You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself: Culture and Shame Driven Personal Growth

Although shame is largely viewed as a negative, destructive emotion, it is very commonly exercised in collectivistic cultures. Shame, an emotion thought to confront the self, often leading to maladaptive self-defensive actions, has been shown to also harbor a positive potential that can motivate people toward self-improvement. Collectivistic cultures that promote shame appear to rely on this positive potential of shame. This article reviews available literature to explore how and why shame lends itself to personal growth in the collectivistic cultures, contradicting its evidenced tendency to provoke self-defense. An extensive study of the literature uncovered four cultural differences in the perception of self, namely, in self-esteem, self-enhancement, self-concept inconsistency, and incremental belief of self which this article argues lead to self-defensiveness or self-improvement. We also argue that lower levels of self-esteem and self-enhancement observed in collectivistic cultures, as well as the propensity to perceive self as inconsistent and incremental, facilitate the positive action potential of shame, preventing self-defense reactions. We conclude that, while self-threatening shame can be more destructive than adaptive in certain cultures, collectivistic cultures tend to depend on their capacity to avail themselves of the positive potential of shame to ensure successful communal living.