469. The psychology of embarrassment

We blush, we look away, we replay the moment for hours (or years) after it happened, becoming convinced that everyone noticed far more than they probably did. Embarrassment is an interesting and complex emotion, but it can help us recognise social expectations and communicate how our behaviour affects others. Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s We explore: • When we first develop the capacity to feel embarrassed • Why we blush and the role of embarrassment in trust • Why some of us feel embarrassment more than others • The role of rumination • The psychological and social role of embarrassment • How we can form a better relationship with it Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s https://substack.com/@thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Our favourite sources: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0025403 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/article/not-intended-still-embarrassed-social-anxiety-is-related-to-increased-levels-of-embarrassment-in-response-to-unintentional-social-norm-violations/F4143AB3B88D41FB18F9962696A77151 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.70024 The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:04Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:10Jemma Sbeg?

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• 3:26Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

• 3:46Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of your 20s, my 20s, our 20s and beyond. Today, we're going to talk about embarrassment. I think there are, if we think about a hierarchy of emotions, embarrassment in terms of how physically awful it feels and how much it shrinks your world is probably near the top. It is an awful feeling, but what is actually happening neurologically and psychologically underneath that feeling? The truth is a whole lot more than we might think just from, just from the cringeness

• 4:30Jemma Sbeg?

  that we are experiencing as individuals. We are trained to pay attention to embarrassment the same way that we are trained to pay attention to pain and rejection and to fear. This makes for an awful emotional experience, especially when you've done something awkward or you've made a mistake. But it also derives, our reaction to it derives from our perception of how other people are seeing us. As much as embarrassment is uncomfortable, it is also synonymous with so many things that are going to actually expand your life, but also make people see you differently. Being earnest, asking questions, being audacious, you know, putting your heart on your sleeve.

• 5:10Jemma Sbeg?

  Those are just a few examples of how embarrassment will often follow us into experiences and moments that are the most revealing and rewarding. So today, I want to talk about the psychology of embarrassment, why it feels so bad, why the memories of embarrassing moments linger for so long, and why we need to rethink that relationship, why our relationship to embarrassment, particularly in our 20s, shapes our reality in so many hidden ways. And if we don't question that, and if we don't question who we're feeling embarrassed for or why we're feeling embarrassed, our lives may not be as big as we want them to be.

• 5:54Jemma Sbeg?

  We're going to talk about one of my favorite studies ever in the history of psychology. I love any chance I get to talk about this study. We're going to talk about all the research that backs up why embarrassment is subjective rather than objective. And I'm just really excited to talk about this because I feel like embarrassment and the fear of being embarrassing or the fear of making mistakes is genuinely the biggest barrier that a lot of people experience between knowing what they want and acting on what they want. So without further ado, let's get into it.

• 6:32Jemma Sbeg?

  So first, things first. We have to kind of understand exactly what kind of emotion embarrassment is before we can dissect why it happens, because it's a special kind of emotion. It belongs to what we call the self-conscious emotions, which are basically emotions that depend on the presence or perception of others to be experienced by ourselves. So other emotions in this category include things like shame, guilt, pride. We very rarely feel those in isolation if somebody else isn't around. This is very different to other categories of emotions that are centered around fear or pleasure.

• 7:15Jemma Sbeg?

  Self-conscious emotions require an idea of the self. It requires a recognition that we are ourselves, individuals. Other people are individuals and how they view us may not be how we view ourselves. And that can be internally painful. That is basically a complicated way of saying to feel embarrassment is to be self-aware. And being self-aware is not an entirely bad thing and it points to why embarrassment occurs. Research actually suggests that our ability to experience embarrassment is a sign of emotional maturity and a developed ego,

• 7:57Jemma Sbeg?

  particularly when we're talking about young children and young kids. By the age of 10 or so, like you should be able to feel embarrassed. And if you are a 10-year-old child and you don't feel embarrassed, you don't feel any of that feeling, people will often say that's not a good thing. That might indicate like, hey, this kid has not developed a sense of self or a sense of self-consciousness. They have not developed a sense that they are their own person, that other people may form opinions of them and that might not be a good thing. And they probably haven't developed a sense of morality. There's a pretty famous study that was published in 1989 by Michael Lewis and his colleagues.

• 8:38Jemma Sbeg?

