Michael Lewis on living in a shameless society
Michael Lewis is Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where he teaches psychology, education, and biomedical engineering. He is also director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development and a founding director of the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Autism Center. He received his PhD in 1962 from the University of Pennsylvania in both clinical and experimental psychology.
Dr. Lewis’s research has focused on emotional and intellectual development in children, including the child’s development of a sense of self. His 1983 book, Children’s Emotions and Moods, was the first volume devoted to children’s emotional development, and his Handbook of Emotions (1st edition) (1993) was awarded the 1995 Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Book Award. His 1995 book, Shame: The Exposed Self, has become a cornerstone of attempts to understand this “quintessential” human emotion and has prompted additional research in the field. Lewis helps us distinguish among shame, guilt, and embarrassment and to consider constructive ways of responding to our own feelings of shame, rather than resorting to denial, depression, or rage.
Among his many honors, Dr. Lewis is a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 1995 he was ranked first in impact by a University of Notre Dame review of the most-referenced and productive researchers in the field of developmental sciences.
Now 80 years old, Dr. Lewis continues to write, teach, travel and lecture widely. He spoke with me by phone on two occasions after returning from a month of lecturing in Italy. — Leslee Goodman
The MOON: Why do you say shame is “the quintessential” human emotion?
Dr. Lewis: Shame is uniquely human. Like guilt and embarrassment, shame is one of the self-conscious, “moral” emotions — the emotions that tell us when we’ve violated one of our own internalized standards of behavior. To feel shame, or any of the moral emotions, several cognitive developmental tasks must first have been accomplished. These are human developmental tasks. So far as we know, no animals complete them:
One, we have to have an understanding of ourselves as separate individuals. This occurs when an infant reaches about 18 months of age. Two, we have to know the rules or standards that are applicable in our environment. Three, we have to be able to evaluate our behavior and find it lacking. Finally, we have to accept responsibility for our behavior. If we accept responsibility but limit our judgment of the behavior to a regrettable action, we will feel guilt. If we decide that our behavior is evidence that we are no good, that we are inadequate as individuals, we will feel shame.
Shame is unique because of its moral power. It is so painful to experience that we seldom want to talk about — or even acknowledge — that we feel ashamed. Yet precisely for this reason, shame and guilt are essential to maintaining societal standards. They prevent us from doing things our environment disallows.
Although some animals — dogs, for example — can behave in ways that look like shame, or guilt, we don’t really know enough about animal cognition to say that these developmental hurdles have been cleared. So it is my thesis that shame is a uniquely human emotion.
The MOON: Please tell us more about the differences between shame and guilt.
Lewis: In both shame and guilt one feels a sense of failure, accompanied by remorse. However, as I said, in guilt we feel remorse for our behavior, which can be corrected. If one feels guilty one can apologize and make amends. In shame, however, we generalize our sense of failure to our worth as a person. We feel that we are no good, and it is only with great difficulty that we can even own up to the things we have done that are shameful. That’s why shamed samurai committed seppuku, or why deeply shamed individuals today might commit suicide. Shame has caused them to feel that there is nothing they can do to right what they’ve done wrong.
The MOON: Some researchers have said that guilt is positive — its focus on the behavior prompts corrective action; while shame is inherently negative, because it focuses inappropriately on the notion of a flawed self. Do you agree?
Lewis: I agree that feeling too much shame is inherently negative, just as feeling too much of any emotion can be toxic. But shame is a normal human emotion. I wouldn’t want to live in a shameless society because shame can stop us from behaving badly in the future. It is a powerful preventive. Guilt is good because it can motivate you to make amends in situations that can be rectified. But what about a wrong that can’t be corrected? Shame is important to keep you from doing it!
The MOON: What are some of the most common shame triggers?
Lewis: Within cultures there are a fair number of common shame triggers — such as being publicly humiliated — but across cultures, and even from individual to individual, there is great variation in behaviors that cause shame. In some families, for example, anything less than high academic achievement is considered shameful. In other families, however, a passing grade is completely acceptable. A high score might even be cause for elation.
