7 ms·

Nope, shame is ineffective as a tool for change. More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them than actually make the change you want.

Nope, shame is ineffective as a tool for change. More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them than actually make the change you want. Besides, it's frequently just about vengeance anyway. Shame is really hate of other, for the most part. As a tool for oppression however, yes it's quite effective.

xpe 3y ago
The comment above lacks essential nuance and is overly confident.
- redcobra762 3y ago
  The comment above lacks contributory value and is also (ironically) overly confident.
  - xpe 3y ago
    Shall we continue into an infinite regress of zingers? You are correct that I didn't provide supporting reasons myself. Fair point. I suppose I didn't think your comment warranted it. Saying that might come across as harsh, which isn't my goal. I'd rather shift into a constructive and specific discussion instead. In that spirit, I'll elaborate on my criticism. Let's start with your leading sentence: > Nope, shame is ineffective as a tool for change. There are lots of ways to improve this sentence; here is one suggestion: consider a phrasing like "In comparison to _X_, shame tends to be less effective for _particular purpose_." I'd suggest avoiding empirical claims about likelihoods you aren't able to defend. Take this sentence fragment: > More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them... If done forcefully, this _might_ lead to "shutting down" or "ignoring"; however, on what basis can one say this happens "more often"? More often than what? The writing here overreaches -- this is why I called it "overconfident". There are many situations where one person points out a shameful behavior in another, who recognizes it, feels bad, and i.e. apologizes and modifies their behavior. My point: it would be faulty to dismiss the idea of shame as useless in social contexts. Finally, the next sentence also struck me as an overreach: > As a tool for oppression however, yes it's quite effective. Care to elaborate your thinking on that one? What do you mean by oppression? By oppression I think of a power dynamic where the weak are kept in a lower position by the more powerful. Is this what you mean? Why do you think shaming is particularly effective way to oppress? In my mind, military, physical, legal, and economic mechanisms tend to be more effective, historically speaking. I could speculate. Perhaps you are referring to the practice by certain religious systems to make people feel ashamed for merely doing things that all humans do (make mistakes) and thus deserve punishment (e.g. by the religious elites, or worse, by yourself, thus making yourself feel weak and unworthy). In short, I'm sufficiently enough in these ideas to be rather unsatisfied with writing that doesn't unpack the ideas at all. No offense intended. I look forward to learning what you mean.
    - redcobra762 3y ago
      Eh, you either seem unaware that your comments aren’t the only ones in this discussion, or narcissistic enough to believe only you deserve a full response, because every answer you’re looking for and more are in sibling comments around you, yet you choose to engage only in my shortest comment that had context you could pretend didn’t exist. If you were trying to show some of the worst faith engagement possible on HN, you did it.
boredtofears 3y ago
Shame isn't always for oppression, although it certainly can be - it's also a pretty useful tool to impose reasonable rules that allow you to live peacefully among your neighbors.
- redcobra762 3y ago
  That's not shame, that's guilt. Shame is existential, guilt is situational. The cost of shame is too high for whatever value it may bring.
  - boredtofears 3y ago
    Nope: > According to cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict, shame arises from a violation of cultural or social values while guilt feelings arise from violations of one's internal values. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame#Comparison_with_guilt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame#Comparison_with_guilt
    - redcobra762 3y ago
      Yep: > In sum, shame and guilt refer to related but distinct negative “self-conscious” emotions. Although both are unpleasant, shame is the more painful self-focused emotion linked to hiding or escaping. Guilt, in contrast, focuses on the behavior and is linked to making amends. [0] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328863/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328863/
      - pests 3y ago
        Why is a painful emotion a bad thing?
        redcobra762 3y ago
        People react poorly to it, and in situations where it is unnecessary, it’s just cruel.
filoleg 3y ago
> people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them Sure, but large businesses entities (as opposed to individuals) often cannot afford such luxury. Try being a bank in a western country and ignoring a public security blog post, outlining exactly how one can exploit your online banking auth flow to gain unauthorized access to customer accounts.
- redcobra762 3y ago
  That’s not shame, that’s risk. Corporations don’t have the capacity for shame, it’s the major thing people gate about corporations in the first place…
  - filoleg 3y ago
    > That’s not shame, that’s risk Risk of what? Risk of losing credibility and revenue due to… people shaming them, perchance?
darthvervet 3y ago
[dead]
Eisenstein 3y ago
There are different types of shame. Shame related to a decision situation (endogenous) and shame not related to a decision situation (exogenous). In the endogenous case the shame is said to be a 'pro-social' emotion. This is backed by studies. "Using three different emotion inductions and two different dependent measures, we repeatedly found that endogenous shame motivates prosocial behavior. After imagining shame with a scenario, proself participants acted more prosocially toward the audience in a social dilemma game (Experiment 1). This finding was replicated when participants recalled a shame event (Experiment 2). Moreover, when experiencing shame after a failure on performance tasks, proself participants also acted prosocially toward the audience in the lab (Experiment 3). Finally, Experiment 4 showed that this effect could be generalized beyond social dilemmas to helping tendencies in everyday situations. Therefore, it seems safe to conclude that shame can be seen as a moral emotion motivating prosocial behavior." [1] You can also contrast 'humiliation' shame with 'moral shame', with moral shame being prosocial. This is also backed by studies. "Our data show that the common conception of shame as a universally maladaptive emotion does not capture fully the diversity of motivations with which it is connected. Shame that arises from a tarnished social image is indeed associated with avoidance, anger, cover-up, and victim blame, and is likely to have negative effects on intergroup relations. However, shame that arises in response to violations of the ingroup’s valued moral essence is strongly associated with a positive pattern of responses and is likely to have positive effects on intergroup relations."[2] [1] de Hooge, I. E., Breugelmans, S. M., & Zeelenberg, M. (2008). Not so ugly after all: When shame acts as a commitment device.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 933–943. [2] Allpress, J. A., Brown, R., Giner-Sorolla, R., Deonna, J. A., & Teroni, F. (2014). Two Faces of Group-Based Shame: Moral Shame and Image Shame Differentially Predict Positive and Negative Orientations to Ingroup Wrongdoing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(10), 1270-1284.
- xpe 3y ago
  Would you care to summarize what "related to a decision situation" means for those of us who don't have access to those articles?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
>More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them than actually make the change you want. shame as a tool of change does not work on the person being shamed at the time, it works on that person for the future hopefully as they will be afraid to be shamed again and it works on changing the behavior of other peoples because they don't want to get shamed either. Thus as a tool of oppression, as you pointed out, it works great. But also as a tool for enforcing otherwise non-enforced social rules - until of course you meet someone shameless or who feels at least that they can effectively argue against the shaming.