  And it basically explored the relationship between self-recognition and self-conscious emotions like embarrassment. If you cannot recognize yourself as an individual, you cannot experience these more complex feelings. In this research, they had children between nine and 24 months old and they were observed during a mirror recognition task. And in this task, they put children in front of a mirror and they put a mark on their forehead. And the researchers basically wanted to see whether the children recognized that this was a reflection of themselves and moved towards the mark and then touched their own face to try and get rid of it. What they found was that when you can pass this mirror test, so when you can realistically see that you're in the mirror,

• 9:23Jemma Sbeg?

  see that there's something on your face in the mirror, wipe it off. So around two years of age, that is when we start understanding ourselves as separate from others. And it's shortly after that that we first start to experience embarrassment, specifically embarrassment around attention. So how we see this in children is that they will kind of like avert their gaze when somebody looks directly at them. They'll like turn their head away. I don't know if you've seen this, you're trying to play peek-a-boo with a kid and they like get embarrassed. They might cover their face behind their parents or a prem, things like that. This is a sign that this child is developing emotionally as they should be. What what kind of goes wrong, though, is that we all have a baseline level of embarrassment.

• 10:08Jemma Sbeg?

  Then we are given a secondary level of things that we feel we have to be embarrassed about that sometimes we don't. We learn what to be embarrassed by, by seeing what other people are doing, seeing how they are treated, seeing their own reactions of embarrassment. And what it really comes back to is there is the first layer of embarrassment that's just kind of natural, and then there's a second layer of embarrassment that comes from unwanted attention in the presence of others. This is the core of embarrassment. We want attention as people, but we only want it in ways that we have asked for it. A really interesting study published in two thousand and twenty five looked into this

• 10:52Jemma Sbeg?

  exact phenomena, the unwanted attention embarrassment phenomena. And they did this by filming preschool aged children, older kids and adults whilst they sang karaoke songs, and then they had to watch the footage back. What the researchers discovered was that across every single age group, including the children, people felt significantly more embarrassed, they even visibly like blushed more when there was an observer sitting right next to them compared to when they watched the video alone. Even these toddlers, some of them were quite young, when they were watching this footage

• 11:33Jemma Sbeg?

  of themselves, they didn't really feel embarrassment unless there was somebody viewing it with them. And what this means is that from a remarkably early age, embarrassment forms as an awareness of our social surroundings. And it's deeply impacted by this realization that other people can judge us and that their judgments might not always be nice and might not always help us. Like I said before, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? It's bad because embarrassment hurts and it doesn't feel nice, but it's good because our ability to feel embarrassment means that we understand and we appreciate how others

• 12:15Jemma Sbeg?

  are feeling, which is what we call in psychology a pro-social experience. It feels like it is better for mankind to know and to be able to sit in somebody else's shoes. I also read a really interesting article that talked about how closely embarrassment and empathy sit next to each other on the emotional scale. And the example these authors gave of this was the idea of vicarious embarrassment. So seeing somebody else do something cringe and feeling cringe or cringing yourself. There was a two thousand and eleven study from researchers in Ireland and Germany. And what it did was it showed participants videos in which other people committed either intentional or unintentional social pitfalls.

• 12:55Jemma Sbeg?

  What the researchers found was that observers could experience embarrassment on someone else's behalf, even when the person making the mistake themselves was completely unaware of it. They still felt it. They also used FMRI uh scans to scan the brain during the study. And they found that there was increased activity in something called the anterior cingulate cortex and also the left anterior insular. These areas are responsible for pain and emotion. Just seeing somebody else do something that we find embarrassing activates those regions. So this kind of leads us to the question of why? Why do I feel embarrassed by things? What is the purpose of feeling embarrassed? We know it's a pro-social emotion. We know that maybe it's aligned with empathy.

• 13:40Jemma Sbeg?

  We know that it's something that's to do with being self-conscious, but one further explanation would also be that when we feel embarrassment and we show embarrassment, this functions as a form of appeasement. So basically, it is a way of saying, I've done something embarrassing, don't worry, I'm punishing myself enough, I feel bad, you don't have to make me feel bad. We require a way of showing others that our mistakes, especially those that may offend somebody else, were an accident. They were not intentional, this was a mistake, we respect rules, we're not gonna do this again. And it all comes back to our little monkey brains and the fact that they don't want to be excluded. So if they can show people that they feel self-conscious, that they know they've done

• 14:25Jemma Sbeg?

  something wrong, therefore you don't have to do something wrong to them to help them learn that lesson, this is a good thing. It keeps people in line and it keeps us from being harmed for mistakes that we didn't intentionally make. So that is the kind of evolutionary explanation. There was a series of uh five studies that were published in two thousand and twelve that explored what exactly embarrassment communicates on an individual level. So why do we experience it? And in one part of the research, participants were asked to describe something embarrassed that they'd experienced and their behavior, what they did was observed and recorded.

