Nope, shame is ineffective as a tool for change. More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them than actually make the change you want. Besides, it's frequently just about vengeance anyway. Shame is really hate of other, for the most part.
As a tool for oppression however, yes it's quite effective.
> people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them
Sure, but large businesses entities (as opposed to individuals) often cannot afford such luxury.
Try being a bank in a western country and ignoring a public security blog post, outlining exactly how one can exploit your online banking auth flow to gain unauthorized access to customer accounts.
Shame isn't always for oppression, although it certainly can be - it's also a pretty useful tool to impose reasonable rules that allow you to live peacefully among your neighbors.
> According to cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict, shame arises from a violation of cultural or social values while guilt feelings arise from violations of one's internal values.
> In sum, shame and guilt refer to related but distinct negative “self-conscious” emotions. Although both are unpleasant, shame is the more painful self-focused emotion linked to hiding or escaping. Guilt, in contrast, focuses on the behavior and is linked to making amends. [0]
>More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them than actually make the change you want.
shame as a tool of change does not work on the person being shamed at the time, it works on that person for the future hopefully as they will be afraid to be shamed again and it works on changing the behavior of other peoples because they don't want to get shamed either.
Thus as a tool of oppression, as you pointed out, it works great. But also as a tool for enforcing otherwise non-enforced social rules - until of course you meet someone shameless or who feels at least that they can effectively argue against the shaming.
There are different types of shame. Shame related to a decision situation (endogenous) and shame not related to a decision situation (exogenous). In the endogenous case the shame is said to be a 'pro-social' emotion.
This is backed by studies.
"Using three different emotion inductions and two different dependent measures, we repeatedly found that endogenous shame motivates prosocial behavior. After imagining shame with a scenario, proself participants acted more prosocially toward the audience in a social dilemma game (Experiment 1). This finding was replicated when participants recalled a shame event (Experiment 2). Moreover, when experiencing shame after a failure on performance tasks, proself participants also acted prosocially toward the audience in the lab (Experiment 3). Finally, Experiment 4 showed that this effect could be generalized beyond social dilemmas to helping tendencies in everyday situations. Therefore, it seems safe to conclude that shame can be seen as a moral emotion motivating prosocial behavior." [1]
You can also contrast 'humiliation' shame with 'moral shame', with moral shame being prosocial. This is also backed by studies.
"Our data show that the common conception of shame as a universally maladaptive emotion does not capture fully the diversity of motivations with which it is connected. Shame that arises from a tarnished social image is indeed associated with avoidance, anger, cover-up, and victim blame, and is likely to have negative effects on intergroup relations. However, shame that arises in response to violations of the ingroup’s valued moral essence is strongly associated with a positive pattern of responses and is likely to have positive effects on intergroup relations."[2]
[1] de Hooge, I. E., Breugelmans, S. M., & Zeelenberg, M. (2008). Not so ugly after all: When shame acts as a commitment device.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 933–943.
[2] Allpress, J. A., Brown, R., Giner-Sorolla, R., Deonna, J. A., & Teroni, F. (2014). Two Faces of Group-Based Shame: Moral Shame and Image Shame Differentially Predict Positive and Negative Orientations to Ingroup Wrongdoing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(10), 1270-1284.
There’s a reason your citations are nearly a decade old at best; the science has changed.
A 2021 meta-analysis showed that, “shame correlates negatively with self-esteem and is large effect size.” [0] So unless the goal of your shame is to actively harm the people involved, then no, shame is not an effective tool at behavior change, given the damage it causes.
You may be thinking of “guilt” rather than shame:
> In sum, shame and guilt refer to related but distinct negative “self-conscious” emotions. Although both are unpleasant, shame is the more painful self-focused emotion linked to hiding or escaping. Guilt, in contrast, focuses on the behavior and is linked to making amends. [1]
One has to do with self-esteem, which has nothing to do with whether it is pro-social or beneficial, just that some types of shame harm self-esteem, which was never contested.
The second study is about criminal populations, and I specifically mentioned that shame is about self-policing, and that obviously didn't work if someone is incarcerated for a crime.
You’re confused about how shame could make someone unproductive? How shame could drive a behavior underground rather than eliminate it, thus exacerbating the issue rather than reducing it?
As you are demonstrating, shame is more about causing pain than changing behavior. You seem to want to hurt people, and that’s one reason why shame is not effective. You don’t care that equally or more effective means exist for improving behavior.
It isn't letting me reply to you above because it locks down comment chains that get replied to quickly to avoid flame wars, so I will reply here and be done.
> So you admit that shame can be bad? Then you’re close. Next you need to realize that shame’s effectiveness is dependent on a person feeling shame the way you want them to. But that’s not how it actually works, is it? Instead, shame is sourced from the judgements of others, so one way of effectively mitigating shame is to hide the behavior from others, rather than stopping it. So shame is ineffective.
I never claimed that shame couldn't be bad -- I said it is essential for society to function properly. I cited two studies which demonstrated that shame can be prosocial and beneficial depending on circumstances.
> And I’m not being silly. You tried to dismiss the legitimacy of my citation by dismissing an entire category of people. That was inconsiderate.