xpe 3y ago

The comment above lacks essential nuance and is overly confident.

redcobra762 3y ago
The comment above lacks contributory value and is also (ironically) overly confident.
- xpe 3y ago
  Shall we continue into an infinite regress of zingers? You are correct that I didn't provide supporting reasons myself. Fair point. I suppose I didn't think your comment warranted it. Saying that might come across as harsh, which isn't my goal. I'd rather shift into a constructive and specific discussion instead. In that spirit, I'll elaborate on my criticism. Let's start with your leading sentence: > Nope, shame is ineffective as a tool for change. There are lots of ways to improve this sentence; here is one suggestion: consider a phrasing like "In comparison to _X_, shame tends to be less effective for _particular purpose_." I'd suggest avoiding empirical claims about likelihoods you aren't able to defend. Take this sentence fragment: > More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them... If done forcefully, this _might_ lead to "shutting down" or "ignoring"; however, on what basis can one say this happens "more often"? More often than what? The writing here overreaches -- this is why I called it "overconfident". There are many situations where one person points out a shameful behavior in another, who recognizes it, feels bad, and i.e. apologizes and modifies their behavior. My point: it would be faulty to dismiss the idea of shame as useless in social contexts. Finally, the next sentence also struck me as an overreach: > As a tool for oppression however, yes it's quite effective. Care to elaborate your thinking on that one? What do you mean by oppression? By oppression I think of a power dynamic where the weak are kept in a lower position by the more powerful. Is this what you mean? Why do you think shaming is particularly effective way to oppress? In my mind, military, physical, legal, and economic mechanisms tend to be more effective, historically speaking. I could speculate. Perhaps you are referring to the practice by certain religious systems to make people feel ashamed for merely doing things that all humans do (make mistakes) and thus deserve punishment (e.g. by the religious elites, or worse, by yourself, thus making yourself feel weak and unworthy). In short, I'm sufficiently enough in these ideas to be rather unsatisfied with writing that doesn't unpack the ideas at all. No offense intended. I look forward to learning what you mean.
  - redcobra762 3y ago
    Eh, you either seem unaware that your comments aren’t the only ones in this discussion, or narcissistic enough to believe only you deserve a full response, because every answer you’re looking for and more are in sibling comments around you, yet you choose to engage only in my shortest comment that had context you could pretend didn’t exist. If you were trying to show some of the worst faith engagement possible on HN, you did it.