• 15:06Jemma Sbeg?

  They then took part in a task that basically measured their level of generosity. They wanted to know, does feeling embarrassed, does a high propensity for feeling embarrassed actually mean that you might be a a better person, a nicer person? What they found was this, people who displayed more embarrassment did behave more generously. They also found that the more visibly embarrassed somebody was, the more the observers tended to judge them as a pro-social and trustworthy person. And they also were more likely to want to associate with this individuals. One of the most obvious indicators of embarrassment is obviously blushing. And that's probably one of the things we wanna hide the most when we do experience it.

• 15:51Jemma Sbeg?

  We don't wanna blush in front of somebody that we've, you know, made a mistake in front of or embarrassed ourselves in front of. The reason blushing occurs is because, you know, there's increased blood flow right near the skin, often near the cheeks and the ears and the neck and the upper chest. Unlike deliberately smiling or apologizing, blushing is involuntary. People can't control where the blood rushes to. And so that communicates something that we know is not fake, that seems very credible, so people trust it more. They trust that this person actually does feel bad, they're blushing, they're showing signs of embarrassment. Therefore, there must be some kind of acknowledgement of the social norms that we all want everybody else to follow.

• 16:36Jemma Sbeg?

  A further two thousand and nine study published in the journal, it's just called the Journal Emotion. It explored whether blushing changed how people are judged after they've made a mistake or after they've done something embarrassing. Participants would read a passage about something embarrassing themselves, then they would look at pictures of people with or without essentially like fake blush on their face that looked like an embarrassing blush. And then they were asked to measure these images, measure these people on how much sympathy they had for them, how much they would be likely to forgive them and how much they liked them.

• 17:15Jemma Sbeg?

  Again, blushing, showing embarrassment generally meant people had a more positive opinion of you than somebody who had done something embarrassing or done, made a mistake and hadn't shown that same feeling. Embarrassment and blushing, these are basically a peace offering. This also explains why embarrassing memories are so hard to forget. I bet you, listening, have an embarrassing memory from years ago that you still torture yourself about. I can tell you mine. Mine was when I accidentally got really drunk at a work meeting when I was like, I think I was the youngest person there by at least fifteen years. And everybody else was sober.

• 17:57Jemma Sbeg?

  And I remember thinking at the time, like, nobody can tell I'm drunk, I'm really holding it together. And now that I'm older, I can tell that they absolutely did. So that's my embarrassing moment that literally still haunts me. We all have one. And our brain latches on to these moments and it sees them as important and valuable. And therefore they tend to dominate over all our other memories, meaning that the moments where we really make a fool of ourselves feel like they happen a lot more than they actually do because you can remember them more clearly. Now, psychology obviously offers an explanation as to why, why we latch on to these memories, why they feel important. I'm gonna talk about that for you.

• 18:40Jemma Sbeg?

  I'm gonna summarize the argument after this short break.

• 18:48Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 19:26Jemma Sbeg?

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• 20:07Jemma Sbeg?

  people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:25Jemma Sbeg?

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• 21:54Jemma Sbeg?

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• 22:38Jemma Sbeg?

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• 23:23Jemma Sbeg?

  That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop. Our most embarrassing moments are unfortunately, the perfect combination of the kinds of feelings and sensations that our mind is trained to pay attention to just naturally. And that means forgetting them is exceptionally hard. Our brain is working against our consciousness. Firstly, embarrassing memories are emotional. Secondly, we are at the center. We're at the center of these memories. They feel personally relevant. Third, they're often surprising. Nobody decides to be embarrassed. Often it's an unsuspecting moment that ends up creating embarrassment.

• 24:09Jemma Sbeg?

  And fourth, a lot of time is often spent mentally rehearsing these embarrassing moments again and again and again and again, to kind of wash them of their sins or make them feel better. That final thing, the rumination and the obsessing is critical as to why we cannot forget them. Minor mistakes can become part of our permanent memory collection if we tell our brain enough times, these are important. And the way we do that is through repetition. The other thing to note is that autobiographical memories, so memories about ourselves are reconstructive. They are not set in stone.

