emotion 6 Shame 5 Embarrassment |
| Surprise | 60 Surprise
17 No Emotion 12 Fear |
| Contempt | 39 No Emotion
34 Contempt 7 Disgust 5 Surprise 5 Shame |
Table 7
For self-conscious emotions, % participants who selected each emotion label for the vocal sound.
| Correct Label for Vocal Sound | % Selected Each Vocal Sound (correct answer bolded) |
|---|---|
| Embarrassment | 33 No Emotion
17 Embarrassment 11 Sadness 11 Shame 10 Guilt |
| Guilt | 30 No Emotion
27 Sadness 15 Shame 14 Guilt 8 Embarrassment |
| Shame | 31 No Emotion
27 Sadness 13 Shame 10 Guilt 8 Disgust 7 Embarrassment 6 Sadness 5 Contempt |
| No Emotion | 39 Contempt
17 Surprise 16 Sadness 6 Disgust |
In Cordaro, Keltner, and colleagues’ (2016) study on vocal change (review here), participants matched a story about embarrassment to a vocal sound. The story was “He/she is passionately singing his/her favorite song until s/he realized his/her friends were watching, and now s/he feels embarrassed” (Cordaro et al., 2016, Table 3, p. 121). The correct vocal sound for embarrassment was self-conscious laughter and a groan. All countries, including Bhutan, matched the vocal sound to the embarrassment stories at beyond chance levels. The lowest recognition rates were obtained in India (79%) and in Bhutan (about 43%).
Watch June Tangey on Guilt and Shame (recommended: beginning through 11:00)
