Shame

Shame is one of the emotions that a person experiences in a variety of everyday situations and many cases it is annoying. Shame is known as a moral emotion, yet its role in psychopathology has been emphasized. This study aimed to examine the lived experience of shame in individuals . This research is a qualitative study with a phenomenological approach. This research describes in-depth what shame is and how it is experienced from the perspective of individuals. The participants included eight men and seven women who contributed to an in-depth unstructured interview. A seven-step Colaizzi method was used to analyze the data. Data were analyzed using MAXQDA (2018) software.Based on our findings, the eight themes of "physical reactions", "accompanying emotions", "making mistakes", "vicarious shame", "gaze of others", "being subject to judgment", " preoccupation" and three sub-themes of "worry", "rumination" and "blame", "existential shame" with the sub-themes of "inadequacy" and "feeling different" are the most common ones in people's experience of shame. Results are discussed regarding the existing literature. In general, the study of people's experience of shame shows that there are common themes in the description of different people from what they have experienced. The use of shame as a concept in psychotherapy may improve our understanding of the nature of some psychological problems.

In this article, I approach some phenomena seen predominantly on social-media sites that are grouped together as cancel culture with guidance from two major themes in Plato’s thought. In the first section, I argue that shame can play a constructive and valuable role in a person’s improvement, just as we see Socrates throughout Plato’s dialogues use shame to help his interlocutors improve. This insight can help us understand the value of shaming people online for, among other things, their morally reprehensible views. In the second section, I argue that it is required for the proper functioning of democratic institutions that some views be excluded from the public sphere, which follows some Platonic ideas from the Laws. In neither case do I argue that this approach is good in an unqualified sense or even ultima facie good. However, I maintain that these important insights from Plato’s dialogues illuminate crucial aspects of how we should think about cancel culture.

This paper corrects a historical injustice that has been perpetrated against Kant for some time now. Mostly on good grounds, Kantian ethics has been accused of neglecting the role played by the emotions in moral deliberation and in morally informed action. However, the contemporary moral philosophers who have put forth such a claim tend to bypass textual sources, on the one hand, and to downplay the role played by the anthropological writings on Kant’s practical philosophy as a whole, on the other. Relying on highly relevant pre-critical texts in which Kant sketches future argumentative patterns and discusses the role of a negative emotion like shame on the improvement of the human species, I address a mistaken conclusion about Kantian ethics as a whole that is common in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. I also raise paradoxical conclusions that follow from Kant’s argument, once its implicit premises have been brought to light. I conclude that Kant did indeed think seriously about a so-called ‘shame-instinct’, however much his central ideas diverge from contemporary readings of the emotion, and fall short of fulfilling the ultimate target one can assume his insights would be drawing at

The present mixed methods study examined the relationship of three constructs within applied linguistics, namely, shame, guilt, and grit among Iranian EFL learners. By considering the principles of positive psychology, the authors tried to determine the existence of any significant association between the variables. In this vein, 263 Iranian students aged between 13 to 18 participated in the study and filled out the questionnaires. Analyses of the data revealed strong negative relatedness between shame and the other two variables, while the learners’ guilt and grit were found to be positively correlated.  Expanding the quantitative results, the authors utilized a grounded theory approach and interviewed 30 students to further investigate the shame-inducing factors in L2 classroom and the analyses signaled that the ashamed learners suffer from internal and external shame-provokers. Attending to shame and other negative feelings would possibly reduce the learners’ shame and stress, help them progress in learning and enhance their well-being.

Objective: Shame is a multi-faceted self-conscious emotion which occurs when one considers themselves to not have fulfilled internalized societal standards and can be viewed as a social, psychological as well as a cultural phenomenon. The current study aimed to explore the lived experience of individuals receiving psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy. Research Methodology: The study used a qualitative research method and described, in-depth, what shame is and how it’s experienced from the participants' point of view. The participants in the study were nine males and seven females who participated in an in-depth unstructured interview. Data were analyzed based on the seven-step Colaizzi's method. Findings: Based on the findings of this study, eight themes of “physical reactions,” “accompanying emotions,” “making mistakes,” “other,” “being subject to judgment,” “blame,” “annihilation,” and “having a negative view of self,” in addition to three sub-themes of “incompetence,” “worthlessness” and “inadequacy” were common in the lived experience of individuals of shame. The resulting themes were explored and discussed. Conclusion: The findings of this study can be used to develop shame assessment scales considering the Iranian culture and to plan interventions that target these common themes.