• 24:50Jemma Sbeg?

  Each time we retrieve an event, we think about something again, we rebuild it using fragments of the original experience, but we also rebuild it based on our emotions and what we're thinking and feeling at the time. And so by the time we've revisited a memory for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time, it has changed, but we do not know that because it's changed so gradually. By the time you have thought about an embarrassing moment, for the, you know, eight months later, it might be an entirely different memory to the one that you've actually experienced. And it may actually be more painful than what it was like when you first were there. This kind of rumination, it's very natural and it feels really normal. And that's what makes it so difficult to avoid because thinking something over and

• 25:35Jemma Sbeg?

  over again is one way that our mind attempts to solve a problem, like the problem of how do I recover from this? How do I make people forget that I did this? How do I make this embarrassing mistake hurt less? It is an instinct for us to come in and think about it and patch it up. That feels constructive. That feels like you're doing something. We're going to find a solution. We're going to remedy this bad feeling. We're going to regain some control. Every single time though, we ultimately hit the same wall, which is no matter how much we think about something, we cannot change the past. That moment, that event has happened. We can reason with it all we want. It has still occurred. So in the process of trying to outthink our embarrassment or outthink the past, we essentially

• 26:20Jemma Sbeg?

  do make it worse for ourselves because we solidify the memory as important. We make it more accessible. We add in all these extra details and we add in all these, all this extra emotional intensity because we are telling our brain, this emotion, this feeling, this moment was so important that we're going to revisit it a million times. So you better not let that one fade away because what if we want to revisit it one more time? This whole process is going to affect people differently and it's going to be a whole lot worse for a specific group of people. And I'm going to give you three guesses as to what kind of people experience embarrassment more than anybody else. Researchers have found that people who get embarrassed more easily, they are not doing

• 27:04Jemma Sbeg?

  more things that are embarrassing. They are often, well, they often have, A, an increased sensitivity or fear of rejection, B, increased levels of social anxiety, and C, increased loneliness. All of this makes social rules and abiding by them feel a lot more important. And it means that when somebody has slipped up, they obsess over that a lot more, giving way to this fallacy or this sense that they are just a really embarrassing person. There was a piece of research published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press and it explored how social anxiety affects reactions to what the researchers called social norm violations.

• 27:44Jemma Sbeg?

  So making an inappropriate comment, wearing a white wedding dress to a wedding without realizing it, you know, that you shouldn't wear white, like not understanding somebody's subtext, things like that are really, really painful for people who have social anxiety. There was a sample of 87 teenagers and 87 adults who completed a task involving accidental or neutral or embarrassing social scenarios. And they measured these people on how socially anxious they were, how lonely they were, how socially aware they were. And then they had them judge how bad these experiences were. So basically, here are all these norm violations, here are all these embarrassing things.

• 28:26Jemma Sbeg?

  If you had done these embarrassing things, how embarrassed do you think you would feel? And how embarrassed do you think people around you would feel? What they found was that higher social anxiety was associated with these people judging norm violations as more inappropriate and more embarrassing than the average person. Even when, to be honest, like some of these things were really not that bad. Some of these things were maybe a little bit weird. It was like, oh, you accidentally made the wrong joke. You accidentally like fell over. Not great, but not life defining, not that embarrassing. But some of these participants, when they were, you know, asked to think of themselves having done that, they were so harsh. They almost felt ashamed for an imaginary mistake.

• 29:10Jemma Sbeg?

  I think it's just another form of catastrophizing. If your brain is anxious or sensitive, it's very easy to be like, if I punish myself first and I overemphasize how bad this is, the responses that other people have will not be as bad. So I will feel, I won't feel as bad. I will feel less terrible. It feels self-protective. It also feels entirely necessary. Like I should carry the pain in advance because if I really make myself remember and feel embarrassed before a situation happens, I'll be less likely to make that same mistake. This is perhaps the most important part of the episode.

• 29:51Jemma Sbeg?

