What happens to the brain when embarrassed? (2023)

What does embarrassment do to the brain?

Guilt and shame can lead to depression, anxiety, and paranoia, but they also nudge us to behave better, says Sznycer. “When we act in a way we are not proud of, the brain broadcasts a signal that prompts us to alter our conduct.”

Embarrassment, being the negative evaluation of self, by self and the others, can have adverse psychological effects. It can make an individual question their self-worth and self-image, which can further result in a decrease in levels of self-confidence and self-esteem.

Embarrassment is what's known as a self-conscious emotion. While basic emotions such as anger, surprise or fear tend to happen automatically, without much cognitive processing, the self-conscious emotions, including shame, guilt and pride, are more complex. They require self-reflection and self-evaluation.

When we feel embarrassed, what happens is that our sympathetic nervous system will make our blood vessels open wiiiiide up and allow blood to rush through. That's what gives us such a red face, neck, or chest when we're embarrassed.

Embarrassment is a painful but important emotional state. Most researchers believe that the purpose of embarrassment is to make people feel badly about their social or personal mistakes as a form of internal (or societal) feedback, so that they learn not to repeat the error.

When someone develops a phobia of embarrassment, they live with a potentially debilitating mental disorder which can get in the way of the ability to live a normal life. Katagelophobia is the fear of embarrassment taken to a disordered extreme.

If so, you're probably a highly empathetic person, according to new study published in the journal PloS One. In fact, the study finds, the experience of vicarious embarrassment affects the same brain regions that light up when you empathize with someone's physical pain.

According to Gerald Fishkin, a California-based psychologist and author of The Science of Shame, the experience of shame is connected with the limbic system. That's the part of the brain that influences the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight-or-flight response.

The researchers found only eight expressions that are used in almost all cultures. Happiness, though, continually emerged as the most varied. It suggests happiness is the most complex emotion, if you consider the number of facial expressions required to show its variety.

What part of the brain controls embarrassment?

According to the researchers, the embarrassment centre is focused in an area called the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex; this tissue resides deep inside your brain, to the front and the right.

Embarrassing moments can keep you afraid of what can go wrong and diminish the excitement of what can go right. Don't let your potential go to waste because you don't feel ready or confident enough.

The two most common ways we try to move against shame is blaming and perfectionism. People who respond to shame in this way can immediately go to blaming themselves or others in response to a shameful event, or they just might try to prove the shame wrong by being their most perfect selves.

If you feel humiliated, there might be a good reason why. If you let yourself feel it, you might be able to learn and grow from the experience. While feeling mortified is part of how we humble ourselves and keep our egos in check, it's also part of how we build confidence.

Shame, Pride, and Embarrassment

This major milestone occurs sometime between 15 and 24 months of age.

Empathy is highly related to secondhand embarrassment as it drives the feeling of stepping into someone else's shoes and feeling the same things they do, especially when it's humiliating.

Chronic, debilitating shyness or a deep fear of being embarrassed in front of other people or negatively judged is called “Social Anxiety” or “Social Phobia”.

Humiliation can destroy one's self esteem and lead to mood disorders over time, including depression and PTSD.

For example, the experience of shame has been found to be connected to the severity of PTSD among older male veterans who were prisoners of war and women who had been exposed to interpersonal violence. Interestingly, these studies found that shame had a stronger connection with PTSD than guilt.

How do I move on from embarrassing mistakes?

Damaging Consequences of Humiliation. Suffering severe humiliation has been shown empirically to plunge individuals into major depressions, suicidal states, and severe anxiety states, including ones characteristic of posttraumatic stress disorder.

In line with this, some recent empirical evidence on the neural processing of emotions has showed that humiliation is a very intense emotion, more so than related negative emotions such as shame and anger (Otten and Jonas, 2014).

Humiliation is defined as the emotion you feel when your status is lowered in front of others. You may feel annoyed with yourself when you make a mistake or fail to know an answer, but unless others are around to witness it, that's all you'll feel.

Shame causes people to hide from the sanctions of cultural norms, which leads to perceptions of brokenness or being bad (Arnsten, 2015). Empathy has the opposite effect. It creates a space where people can process their circumstances without shame's debilitating effects.