There are also gender differences in shame triggers. In our culture, for example, men are more likely to feel shame around sexual impotence and failure to succeed in sports, academics, or career; while women are far more likely to feel shame in association with their physical appearance or failure in their personal relationships. That’s why unemployment is far more debilitating for men than for women. It’s also why there are drugs to restore men’s sexual potency and performance, but not women’s. It’s a much more important issue for men.
Conversely, women’s desire to avoid feeling shame leads to all sorts of cosmetics, surgery, dieting, and even eating disorders. Women also are far more likely to take responsibility for personal relationships and, as a result, are far more likely than men to apologize to repair a relationship breach.
Obviously, we develop our shame triggers through parental and societal conditioning, but it’s interesting that children can also trigger feelings of shame in their parents. Say a parent denies a child’s request and the child shows disappointment. Though an entirely appropriate response, the child’s disappointment triggers the parent’s feeling that perhaps they’re no good as a parent. The parent gets angry and orders the child to change his or her attitude. This is an example that illustrates how shame complicates human interactions. Because shame is so painful to experience, people will quickly default to a less painful substitute. In men, the default is rage. In women, the default is more likely to be depression.
I’d also like to mention that certain classes of people are stigmatized — made to feel shame by their culture. In Biblical times, for example, lepers were stigmatized — publicly shamed and shunned. Today, in our culture, people with disabilities — physical or developmental — are often stigmatized. Children of different sexual orientation can be shamed. Children whose parents cannot afford the trendy clothes or footwear are often stigmatized. African American, Mexican American, Muslim, or non-English-speaking immigrants may be stigmatized. Shame can also be felt by association. For example, the parents and siblings of stigmatized people can feel shame and embarrassment that will last a lifetime. This can lead to a shame-rage spiral — in which the shame results in rage, which is expressed in an anti-social way that leads to more shame, which leads to more rage, and so on. Alternatively, perpetual shame can lead to a shame-depression spiral. One can easily see how impoverished minority members may be victimized by this.
The MOON: What about being exposed? The name of your book is Shame: The Exposed Self, and you’ve pointed out that people can feel ashamed simply by having attention focused on them — even if the attention is positive.
Lewis: Yes, well, actually that feeling — embarrassment — is distinct from shame. Guilt and shame we can feel all by ourselves. They’re the result of shortcomings in our own evaluation. But embarrassment requires others; it’s a public emotion. And yes, many people experience it when they are the focus of attention, even positive attention. In fact, embarrassment is the first self-conscious emotion in human development. You can see it in small children when they’re asked to perform in some way.
Under 18 months, children don’t recognize themselves in mirrors, use personal pronouns, or engage in imaginative play in which they take on a role, which is why young children don’t feel guilt, shame, or embarrassment. It takes 18 months or more to develop self-awareness — to be able to reflect upon yourself. The first phenomenological evidence of shame is that you want to hide, disappear, or even die. The body collapses, the head drops; you might cover your face with your hands. It’s the opposite of expressions of pride — a positive self-conscious emotion — in which you puff up, whoop and holler, give a “high five,” or even do a victory dance.
We’ve conducted experiments in which young children — three to five years old — are left alone in a room with a toy that is rigged to fall apart. We observed the children from another room and found that children who felt shame when the toy broke were visibly distressed, yet made no effort to repair the toy. They felt powerless. Children who felt guilt weren’t happy about the toy breaking, but they tried to fix it. This is how we’ve come to distinguish guilt from shame. Kids who felt no responsibility for the toy breaking just shrugged it off — demonstrating that guilt and shame require ownership of responsibility.
It’s interesting that we have also found gender differences in accepting responsibility for behavior. Boys as young as three or four tend not to feel responsibility for their “failures,” yet to take responsibility — pride — for their successes. Conversely, girls as young as three or four are more likely to feel responsibility for their failures and less likely to feel responsibility for their successes — which is one of the reasons women are more prone to depression than men. Boys have to learn to take responsibility for their mistakes and to apologize when their actions have hurt someone.
The MOON: Please say more about that — and about your earlier statement that men will bypass shame and default to rage, while women will bypass shame and default to depression.