  We feel embarrassed even when other people aren't asking us to. And that is the critical thing that gets in a lot of people's way. People are really not paying attention to us that much. And we know that because of science and because of psychology and because of research that has gone into spaces where people are, gone into classrooms, gone into workplaces, gone into wedding halls and basically said, how much are you actually noticing about other people? And when they do these studies, what they realise is that people really aren't noticing you that much. And the people who do notice the mistakes that other people make often have the deepest

• 30:32Jemma Sbeg?

  level of insecurity themselves. They often are judging people as a way to subvert or project the own shame, the shame and pain that they hold within. They are equally as mean to us as they are to themselves. So really, who do you feel most bad for? I don't know, probably them. So we actually have a name for this. We have a name for the fact that we think people think about us more than they do. And it's called the spotlight effect. We have spoken about this study and the study that created this term so many times on the podcast before, but I think it's well known for a reason, because it's one of the best and because it's one of the most like revealing of how useless certain insecurities

• 31:17Jemma Sbeg?

  we have are. So I'm just going to repeat it once more. So the study took place in 2000 and it essentially had participants enter a lecture hall wearing a really embarrassing shirt. And then it measured how many people in that lecture hall noticed the embarrassing shirt. The shirt said really weird inappropriate things. It said things like, had weird photos, weird slogans and swear words. Participants were asked before they went in, how many people do you think are going to notice that you're wearing this really weird shirt? Basically, all of them said, I think the majority of people. When they actually surveyed the people and said, did you notice what's on that person's shirt? Only one in four of

• 31:57Jemma Sbeg?

  them actually did. And this is the worst part of embarrassment. The feeling of embarrassment obviously sucks. It's not nice to ruminate. But we make a lot of decisions based on this false assumption that more people care about what we're doing than they do. And also that their feelings and their judgements of us, even when they do notice us, matter and have a final say. I see this a lot, especially when it comes to things that aren't actually embarrassing. Like, it's actually not embarrassing to try stuff. It's not embarrassing to fail. It's not embarrassing to get your heart broken or to put yourself out there or to have to, you know, try again. Embarrassment itself is normally really quite brief, but the larger

• 32:41Jemma Sbeg?

  psychological costs and emotional costs comes from when we try and prevent it from happening by not trying at all, or we shrink from any kind of unwanted attention, meaning we limit ourselves in advance. Remember, unwanted attention is the core of embarrassment, but unwanted attention is also what occurs when we do anything even a little bit audacious. If you want to be an author or you want to be an actor, 50% of what it takes to realise a dream like that is exposure. And that means that potentially you're going to be judged and you're going to be misunderstood. If you fear those very basic human reactions,

• 33:23Jemma Sbeg?

  you may as well not bother because you're going to spend your entire life avoiding embarrassment, avoiding any kind of feeling that puts you in an awkward place when you could have just made a fool of yourself, gotten over it and become everything that you wanted to be. Like, the gap between you and your dreams is just feeling a little bit awkward about it. So I wanted to devote the last part of this episode to that barrier, to that sliver between you and your dream life. In the words of Austin Butler, the actor, I'm sure you've heard this quote, but I think it's incredible. Embarrassment is an unexplored emotion and everything that you want is on the other side of cringe. I think truer words have not been spoken. I believe this with my full heart. The best thing that you can

• 34:08Jemma Sbeg?

  do in your twenties is to make an absolute fool of yourself. Genuinely embarrass yourself because that is so often the gateway to the most incredible life. And it is a doorway and it is a path that few people will take because the feeling, the immediate feeling of embarrassing is too hard for them to swallow. And I want to talk about this more and talk about how we can use this pathway, feel embarrassment and not let it completely destroy us. We're going to take a short break. When we return, let's talk about it.

• 34:44Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know, they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favourite gym clothing at gymshark.com. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And

• 35:26Jemma Sbeg?

  we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to

• 36:11Jemma Sbeg?

  matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:21Jemma Sbeg?

  Growth isn't linear. There's no magic timeline or secret template. And no one understands that quite like Southern New Hampshire University, because SNHU has online degree programs built for whatever path you are on. Tried college before? Transfer up to 90 credits. And if you're new to this, no worries. Every student gets a dedicated academic advisor. And here's the best part, there's no set class times. So school actually fits your life. Ready to get started? Visit SNHU.edu/psych. That's SNHU.edu/psych. Something that really frustrates me is when wellness brands greenwash their products

• 37:05Jemma Sbeg?

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• 38:20Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritise my health in a realistic way this year. And something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 39:05Jemma Sbeg?