boredtofears 3y ago

Shame isn't always for oppression, although it certainly can be - it's also a pretty useful tool to impose reasonable rules that allow you to live peacefully among your neighbors.

redcobra762 3y ago
That's not shame, that's guilt. Shame is existential, guilt is situational. The cost of shame is too high for whatever value it may bring.
- boredtofears 3y ago
  Nope: > According to cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict, shame arises from a violation of cultural or social values while guilt feelings arise from violations of one's internal values. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame#Comparison_with_guilt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame#Comparison_with_guilt
  - redcobra762 3y ago
    Yep: > In sum, shame and guilt refer to related but distinct negative “self-conscious” emotions. Although both are unpleasant, shame is the more painful self-focused emotion linked to hiding or escaping. Guilt, in contrast, focuses on the behavior and is linked to making amends. [0] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328863/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328863/
    - pests 3y ago
      Why is a painful emotion a bad thing?
      - redcobra762 3y ago
        People react poorly to it, and in situations where it is unnecessary, it’s just cruel.

filoleg 3y ago

> people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them Sure, but large businesses entities (as opposed to individuals) often cannot afford such luxury. Try being a bank in a western country and ignoring a public security blog post, outlining exactly how one can exploit your online banking auth flow to gain unauthorized access to customer accounts.

redcobra762 3y ago
That’s not shame, that’s risk. Corporations don’t have the capacity for shame, it’s the major thing people gate about corporations in the first place…
- filoleg 3y ago
  > That’s not shame, that’s risk Risk of what? Risk of losing credibility and revenue due to… people shaming them, perchance?

darthvervet 3y ago

[dead]

Eisenstein 3y ago

There are different types of shame. Shame related to a decision situation (endogenous) and shame not related to a decision situation (exogenous). In the endogenous case the shame is said to be a 'pro-social' emotion. This is backed by studies. "Using three different emotion inductions and two different dependent measures, we repeatedly found that endogenous shame motivates prosocial behavior. After imagining shame with a scenario, proself participants acted more prosocially toward the audience in a social dilemma game (Experiment 1). This finding was replicated when participants recalled a shame event (Experiment 2). Moreover, when experiencing shame after a failure on performance tasks, proself participants also acted prosocially toward the audience in the lab (Experiment 3). Finally, Experiment 4 showed that this effect could be generalized beyond social dilemmas to helping tendencies in everyday situations. Therefore, it seems safe to conclude that shame can be seen as a moral emotion motivating prosocial behavior." [1] You can also contrast 'humiliation' shame with 'moral shame', with moral shame being prosocial. This is also backed by studies. "Our data show that the common conception of shame as a universally maladaptive emotion does not capture fully the diversity of motivations with which it is connected. Shame that arises from a tarnished social image is indeed associated with avoidance, anger, cover-up, and victim blame, and is likely to have negative effects on intergroup relations. However, shame that arises in response to violations of the ingroup’s valued moral essence is strongly associated with a positive pattern of responses and is likely to have positive effects on intergroup relations."[2] [1] de Hooge, I. E., Breugelmans, S. M., & Zeelenberg, M. (2008). Not so ugly after all: When shame acts as a commitment device.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 933–943. [2] Allpress, J. A., Brown, R., Giner-Sorolla, R., Deonna, J. A., & Teroni, F. (2014). Two Faces of Group-Based Shame: Moral Shame and Image Shame Differentially Predict Positive and Negative Orientations to Ingroup Wrongdoing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(10), 1270-1284.

xpe 3y ago
Would you care to summarize what "related to a decision situation" means for those of us who don't have access to those articles?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

bryanrasmussen 3y ago

>More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them than actually make the change you want. shame as a tool of change does not work on the person being shamed at the time, it works on that person for the future hopefully as they will be afraid to be shamed again and it works on changing the behavior of other peoples because they don't want to get shamed either. Thus as a tool of oppression, as you pointed out, it works great. But also as a tool for enforcing otherwise non-enforced social rules - until of course you meet someone shameless or who feels at least that they can effectively argue against the shaming.