The Information Threat Theory: Understanding Why We Feel Shame

A summary of the Information Threat Theory, which explains shame as an adaptation.

Shame is a very human emotion. We have all felt ashamed at one time or another, both for things we have done and for things others have done that make us blush. However, it also happens that we feel ashamed for things that we have not done, but that people think we have done, why?

At first we might think that this makes no sense, that there is no reason to feel shame for something we know we have not done and, therefore, we know we have not acted wrongly. However, even so, we cannot help but feel this emotion.

Information threat theory is an approach that has illuminated the idea of human shame in a new light.. Let's find out why...

What is the Information Threat Theory?

Shame is a human emotional state. Everyone, at some point in their lives, has felt this experience, either caused by something they have done or said or by something that others have done and that, when witnessed, causes us some kind of discomfort. It is an emotional state that can arise from many causes, but most of them usually coincide in being something we regret having said or done.

One of the most well-known and classic explanations for why we feel shame comes from attributional theories, which suggest that this emotion arises when two conditions are met.

The first is experiencing or feeling that an event or outcome has occurred that is incongruent with the representations we have of ourselves, of our ideal selves. For example, we feel ashamed when, wishing to be one of the best students in our class, we fail an exam. Here it has happened that our ideal self has not only not been achieved, but also that we have moved away from that idealized image that we want to become. We feel shame for not achieving what we wish to be.

The second condition in which shame would appear would be when one attributes that event or result as something unstable of his or her global or real self, a trait that he or she considers negative and that he or she considers negative.a trait that he or she considers negative and that he or she considers implausible to change. For example, we would feel ashamed of ourselves when we fail an exam and consider that it is really because we are not very intelligent or we are not good at studying.

Why do we sometimes feel ashamed?

Based on these two conditions advocated by attributional models, shame would arise as a result of feeling that one has failed one's own standards or aspirations.

There is discussion about what is shame and what is guilt. Popularly, there is agreement that shame is a public emotion, arising from interacting with others, whereas guilt would be experienced more privately. Attributional theories reject this idea, considering that this need not be the case, and that both emotions can be felt regardless of whether or not other people know what we feel shame or guilt about.

However, attributional theories do provide explanations of what causes shame and what causes guilt. Shame would be activated by attributions of negative events related to the global self and elements of our self considered as stable, that is, traits of our personality or way of being that we perceive as negative and undesirable and believe are difficult to change. In contrast, guilt would be triggered by attributions of unstable negative events, momentary aspects of ourselves that we believe we can change.

For example, if we fail an exam, we would feel shame thinking it is because we are not smart enough (stable trait), while we would feel guilt thinking it is because we have not studied enough (unstable trait).

The point is that when we feel ashamed, according to attributional theories, we see our global self as defective. We feel emotional Pain when we feel that we have failed to live up to our ideal self. For this reason, shame is said to be a strongly unpleasant and aversive emotion. For this reason, this emotion is also associated with the activation of several defense mechanisms such as blaming others, feeling anger, attacking objects and people, while also experiencing problems such as anxiety, depression and suicidal ideations.

But although attributional theories have been so widely used to explain shame, they are not able to explain why this emotion appears in situations where the individual who feels it consciously knows that he or she has not done wrong or committed any morally questionable act. That is, attributional models seem unable to explain why innocent people, who have no reason to feel bad, may feel shame for behavior that others believe they have done but that he or she knows they have not.

This is where the information threat theory comes into play, an interesting paradigm that sheds light on this issue. According to Theresa E. Robertson and her research team, authors of the article "The true trigger of shame: social devaluation is sufficient, wrongdoing is unnecessary", shame acquires a fascinating social survival function, an emotion that can appear even without us being guilty of anything because it is thought more towards what people will say than towards our regrets or actions.

The threat of information

According to the authors of the paper, shame is an emotion that constitutes a cognitive system shaped by natural selection, whose objective is to limit the probability and associated costs of being socially devalued due to the spread of negative information about our person, regardless of whether it is true or false. Being told bad things about us is threatening information in that it risks us losing status, benefits and social attention within our social group or environment.

People who are undervalued among their peers are less likely to be properly cared for when they need it.. A person whose social reference group looks down on him or her or considers him or her to have a bad reputation runs the risk of not receiving help when needed, and even being ignored or marginalized outright. One is also more likely to be a victim of exploitation if people believe something bad about us, and it is suspected that, in prehistoric times, being socially devalued by the herd was a severe handicap for the survival of the individual.