  When we say that somebody is a fool, like, we're not saying it in a nice way. We mean that they are probably not very smart, they don't think things through, they make bad decisions. In psychology, the fool means something completely different. The fool represents limitless raw potential and the fool represents innocence and it represents a beginner's mind. It is the soul's first step into growth. And in Jungian psychology, literally the best thing you can be is a fool because fools, they go where nobody else does. And that just also happens to be where the opportunity is. The fools of the world are those who start businesses, start weird art projects. The fools are audacious.

• 39:46Jemma Sbeg?

  The opposite of a fool is somebody who is a ruler or somebody who is very constrained. And they're very focused on order and they're very focused on structure. And they refuse to look foolish. Their ego won't allow it. And in that attempt to protect themselves, they become trapped by what they already know. And that's why so many psychologists or psychotherapists in this area say to be a fool is to be free. This is why the fear of embarrassment is one of the biggest barriers to finding any kind of success. You are not actually afraid of any kind of serious consequence of embarrassment. You know that you can recover, but you anticipate and you fear the awkwardness and you fear the cringe and you fear the judgement.

• 40:29Jemma Sbeg?

  That feeling is often disproportionate to what will actually happen and to the actual stakes. Like, I was asking my friend this the other day, we were talking about this episode and I was like, can you really remember a serious consequence of feeling embarrassed other than that you just continue to feel embarrassed? Like, shame and guilt are a different thing, but embarrassment, embarrassment is not all that bad. And I think it often appears at the exact moment where we are becoming aware of how we exist in the eyes of others. That's what makes it uncomfortable, right? Because we're like, oh, these people can see me, I can see me, this is weird. But I think that also means it has the potential to be really, really informative. I think recognising the potential of embarrassment

• 41:14Jemma Sbeg?

  to actually make you a more socially aware person. Give you a better relationship to yourself is one of the best ways that we get over feeling it in the, in the first place. When we feel embarrassed, I think it acts as a signal that we are engaging with a wider social reality and we're actually being and are aware of people who are not just ourselves. Therefore, we are quite reflective, we are quite empathetic. Embarrassment, I think, is also a bit of a training ground or a litmus test that you are experiencing psychological growth. You would not experience embarrassment if you were not trying something new. If you can experience this emotion without immediately

• 41:55Jemma Sbeg?

  escaping or over explaining or attacking yourself, you inevitably gain more freedom because like genuinely, the only way to experience psychological growth is by trying and doing things that you are not ready to do. Perfect example of this is go and have a listen to the first episode of this podcast. After this, go and have a, go and have a listen if you want. I will spoil it for you if you don't want to. It's terrible. It's awful. And I'm also never going to delete it because it took a lot of guts posting that. Like being a beginner is never going to be easy. I think it is a rite of passage to feel embarrassed. And I, I know this is, might sound strange, but I almost feel like

• 42:36Jemma Sbeg?

  it is the universe or some higher power saying, if you want this enough, you've got to give me a sign. You've got to pay for this in some way. And the embarrassment of starting something is your payment. I also think as much as we're like embarrassment is the worst thing we can feel, it does also endear people to you. And the example I always give is of, of Jennifer Lawrence, like one of the most famous people in the world. When she walked across that stage at the Oscars in like two thousand and thirteen and she fell over, she had literally just won an Oscar. She was already famous. She was at the peak of her, like of her industry. And then she fell over. And I genuinely think that like the Oscar isn't what got people to love her. It was her falling over that

• 43:20Jemma Sbeg?

  got people to love her. Because she got up, she laughed, she made a joke, she talked about it in interviews. And her response was so endearing because it acknowledged the awkwardness that everybody was like, I want to be her friend. And everybody was like, somebody who can not take themselves seriously like that is somebody that I really want to root for. Rather than making the situation too serious, I think she did an excellent thing where she decent, like she, she demonstrated just ordinary humanness and a kind of thing that happens to everyone. And you can achieve that same feeling of like, I want to be

• 44:01Jemma Sbeg?

  that person's friend, or that person feels really, really genuine by embracing your embarrassment the way that she did. You know, what actually happened to her has a name in psychology. The reaction that we had to her reaction also has a name. It's called the pratfall effect. And it was first coined in nineteen sixty six by this psychologist called Elliot Aronson. And he basically realized that when people make small mistakes, they immediately become more likeable. He had participants listen to audio recordings of actors auditioning for a TV quiz show. And in some of the recordings, the actor was portrayed as the superior candidate. And they aced ninety two percent of the trivia