I dismissed your studies because they were both irrelevant to my point and did not contradict anything I cited. If you feel that I am othering prisoners because I said that the situation of the people in the study made it useless to make your point, then I object to that and say that you are grasping at straws since you have no reasonable argument otherwise.
Look, you have every right to be absolutely wrong in this case, so don't bother changing your mind or looking at my actual standing on the issue and instead imagine I am some kind of meany pants who wants people to feel bad if you want, but I am done with this conversation.
That’s not how HN works, individuals are slowed by IP, there is no “slow a specific conversation”, but thanks for making it clear you’ve been flagged by dang as a troll.
And one of the clearest indicators to me that a person knows their argument is weak is when they declare themselves correct (or me wrong). Of course I’m free to be wrong, the problem you have is you’ve done a terrible job demonstrating that fact.
You talk about how others 'want people to feel bad', but have you considered that you are expressing the most desire to belittle others and make them feel bad? Your abrasiveness and need to triumph in what should otherwise be a genial conversation must really make it difficult to engage with people without them disliking you. Have you considered self-reflection?
The problem with thinking you know everything is that you miss genuine opportunities to learn things -- I wasn't trying to shame you, I was pointing out the irony of your crusade in this thread (which is completely apparent to everyone) and urging you to self-reflect on things that could improve your life.
Even if you think I am an asshole, self-reflection can only be beneficial. One thing that may be helpful is to take a look at your actions over the thread and think about it from the other perspective, and seeing how you may appear from someone else's point of view. I do that often and though it isn't always pleasant, it does give a reality check in some key areas.
Keep thinking beyond the immediate for another step and you will see how harming self esteem means a person won’t productively alter their behavior. It’s in the literature I’ve cited if you’re actually curious.
And you made a value judgement about the people who end up in jail/prison, which was completely uncalled for.
You know that things can be bad sometimes and not bad some other times? Shaming people to make them feel bad is not good; however feeling shame for having done something wrong is good -- it motivates one to avoid doing that again.
> And you made a value judgement about the people who end up in jail/prison, which was completely uncalled for.
So you admit that shame can be bad? Then you’re close. Next you need to realize that shame’s effectiveness is dependent on a person feeling shame the way you want them to. But that’s not how it actually works, is it? Instead, shame is sourced from the judgements of others, so one way of effectively mitigating shame is to hide the behavior from others, rather than stopping it. So shame is ineffective.
And I’m not being silly. You tried to dismiss the legitimacy of my citation by dismissing an entire category of people. That was inconsiderate.
Just a guess, but I imagine it's the difference between "I'm ashamed I can't make enough money to save anything" vs. "I'm ashamed I blew all my savings on crypto". One is shame about your situation (which are likely to be out of your own desires and control too), the other is shame about your decision (which you likely had better control over).
Shall we continue into an infinite regress of zingers?
You are correct that I didn't provide supporting reasons myself. Fair point. I suppose I didn't think your comment warranted it. Saying that might come across as harsh, which isn't my goal. I'd rather shift into a constructive and specific discussion instead. In that spirit, I'll elaborate on my criticism. Let's start with your leading sentence:
> Nope, shame is ineffective as a tool for change.
There are lots of ways to improve this sentence; here is one suggestion: consider a phrasing like "In comparison to _X_, shame tends to be less effective for _particular purpose_."
I'd suggest avoiding empirical claims about likelihoods you aren't able to defend. Take this sentence fragment:
> More often people shut down or ignore you if you attempt to shame them...
If done forcefully, this _might_ lead to "shutting down" or "ignoring"; however, on what basis can one say this happens "more often"? More often than what? The writing here overreaches -- this is why I called it "overconfident".
There are many situations where one person points out a shameful behavior in another, who recognizes it, feels bad, and i.e. apologizes and modifies their behavior. My point: it would be faulty to dismiss the idea of shame as useless in social contexts.
Finally, the next sentence also struck me as an overreach:
> As a tool for oppression however, yes it's quite effective.
Care to elaborate your thinking on that one? What do you mean by oppression?
By oppression I think of a power dynamic where the weak are kept in a lower position by the more powerful. Is this what you mean? Why do you think shaming is particularly effective way to oppress? In my mind, military, physical, legal, and economic mechanisms tend to be more effective, historically speaking.
I could speculate. Perhaps you are referring to the practice by certain religious systems to make people feel ashamed for merely doing things that all humans do (make mistakes) and thus deserve punishment (e.g. by the religious elites, or worse, by yourself, thus making yourself feel weak and unworthy).
In short, I'm sufficiently enough in these ideas to be rather unsatisfied with writing that doesn't unpack the ideas at all. No offense intended. I look forward to learning what you mean.
Eh, you either seem unaware that your comments aren’t the only ones in this discussion, or narcissistic enough to believe only you deserve a full response, because every answer you’re looking for and more are in sibling comments around you, yet you choose to engage only in my shortest comment that had context you could pretend didn’t exist.
If you were trying to show some of the worst faith engagement possible on HN, you did it.
As a tool for oppression however, yes it's quite effective.