Why do we cringe when others embarrass themselves? — Quartzy: “You need an audience to feel embarrassed,” says Frieder Paulus, a psychologist at the L�beck University in Germany. The emotion is social: It tells us when we have violated a social norm and makes us feel bad for doing so.
We have to actually know what these norms are to know we’ve violated them. Tripping is more or less universally embarrassing; we all know humans are meant to be upright creatures. But years ago, Paulus and his lab director S�ren Krach attended a presentation by someone who bragged unabashedly about his work, clearly unaware of what a fool he looked like in front of his peers, Melissa Dahl writes in her new book Cringeworthy. The two realized that watching their colleague humiliate himself was painful, even though they knew they had done nothing themselves that was outside of social norms. They decided to explore this phenomenon further in their lab.
Their research team conducted two studies on the neurological underpinnings of vicarious embarrassment, published simultaneously in 2011. First, researchers asked students to rank various embarrassing scenarios—like belching in a fancy restaurant, tripping in the mud, and wearing a shirt that says “I am sexy” (which doesn’t seem particularly embarrassing to me, but perhaps my fashion choices are questionable)—in terms of how they would feel if it happened to them. The scientists also asked people how they would feel if they saw someone else in any of these situations. They then had the students take a survey to get a sense of how much empathy they felt for others on a regular basis. It turned out that the study participants felt embarrassed for others in more scenarios than they felt embarrassed for themselves. They also found that those who generally feel more empathy tend to feel even more second-hand embarrassment.
We have to actually know what these norms are to know we’ve violated them. Tripping is more or less universally embarrassing; we all know humans are meant to be upright creatures. But years ago, Paulus and his lab director S�ren Krach attended a presentation by someone who bragged unabashedly about his work, clearly unaware of what a fool he looked like in front of his peers, Melissa Dahl writes in her new book Cringeworthy. The two realized that watching their colleague humiliate himself was painful, even though they knew they had done nothing themselves that was outside of social norms. They decided to explore this phenomenon further in their lab.
Their research team conducted two studies on the neurological underpinnings of vicarious embarrassment, published simultaneously in 2011. First, researchers asked students to rank various embarrassing scenarios—like belching in a fancy restaurant, tripping in the mud, and wearing a shirt that says “I am sexy” (which doesn’t seem particularly embarrassing to me, but perhaps my fashion choices are questionable)—in terms of how they would feel if it happened to them. The scientists also asked people how they would feel if they saw someone else in any of these situations. They then had the students take a survey to get a sense of how much empathy they felt for others on a regular basis. It turned out that the study participants felt embarrassed for others in more scenarios than they felt embarrassed for themselves. They also found that those who generally feel more empathy tend to feel even more second-hand embarrassment.