• 44:41Jemma Sbeg?

  questions. They shared all of their impressive achievements. They were very serious. Then they also had the average candidates, people who kind of only got like thirty percent of the questions right. They were a little bit clumsy. And at the very end of the tapes, both kinds of actors made a little clumsy mistake. They, it made it sound like they had like spilt coffee over themselves. Listeners were then asked, how much do you like each candidate? And the results suggested that after the candidate who was very serious spilt the coffee on themselves, their likability shot up. Because people were just looking for a sign that this person was human. And they wanted any kind of, they wanted any

• 45:24Jemma Sbeg?

  kind of indicator that they could relate to this person. They naturally were rooting for them because they were smart and they want to be on the winning team. But there was something in the way. And what the researchers realized was that it is very hard to like somebody, to imagine yourself being friends with somebody, if they aren't also making the mistakes that, that we are making. So if you do something embarrassing, I really want you to remember that exact effect, the pratfall effect. You are so scared of other people's judgment that maybe your inclination will be to hide beneath your mistake, embracing that mistake and being like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon here. I'm gonna have a little bit of a laugh at myself. I'm gonna make light of this

• 46:08Jemma Sbeg?

  situation. Is perhaps one of the best things you can do socially and emotionally. Firstly, it reduces the shame that you're perhaps feeling. It reduces the severity of this feeling for you. And then also, it makes people like you. It really does. People who sometimes do the occasional embarrassing thing are just so much more likeable and so much more fun to be around. Now, obviously, don't take this too far. And choose your times, right? There was this paper published in June this year that examined the reputational effects of laughing at your own embarrassment. And they did offer a little bit of a caveat.

• 46:51Jemma Sbeg?

  They were like, yeah, laughing at yourself when you make a mistake is a good reputational move and will endear people to you more. Laughing at other people when they make a mistake before they laugh at it themselves, probably not a good idea. Also, laughing at somebody else when they've genuinely hurt themselves, also not great. The first example shows that somebody can emotionally regulate, and it shows that they are human. It also says, I am, I, it, it displays confidence. When you laugh at yourself, you display that you are so confident in yourself, that even the small thing is nothing. It's insignificant.

• 47:34Jemma Sbeg?

  You know who you are. But laughing at somebody else when they are seriously hurt or when something has gone wrong, actually indicated to a lot of these participants that this person did not have confidence. They were borrowing confidence by taking advantage of somebody else's insecurity. The point is appropriate and proportionate self-deprecating humor is actually a wise reputational move. Finally, I think the best way to reprogram your relationship to embarrassment is A, obviously to realize that it is the gateway and it is the price you pay for a rewarding life. B, understand that sometimes it can

• 48:14Jemma Sbeg?

  be helpful and actually make people like you more. But C, it's to really expose yourself to embarrassment, so much so that you get to control your response to it and you get to choose whether you, you allow yourself to feel embarrassed. You get to reapply a conscious choice over this emotion. Embarrassment is so often something that just kind of happens to us. But if you microdose or almost like vaccinate yourself against embarrassment by experiencing it in small sums and experiencing it intentionally, you achieve a kind of ego power, self conscious, like self-control that few people have. I'm going to give

• 48:59Jemma Sbeg?

  you some examples of this. I've seen so many of these TikToks recently where people create like these little experiments for themselves of like, I'm going to get rejected a hundred times this year. I'm going to go up to people and just ask them to be my friend. You guys have heard about my shoot your shot exercise where every Wednesday, I commit myself to sending like the most ridiculous outlandish emails or pitches to people I want to work with. What you have to realize is that all of these things are training your brain to sit in the discomfort of being judged or being rejected and come out the other side a whole lot stronger. Come out the other side a whole lot stronger because you realize

• 49:41Jemma Sbeg?

  that nobody can make you feel bad if you don't feel bad yourself. All of these experiments are essentially a tolerance exercise. If embarrassment for you is the thing you fear the most, this is probably one of the best things that you can attempt. You need to set yourself a goal where you essentially ask yourself to encounter cringe, awkward, embarrassing moments. And then you live through them, you endure maybe the small, sharp pain of them, and you realize that what happens on the other side is really not that bad. Everything you want is on the other side of cringe, especially in your twenties. So this is why these exercises work so much. And this is why somebody like you, somebody like me, I think we need to be really aware of the things that we are not doing purely

