512 v. AFFECTI vE PROCESSES
about a CEO who apologized for a negative 
ecological incident caused by his company. 
Participants who learned that the CEO ver -
bally expressed feelings of shame while apol -
ogizing were more satisfied than those who 
learned that he communicated guilt or no 
emotion. Similarly, individuals apply weaker 
penalties to fictitious sex offenders who are 
described as feeling ashamed than to offend -
ers described as feeling sad and remorseful, 
or no emotion (Proeve & Howells, 2006). 
Correspondingly, although the shame non -
verbal display is automatically perceived 
as low status (Shariff & Tracy, 2009), a 
communication that is likely to reduce  the 
expresser’s fitness, showing the display in 
response to a transgression may benefit ex -
pressers by appeasing onlookers (Keltner & 
Buswell, 1997). Indeed, the shame expres -
sion may have evolved as a social signal that 
functions to inform group members of (1) a 
transgressing individual’s awareness that so -
cial norms have been violated, and (2) his or 
her respect for those norms (Gilbert, 1998). 
Supporting this account, Keltner, Young, 
and Buswell (1997) found that participants 
were more sympathetic toward hypothetical 
students who failed a class presentation, and 
more forgiving of hypothetical criminals, 
when those individuals were said to display 
shame.
Although studies highlighting shame’s 
more problematic social consequences (e.g., 
anger, aggression, social avoidance) raise 
questions for this account of shame as adap -
tive, in many cases these negative behaviors 
result from a tendency, among individuals 
from Western cultures in particular, to try 
to avoid or otherwise regulate experiences of 
shame, often by externalizing blame (Tang -
ney, Wagner, Hill-  Barlow, Marschall, & 
Gramzow, 1996; Tracy & Robins, 2004a). It 
is therefore possible that shame experiences 
and nonverbal expressions are evolutionarily 
adaptive but humans’ desire to counteract, 
suppress, and avoid the emotion is problem -
atic.
In contrast to shame, guilt is more clearly 
functional, as it motivates individuals to 
engage in prosocial, reparative behaviors 
following transgressions, and to take re -
sponsibility for their actions, all of which 
can enhance interpersonal relationships 
(Tangney & Dearing, 2002). In a personal -ity context, these functional responses are 
consistent with behaviors typical of highly 
conscientious individuals, who tend to obey 
social norms and demonstrate responsibility 
and accountability toward others (Roberts, 
Chernyshenko, Stark, & Goldberg, 2005). 
In fact, studies have found that conscien -
tious people tend to be high in proneness to 
guilt—a dimension associated with adaptive 
responding to transgressions (Fayard, Rob -
erts, Robins, & Watson, 2012)— yet low 
in proneness to shame, the much more mal -
adaptive propensity (e.g., Fee & Tangney, 
2002).
Development of  Self‑Conscious  Emotions
Self- conscious emotions are first experienced 
later in the course of development than more 
basic emotions: typically around 2.5 to 3 
years of age for pride and shame (M. Lewis 
et al., 1992; Stipek et al., 1992). These find -
ings are based on studies that present young 
children with a challenging task and com -
pare their behavioral and verbal responses 
after successful completion versus failure. 
Behavioral components of the pride expres -
sion and verbal indicators of pride tend to be 
shown by children at 2.5 to 3 years of age 
but not earlier, and not in shame-  inducing 
(i.e., failure) situations. Correspondingly, 
by age 3, children tend to respond to failure 
situations by showing shame behaviors such 
as tilting down their heads or covering their 
faces with their hands (Belsky, Domitrovich, 
& Crnic, 1997).
In contrast, embarrassment has been iden -
tified in children somewhat earlier—  at age 
2 and younger—  and to be correlated with 
mirror self-  recognition (M. Lewis, Sullivan, 
Stanger, & Weiss, 1989). On the basis of 
this finding, these authors argued that em -
barrassment emerges prior to shame and 
pride, perhaps because it requires only an 
ability to be self-aware (and no subsequent 
attributions or appraisals), and therefore 
belongs within a cognitively simpler class 
of self-  conscious emotions. Similarly, Izard 
and colleagues (2001) included shame, guilt, 
and pride, but not embarrassment, within 
the category of cognition-  dependent self- 
conscious emotions.
The capacity to understand pride emerges 
somewhat later than its (assumed) experi -