Lewis: The point is that shame is such a painful state that it’s very hard for people to stay in it. Bypassing shame is an attempt to dissociate oneself from the pain of it. Men will bypass shame by becoming enraged. I prefer this term over anger, because anger is a restricted, focused response to an identifiable cause, whereas rage is not. Rage connotes anger born of powerlessness. That’s why men are more likely to commit acts of violence or rage. Women, who are more often conditioned not to express anger, will, if shamed, become depressed. Depression, by the way, has been called “rage turned inward.” Neither is helpful because it hides the causal emotion — even from the one who experiences it. Denial and bypassing shame make it difficult for people to explain their behavior — to themselves or others — because they won’t acknowledge its source. I liken shame to an atomic particle — we often know where it is only by the trace it leaves; by the effects it causes. Phenomena as diverse as child abuse, crimes of passion, minority and underclass crime, as well as many dysfunctional parent-child and interpersonal relationships are shame-dependent.
The MOON: You’ve said that “The narcissistic personality is the personality of the shamed.” Why?
Lewis: Narcissistic disorder arises when people are so damaged by feeling ashamed that they won’t allow it into their awareness. But denying shame is like denying any other emotion; it’s dysfunctional. Healthy individuals take responsibility for their mistakes and learn from them so that they don’t make the same mistake again. A narcissist, however, will not even acknowledge responsibility for a mistake; a narcissist must maintain the illusion that he or she makes no mistakes; that everything they do is perfect.
The MOON: We have a president who fits the bill of narcissism: an individual who characteristically blames others for his failures while taking full responsibility for his successes. He also has said in an interview with the NY Timesthat “I don’t like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see.” Do you believe he is a deeply shamed individual? What would be a healthier defense against shame than narcissism?
Lewis: Absolutely. Our president is a textbook case of narcissism. He apologizes for nothing; in fact, when wrong, he attacks. And it’s not just our president who is guilty. Our society is increasingly narcissistic. Forty percent or more of our population believes that feeling shame is inappropriate; that it’s a sign of weakness. So we have a Congress that is unashamed to propose eliminating health insurance for poor people, while they themselves keep their government-sponsored premium health coverage. We’ve got a population that doesn’t want to acknowledge that we’ve been continuously at war since at least 1952. That doesn’t want to apologize or atone for slavery, or genocide of the Native Americans. We live in a culture that won’t admit it’s ever done anything wrong. “American exceptionalism” has become delusional.
The MOON: But isn’t that evidence that we are so ashamed, and we just won’t admit it to ourselves?
Lewis: Yes, that’s exactly what it indicates, but that’s the problem with shame: we are ashamed by it. We don’t want to admit it to ourselves, or to others, so it persists. I said in my book that shame is often the reason we seek out therapy; but then shame often prevents us from benefitting from therapy because we’re so unwilling to admit it — even in a therapeutic situation. Avoiding shame drives a lot of human behavior, and its power is compounded by its secrecy.
The MOON: It seems to me that if we could just take a step away from shame and admit guilt — responsibility for behavior that hurt someone — we could deal with a lot of our history — and our current situation. What do you think?
Lewis: I think it’s difficult because no one wants to acknowledge shame. They’re in denial.
The MOON: What is the connection between shame and disrespect? I’ve noticed that my husband and I, for example, don’t want to acknowledge feeling ashamed, but we can talk about feeling disrespected. [Laughs] Partly, I think, because it puts the focus on the other’s behavior — you disrespected me — rather than our own shame response.
Lewis: Yes, I think that’s a good strategy. There’s a very interesting and powerful connection between shame and disrespect. Poor people often talk about “being dissed” — disrespected — and of course personal disrespect compounds the shame of powerlessness they may feel at not being able to secure employment, adequately provide for their families, and so on. Add to this the shame of belonging to a demeaned or devalued ethnic group and you get an idea of the emotional and psychic burden poor people operate under in our society.
If someone hasn’t treated you well, you’re likely to feel shame. But because we don’t like to talk about shame–it’s shameful — it’s hard to address. If we can talk about something else — disrespect — it helps. We can get it out into the open.
