 23. The Self‑Conscious and Social Emotions  505
larly important to personality research. 
Next, we broadly review extant research 
findings on the self-  conscious emotions, par -
ticularly as they pertain to personality. Sev -
eral of these emotions have received a great 
deal of research attention, resulting in a 
considerable body of knowledge about their 
psychological experience, nonverbal expres -
sion, evolutionary origins, development, and 
impact on health and well-being. Finally, we 
provide a briefer overview of research find -
ings on a handful of other social emotions 
that bear relevance to personality: gratitude, 
compassion, jealousy, envy, humility, and 
awe. Throughout the chapter, we highlight 
important future directions for personality 
research into all of these emotions.
What Are the Social Emotions,  
and How Are They Relevant to Personality?
To some extent, all emotions are social, in 
the sense of functioning to help individuals 
navigate the social world. Even basic emo -
tions such as fear, anger, and disgust func -
tion, in part, to send evolutionarily signifi -
cant interpersonal messages to social group 
members, as well as intrapsychic signals to 
the emotion-  experiencing individual about 
his or her shifting environment and relation -
ships. But some emotions are more purely 
social, in that they would not exist were it 
not for humans’ intensely social evolution -
ary history and our unique sense of self. 
These emotions evolved in humans to help 
us cope with the tasks that are essential to 
group living, such as bonding with poten -
tial mates, caring for children, establishing 
group loyalty, following and learning from 
leaders, and attaining status and influence 
over others. Although anger, fear, and sad -
ness are instrumental to many of these pro -
cesses, human societies and cultures have 
become as complex and highly developed as 
they are in large part because of our uniquely 
human social emotions (Tracy, 2020; Tracy, 
Mercadante, Witkower, & Cheng, 2020; 
Robins, Tracy, & Trzesniewski, 2008).
Since its inception, emotion research 
has been at least partially located within 
the broader field of personality psychol -
ogy; many of the scholars who founded the 
contemporary study of affective science in the 1980s and 1990s were at the time per -
sonality or personality-  oriented clinical re -
searchers (e.g., Clark, Davidson, Ekman, 
Levenson, Russell, Tomkins, and Watson). 
Furthermore, emotions occupy a central 
position within several more specific ap -
proaches traditionally taken to the study 
of personality. For example, emotions have 
long been understood as the mechanisms by 
which human motivation is translated into 
concrete goal-  directed behavior (e.g., Mc-
Clelland, 1987; Murray, 1938); emotional 
stability (or neuroticism) is considered a 
major part of nearly all established trait 
taxonomies (e.g., John, Chapter 2, this vol -
ume), and positive and negative affect are 
typically viewed as central components of 
subjective well-being (e.g., Diener & Lucas, 
2008).
In the last two decades, personality psy -
chologists have devoted increased attention 
to the study of distinct emotions, and to the 
social and self-  conscious emotions in par -
ticular, often treating these constructs as 
personality dispositions, emotional prone -
nesses, or affective tendencies. As a result, 
the field has begun to accumulate consid -
erable knowledge about how the trait-like 
tendency to experience emotions such as 
shame, guilt, pride, gratitude, compassion, 
jealousy, envy, and humility are related to 
a range of other personality processes and 
social behaviors.
What Are the  Self-Conscious  Emotions?
The primary distinctive characteristic of 
self- conscious emotions is that their elici -
tation requires the ability to form stable 
self- representations (a “me” self), to focus 
attention on those representations (i.e., to 
self- reflect, or hold an “I” self; James, 1890), 
and to put it all together to generate a self- 
evaluation (Tracy & Robins, 2004a). Com -
plex self-  evaluative processes are an impor -
tant part of both the direct causal processes 
that elicit self-  conscious emotions (i.e., a 
proximal cause), and the ultimate evolution -
ary processes through which these emotions 
became part of the human repertoire (i.e., a 
distal cause).
At a distal level, self-  conscious emo -
tions exist because they motivate individu -