Cross-cultural regularities and variability in the emotion of shame

Shame appears to be part of human nature, yet it varies across time and between cultures. While differences in social norms or attributional styles are often cited as driving forces behind variation in shame, these approaches struggle to explain cross-cultural regularities in shame and the tight alignment between the features of the shame system and the challenges it addresses. In this chapter, we characterize shame from an adaptationist perspective—viewing this emotion as an evolved adaptation shaped by natural selection. We argue that despite its diversity of cultural expressions, shame functions to mitigate the actual or potential costs of being devalued by others. This framework can account for both cross-cultural similarities and differences in how shame is felt, expressed, and regulated. What may appear as culturally unique expressions of shame can be understood as variations on a universal theme: a finely tuned system evolved to manage the adverse consequences of devaluation. This approach reveals that even cultural differences in shame stem from a common adaptive logic.