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SHAME, as one of the self-conscious emotions, differs from what have been called the primary emotions because it comes about through self-reflection. While primary emotions require a self to experience the state (Lewis and Michalson, 1983), self-conscious emotions require a self both to produce the state and then to experience it. For example, a loud noise may put me in a state of fright. But to experience this state, I need to be aware of my state of fright. To be in a state of shame I must compare my action against some standard, either my own or someone else's. My failure, relative to the standard, results in a state of shame. Once in the state, I may or may not experience it. To experience it depends on whether I focus my attention on my state. Again, this requires consciousness. Others have suggested that the state of shame can be produced in a more automatic fashion, one that does not require objective self-awareness.
Consider the case of a 30-month-old child who has a bowel movement in his pants. We could assume that this event automatically causes a state of shame; that is, that there is some connection between the bowel movement and shame. Alternatively, we could think of shame as the consequence of what the child was thinking, either about the accident or about his parent's response to it. In my work, I have focused on the latter explanation, because I believe that most examples of shame-eliciting events cannot readily be explained by an automatic process. Consider another example, this time involving adults. A man asks an acquaintance who claims to be well read if he has read Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel. The well-read friend has not read the Oates book, but answers that he has read it in order to maintain his reputation for being cultured. In other words, he lies so as not to be shamed by his lack of knowledge. Clearly, here the event leading to a state of shame has to do with how the second man thinks rather than with some automatic process.
The confusion may reside not in the nature of the process but in the likelihood that some events lead to the state of shame more readily...