The Information Threat Theory: Why Do We Feel Shame?

Shame is a very human emotion. We have all felt embarrassed at some point, both for things we have done and for things that others have done that make us blush. However, it also happens that we feel ashamed for things that we have not done, but that people think we have, why?

At first we might think that this makes no sense, that there is no reason to feel ashamed for something that we know we have not done and, therefore, we know that we have not acted wrong. However, even so, we cannot help but feel this emotion.

Information threat theory is an approach that has illuminated the idea of ​​human shame in a new light Let’s find out why…

What is Information Threat Theory?

Shame is a human emotional state. Everyone, at some point in their life, has felt this experience, whether caused by something they have done or said or by something that others have done and which, upon witnessing it, causes us some type of discomfort. It is an emotional state that can arise for many reasons, but most of them tend to coincide in being something that we regret having said or done.

One of the best-known and classic explanations for why we feel shame comes from attributional theories, which suggest that this emotion arises when two conditions are met.

The first is living or feeling that an event or result has occurred that is incongruent with the representations we have of ourselves, of our ideal self For example, we feel ashamed when, wanting to be one of the best students in our class, we fail an exam. Here it has happened that our ideal self has not only not been achieved, but we have also moved away from that idealized image that we want to become. We feel shame for not achieving what we want to be.

The second condition in which shame would appear would be when one attributes that event or result as something unstable to one’s global or real self, a trait that he considers negative and that he considers it implausible to change. For example, we would feel ashamed of ourselves when failing an exam and considering that it is really because we are not very intelligent or we are not good at studying.

Why do we sometimes feel ashamed?

Based on these two conditions defended by attributional models, shame would arise as a result of feeling that one has failed one’s own standards or aspirations.

There is discussion about what shame is and what guilt is. Popularly, it is agreed that shame is considered a public emotion, arising from interacting with others, while guilt would be experienced in a more private way. Attributional theories reject this idea, considering that it does not have to be this way, and both emotions can be felt regardless of whether or not other people know what we feel shame or guilt about.

However, attributional theories do provide explanations about what causes shame and what causes guilt. Shame would be activated through attributions of negative events related to the global self and elements of our self considered stable, that is, traits of our personality or way of being that we perceive as negative and undesirable and believe that they are difficult to change. Instead, guilt would be activated by attributions for unstable negative events, momentary aspects of ourselves that we believe we can change.

For example, if we fail an exam, we would feel shame thinking that it is because we are not intelligent enough (stable trait), while we would feel guilt thinking that it is because we have not studied enough (unstable trait).

The point is that when we feel shame, according to attributional theories, we see our global self as defective. We feel emotional pain when we feel that we have not managed to meet our ideal self, which is why it is said that shame is a strongly unpleasant and aversive emotion. For this reason, this emotion is also associated with the activation of various defense mechanisms such as blaming others, feeling anger, attacking objects and people, while also experiencing problems such as anxiety, depression and suicidal ideations.

But despite attributional theories having been so widely used to explain shame, they are not able to explain why this emotion appears in situations where the individual who feels it consciously knows that he has not done wrong or committed any morally questionable act. That is, attributional models do not seem to be able to explain why innocent people, who have no reason to feel bad, can feel shame for a behavior that others believe they have done but that he or she knows is not the case.

This is where the information threat theory would come into action, an interesting paradigm that sheds light on this issue. According to Theresa E. Robertson and her research team, authors of the article “The true trigger of shame: social devaluation is sufficient, wrongdoing is unnecessary,” shame acquires a fascinating social survival function, an emotion that can appear even without Let us not be guilty of anything because it is designed more towards what they will say than towards our remorse or actions.

The information threat

According to the authors of the paper, shame is an emotion that constitutes a cognitive system shaped by natural selection, whose objective is to limit the probability and associated costs of being socially devalued due to the expansion of negative information about our person, by margin of whether it is true or false. That they say bad things about us is threatening information as it risks us losing status, benefits and social attention within our group or social environment.

People who are little valued among their peers are less likely to be properly cared for when they require it A person whose social reference group despises them or considers them to have a bad reputation runs the risk of not receiving help when they need it and even being ignored or marginalized on purpose. We are also more likely to be a victim of exploitation if people believe something bad about us, and it is suspected that, in prehistoric times, being socially devalued by the herd was a severe handicap for the individual’s survival.