As it turns out, confession is one of the few solutions to feeling shame. A classic shame case between couples is sexual dysfunction. The man fears that he won’t be able to perform and is ashamed, so he avoids sexual intimacy. He doesn’t confess his shame to his partner, so she assumes that his lack of interest is due to her lack of attractiveness — a shame trigger for her. She doesn’t want to admit that to him, so no one talks about it and they suffer silently.
However, if either of them will risk confessing their shame, the entire dynamic changes. The man says, “I’m sorry; I’m having potency problems. It’s not your fault.” The woman is relieved; her shame is lifted from her; and she is likely to feel grateful and closer to her partner for his willingness to share. Now they can seek a solution because they’ve correctly identified the problem.
The Catholic Church was wise to build confession into the practice of its religion. In the privacy of the confessional, people could speak their shame and take steps to atone. I’m not Catholic, but I can see the value of this practice. Fundamentalist Christians don’t have the practice of confession. Many of them believe it’s unnecessary; all you have to do is believe and you are forgiven. But not only does this bypass the acts of atonement that might be appropriate for shameful behavior, you don’t even have to acknowledge the behavior to yourself — let alone to a priest! You believe; therefore you are forgiven. I can’t help but wonder whether this doesn’t contribute to our collective unwillingness to admit and apologize for some of the shameful things we have done.
The MOON: How can we get to a place where we can collectively acknowledge our shameful acts and atone for them, so that we can move forward as a country?
Lewis: I’m not optimistic about that, although other countries have done it. The Germans have acknowledged the horror of the Holocaust and even paid reparations to some of the Jews they weren’t able to exterminate. In South Africa, they overcame their terrible history of apartheid by freeing Nelson Mandela and establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission where people could acknowledge their crimes and be forgiven. Even the Catholic Church has apologized for sins committed against Jews, heretics, women, and indigenous peoples. So far, the United States hasn’t been willing to acknowledge its shameful past. Our Founding Fathers were comfortable defining three slaves as the equivalent of five white people — not to give slaves a partial right to vote; but to give their masters more representation in Congress! That’s the only way Virginia — a slave state — could have more representatives in Congress than Pennsylvania. And let’s not get into the sexuality of slavery. We would probably still be unable to talk about it were it not for the case of Sally Hemings’ descendants having the DNA evidence to show their kinship with Thomas Jefferson.
Our country is founded on the notion that you can own other people as property and also that you can take the land by force from its previous inhabitants. Social Darwinism is predicated on the notion that certain people just don’t matter as much as other people — specifically, wealthy white males. My wife and I travel a great deal and find that no other developed country has to discuss whether everyone should have access to healthcare. It’s obvious to them. The fact that our government not only refuses to offer universal healthcare, but is trying right now to take it away from 23 million people is shameful to me.
We’ve become a society that engages in shameful behavior but feels no shame. If you’re poor or black or brown, you’re more likely to be harassed by the police and sent to prison, where the whole point is not to rehabilitate you, but to shame and punish you — and even strip you of your right to vote for the rest of your life. If you’re addicted, we might give lip service to the idea that it’s a disease, but if you’re addicted while being poor or black or brown, you’re likely to end up in prison, not a hospital or rehab facility.
Yet poor people typically don’t blame the system; they blame themselves by feeling ashamed. And our politicians keep the shame going by turning people against each other.
The MOON: So how might we deal with our shame constructively?
Lewis: First we have to acknowledge that shame exists. It is not a pathological condition; it is a normal human emotion that we are all capable of feeling. Indeed, never feeling shame is the pathological condition. Second, we need to acknowledge that too much shame is debilitating; it prevents people from taking constructive action — or even talking about it — because they don’t want to acknowledge it. Three, we can recognize that everyone feels shame, or ought to, because everyone occasionally does or says something that is shameful. And four, we can confess when we feel ashamed and ask for forgiveness. It’s not actually that difficult to say “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that,” and it gets easier with practice. Admitting shame is like joining the human race. Yes, I’m human. I made a mistake. I feel terrible about it. Please forgive me.
You may have to atone for your transgressions, but after that, you’re free. You don’t have to keep denying them, bypassing them, and living with the rage or depression that follows.
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