According to the information threat theory of shame, this emotion is activated in the individual's mind when he notices that other people have noticed (or give him the feeling that they notice) that they know negative information about him, whether this information is true or not. According to this hypothesis, this emotion would have an evolutionary functionality, the adaptive purpose to ensure that the individual does not remain idle when he sees that his reputation is tarnished, but neither does he continue to commit acts that put his social and individual survival at risk.

According to this paradigm, there would be three functionalities of shame.

The first is that embarrassment would appear to cause the person to behave in a particularly careful manner once he or she has become aware of the threatening information being said about them. The individual should be careful what he or she does or says, lest he or she make the situation worse than it already is. The objective is to avoid being more socially devalued than they are at the moment and, thus, avoid entering an even more precarious social situation.

The second would be that, in order to prevent his reputation from getting even worse because more people know the negative information about him, the individual would try to limit the spread of the negative information, the individual would try to limit the spread and dissemination of the aforementioned information.. This information is a key point in the theory, since it is in itself the threat of the information that gives the paradigm its name, opinions, comments, thoughts or data that, regardless of how true or false they are, are potentially harmful.

Finally, and in an attempt to recover a little of the status prior to the threat, the individual tries to limit and mitigate the costs of any consequent social devaluation.. He may not entirely succeed, but his goal is to try to neutralize the negative information that has been shared about him and to anticipate in case he knows that it may reach other people, so as to give them his version or a rebuttal of what is being said about him or her.

Thus, the information threat theory holds that it is not that we feel shame for regretting something we have said or done, especially if we have not actually done anything. Any innocent person can feel shame simply because they know or suspect that other people see them in a negative light, regardless of whether or not it corresponds to how they are or what they have actually done. Shame would be the result of the negative beliefs and thoughts of others towards us, which make us uncomfortable and make us feel ashamed.that make us uncomfortable and make us fear for our social integrity.

The problem of belittling

In smaller societies, based on subsistence economies and social systems with few members, the potential consequences of not being socially valued are very negative.

In these societies, if one of the members is socially undervalued, he or she has hardly any social benefits, which becomes a big problem if he or she is in a situation where help is needed, such as falling ill or being the victim of an accident. If a member is in a situation where he needs help, such as falling ill or being the victim of an accident, he has little chance that the rest of the group will come to his aid and, therefore, more chances of not being able to help him. He has little chance that the rest of the group will come to his aid and, therefore, more chances of not surviving.

Because of the evolutionary benefits of being highly valued and the risk to our survival if this is not the case, natural selection has made the human mind have a series of mechanisms to ensure that we do not survive. a series of mechanisms that ensure that, when necessary, we behave in a way that enhances our social image, motivates us to make others think of us in a more positive way and, when necessary, to make us behave in a way that enhances our social image.We are motivated to make others value us and to seek out people who have a higher social status than we do.

In addition to this, we have cognitive skills to identify and try to achieve skills perceived in the group as socially desirable, such as being in good physical shape, having a job, participating in volunteer work, or being the best fisherman in the river next to the village. Whatever the society in which we live, in all of them there are skills and merits that are socially well valued and that make the people who possess them also highly valued.

The information threat theory suggests that shame is also part of this evolutionary endowment and that this emotional state has arisen and that this emotional state has arisen to solve possible adaptive and survival problems arising from feeling that one is devalued.

How does shame protect us from devaluation?

Being socially devalued means running the risk of receiving fewer social benefits, as well as incurring more costs in case of need because of not receiving help from others. This leads to reduced prospects for survival and reproduction.

It is believed that social devaluation was a very recurrent situation in ancient times and, taking into account that at that time societies were smaller, the transmission of negative information was a much more damaging phenomenon as it was not so easy to turn to people who were not aware of the bad reputation of the individual who was spoken ill of.

Because of the risk to our survival posed by others viewing us as socially undesirable, natural selection is believed to have created mechanisms to detect and anticipate social devaluation and thus limit the likelihood of its occurrence and its associated costs. These include mechanisms to minimize mechanisms to minimize the leakage and propagation of discrediting informationThese include mechanisms to minimize the leakage and spread of discrediting information, and to enhance the socially valued quality that has been compromised, to fight to be treated better in the event of injustice, and to tolerate some reduction in status.

In addition to the behaviors associated with these situations, information threat theory predicts a series of cognitive, motivational, affective and physiological responses focused on the goal of buffering devaluation and coping with the adverse social situation caused by the transmission of negative information.

This would make sense of the behaviors associated with shame, which the theory understands as behaviors to minimize reputational damage. We behave in such a way as to avoid further reputational damage.We do not talk to the people who have transmitted the negative information until we think of a counter-information or apology or, directly, we stay away from social situations for a while. All of these are aimed at preventing negative knowledge about us from worsening, and consequently making us feel more embarrassed.