ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the burden of selfhood, that is, the reasons people seek to escape the self, including negative self-evaluations. It describes more fully how the self-conscious emotion of shame can represent an important emotion-based mechanism, through which self-relevant experiences can lead to pursuing self-escape behaviors such as alcohol misuse. The chapter presents reverse causal feedback loops in which destructive behaviors such as escape-avoidant alcohol misuse promotes further negative self-evaluation and shame. It explores directions for future research and highlight practical implications for the workplace at both the individual and the organizational levels, documenting how social psychological theory and research on self and self-conscious emotions, in particular, can offer important insight for organizational psychologists who are keen to improve employee health and well-being, as well as employee response to real. Although the above shame-reduction techniques are individual-level approaches, some of them may lend themselves well to use in organizations.
