ABSTRACT
Emotions are enormously complex, and difficult to define. Shame can be seen as the entwinement of negative self-evaluations and the fear of this being made public. These social dimensions are acknowledged in Scheff's analysis of shame that leads him to view this as ‘the large family of emotions that include many cognates and variants, most notable embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, and related feelings such as shyness that originate in threats to the social bond’ (2003: 255). He suggests that the maintenance of social bonds is fundamental to human motivation, and threats to these bonds, however slight (for example, arising out of failure, criticism, sarcasm, inadequacy, misunderstanding or rejection), give rise to feelings of shame. Given the central position of shame in social interaction, Scheff names it the “master emotion” of everyday life. It is a painful experience of the self by the self, and one which, momentarily at least, “affects” our self-esteem. By exposing ourselves to ourselves, it is the affect most central to the development of our identities. It is like a ‘looking-glass’ (Cooley 1922) in which we imagine how we are seen by other people and, therein, how we might be judged.