According to the information threat theory of shame, this emotion is activated in the individual’s mind when they notice that other people have realized (or get the feeling that they realize) that they know information. negative information about him, whether the information is true or not. According to this hypothesis, this emotion would have an evolutionary functionality, the adaptive purpose of ensuring that the individual does not sit idly by when he sees that his reputation is tarnished but also does not continue committing acts that put his social and individual survival at risk.

There would be three functionalities of shame according to this paradigm.

The first is that shame would appear so that the person behaves especially carefully once they have realized the threatening information that is being said about them The individual must take care of what he does or says, lest he make the situation worse than it already is. The objective is to prevent one from being socially more devalued than they are at the moment and, thus, avoid entering an even more precarious social situation.

The second would be that, in order to prevent your reputation from getting even worse because more people know negative information about you, the individual would attempt to limit the expansion and disclosure of the aforementioned information This information is a key point in the theory, since it in itself represents the threat of the information that gives its name to the paradigm, opinions, comments, thoughts or data that, regardless of how true or false they are, are potentially harmful.

Finally, and to try to recover a little of the status prior to the threat, the individual tries to limit and alleviate the costs of any consequent social devaluation He may not be completely successful, but his goal is to try to neutralize the negative information that has been shared about him and anticipate in case he knows that it may reach other people, in order to give them his version or a refutation of what is said. is saying about him or her.

Thus, information threat theory maintains that we do not feel shame about regretting something we have said or done, especially if we have not really done anything. Any innocent person can feel shame simply by knowing or suspecting that other people see them in a negative way, regardless of whether or not it corresponds to how they really are or what they have done. Shame would be the result of the negative beliefs and thoughts of others towards us which make us uncomfortable and make us fear for our social integrity.

The problem of devaluation

In smaller societies, based on subsistence economies and social systems with few members, the potential consequences of not being socially valued are very negative.

In these societies, If one of the members is socially devalued, they barely have social benefits, something that becomes a big problem in case you find yourself in a situation where you require help, such as falling ill or being the victim of an accident. He has little chance of the rest of the group coming to his aid, and therefore a greater chance of not surviving.

Because of the evolutionary benefits of being highly valued and the risk to our survival of not being highly valued, natural selection has given the human mind a series of mechanisms that ensure that, when necessary, we behave in a way that improves our social image motivates us to make others value us and look for people who have a higher social status than ours.

In addition to this, we have cognitive skills to identify and try to achieve skills perceived in the group as socially desirable, such as being in good physical shape, having a job, participating in volunteer work or being the one who fishes the best in the river at the same time. side of the village. Whatever society we live in, in all of them there are skills and merits that are socially well valued and that mean that the people who possess them are also taken into account.

The information threat theory suggests that shame is also part of this evolutionary endowment and that this emotional state has arisen to solve possible adaptive and survival problems that arise due to feeling that one is devalued.

How does shame protect us from devaluation?

Being socially devalued implies running the risk of receiving fewer social benefits, in addition to incurring more costs in the event of a situation of need due to not receiving help from others. This brings with it a reduced prospects for survival and reproduction

It is believed that social devaluation was a very recurrent situation in ancient times and, taking into account that at that time societies were smaller, the transmission of negative information was a much more harmful phenomenon as it was not possible to turn so easily to people who did not. were aware of the bad reputation of the individual who was being spoken ill of.

Due to the risk to our survival that others view us as socially undesirable, natural selection is believed to have created the mechanisms to detect and anticipate social devaluation and thus limit the possibilities of its occurrence and its associated costs. These include the mechanisms to minimize the leak and spread of discrediting information and improve the socially valued quality that has been compromised, fight to be treated better in case of injustice and tolerate some reduction in status.

Apart from the behaviors associated with these situations, information threat theory predicts a series of cognitive, motivational, affective and physiological responses focused on the objective of cushioning the devaluation and coping with the harsh social situation caused by the transmission of information. negative information.

This would make sense of the behaviors associated with shame, which the theory understands as behaviors to minimize reputational damage. We behave trying to prevent reputational damage from getting worse ; We do not talk to the people who have transmitted the negative information until we have thought of a counterinformation or apology or, directly, we have removed ourselves from social situations for a while. All of them are aimed at preventing negative knowledge about us from getting worse, and consequently we feel more shame.