Shame and Its Influence on Action Orientation

Alicja KEPLINGER

Zakład Psychologii Osobowości, Instytut Psychologii, Wydział Nauk Historycznych i Pedagogicznych, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, ul. J.W. Dawida 1, 50-527 Wrocław, Poland , Poland

Abstract

Shame can play a central role in motivating and regulating people’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, achievements and social adaptation. People can devote much attention and energy to make a good impression in the eyes of others and properly behave in social relationships or task situations because they fear social sanctions and consequences of not keeping up with certain standards of functioning. Despite decades of research into the emotion of shame we still do not have a clear idea of the functions and mechanisms of shame in the life of an individual. The purpose of the article is to discuss the most frequent ways of understanding shame in current psychological literature as well as to describe the two opposing approaches to dealing with emotional shame, namely, the constructive and the destructive ones.

Keywords:

shame, constructive and destructive approach orientations