The emotion of shame has three important elements. The first is social. Individuals feel ashamed in response to a real or imagined audience. We do not feel shame in isolation, only when we transgress a social boundary or break a community expectation. Our internal moral guide may lead us to feel guilt, but shame comes when we fear exposure and evaluation by others. This may be especially true for girls and women, who draw a larger sense of self-identity from their friendly, familial, and romantic relationships. Second, shame is global. It causes us not only to evaluate our actions but to make a judgment about our whole selves. A person may feel guilty about a specific incident but still feel that she is a good person. Shame is more diffuse: it extends beyond a single incident and becomes an evaluation of the self. Psychologists commonly refer to shame as a belief in the malignant self: the idea that your entire person is infected by something inherently bad and potentially contagious. Finally, shame brings a psychological and physical urge to withdraw, submit, or appease others. When we feel ashamed, we tend to drop our heads, avert our eyes, and fold into ourselves. Pride makes us feel taller (think of Phoeby made taller by listening to Janie’s story), bolder, and more open; shame makes us want to be smaller, timid, and more closed. ‘Shame transforms our identity. We experience ourselves as being small and worthless and as being exposed.’

Clinical psychologists have traced the corrosive effects of shame in a number of dimensions. It is a common and debilitating effect of childhood sexual abuse. It is implicated in the higher incidence of depression among women and contributes to alcoholism, hostility, social anxiety, personality disorders, and suicide. When individuals feel chronically ashamed, they tend to attribute all negative events to their own failings. Instead of seeing the external world as capable of producing both good and bad outcomes, shamed individuals see themselves as particularly worthy of punishment. Shame eats away at self-esteem and makes every social role more difficult.