• 50:25Jemma Sbeg?

  because we don't want to be seen trying, because we feel like that is embarrassing. This is why you need to make a list of everything. Personally, this is why I, what I've done in the past, but I think you should make a list of everything you can be honest with yourself and say, I'm not doing this because I'm afraid of what people will think of me. And I am not doing these things because I am afraid of what it will look like in the presence of others. Make a massive list of everything that you are too embarrassed to do, as big as you can make it. And then genuinely be like, I am going to treat this like a cold plunge, treat this like some kind of painful exposure therapy where I'm

• 51:09Jemma Sbeg?

  going to submerge myself in this situation that I thought was going to be terrible and just see what happens. Just see what I can endure and come out the other side. I think it only takes a couple of tries to encounter success from that and realize, wait, this is actually not that hard. I was scaring myself into, into stagnation. But B, I think it only takes a couple of tries to actually be embarrassed. Like you will encounter something, you will encounter somebody saying no, you will encounter somebody pushing back. And it is, it feels bad. It does. And then you get over it and you realise you've got bigger things to do.

• 51:50Jemma Sbeg?

  And that is why giving yourself embarrassment antibodies by microdosing embarrassing situations in which you are in control or putting yourself into audacious situations in which you have more to gain than you have to lose is one of the best things you can do at any age to reprogram how you view failure, reprogram how you feel about being perceived and actually just like completely expand your horizon for what is possible. I will also say, if you are listening to this because you have had an awkward moment recently, let me ease your fears with some of my own stories. I want you to remember, very few people, you are not the centre of everybody else's universe. They're not paying as much attention to you as you are to your own actions.

• 52:36Jemma Sbeg?

  But B, time heals all these things. I once got two people confused and thought the wrong person was pregnant and told them congratulations. That was incredibly embarrassing. And I don't think, maybe they do remember, but I don't think they do. Um, literally last year I was at a wedding, I got makeup all over my boyfriend's dad's suit and I had to awkwardly brush it off and it was really embarrassing. I once reversed my car into another car in a busy car park and everybody saw it. I once had my ex on this podcast and I thought that was a good idea. All of those things are embarrassing, really embarrassing, and I think about them, but I know other people don't. And I also know that it's character building. And if to not have endured those things, obviously reversing into somebody's car,

• 53:20Jemma Sbeg?

  he was fine, I was fine, not the nicest feeling. But it really has increased my tolerance for so many other opportunities that require me to feel a little bit awkward, to unlock their full potential. So if you are still listening and you've made it this far, I hope that this has eased your fear of embarrassment. I hope you understand it from a psychological perspective a little bit better. If you're listening on Spotify, leave a comment down below. Tell us your most embarrassing moment, if you feel like you wanna share. Or leave a comment down below and tell us something that you wanna do by the end of the year that you know will be a little bit embarrassing, but you wanna try anyways. And let's just commit to them all together.

• 54:06Jemma Sbeg?

  I was gonna share mine, but I'm not gonna lie, I don't think I have one at the moment. I feel like I embarrassed myself enough. I literally record myself speaking for two hours a week. I think there's a lot of people who would think that's pretty embarrassing. So, um, if I can think of what mine is gonna be, because I do wanna do this challenge, um, I'll leave, I'll leave it in the, I'll leave it in the, the episode description. But thank you again for listening. Thank you to our researcher, Libby Cobit, for her assistance with this episode. If you liked this episode, if you gained something from it, feel free to leave a five star review. Make sure you are following along. Follow us on Instagram, watch an episode on Netflix. Everything and more is in the description. There's also some really interesting further studies, or if you wanna find some of the

• 54:51Jemma Sbeg?

  studies we referenced in this episode, you can do so below. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.

• 55:05Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know, they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favourite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 55:43Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritise my health in a realistic way this year and something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 56:27Jemma Sbeg?

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• 57:52Jemma Sbeg?

  Growth isn't linear. There's no magic timeline or secret template and no one understands that quite like Southern New Hampshire University, because SNHU has online degree programs built for whatever path you are on. Tried college before? Transfer up to ninety credits. And if you're new to this, no worries. Every student gets a dedicated academic advisor. And here's the best part, there's no set class times, so school actually fits your life. Ready to get started? Visit snhu.edu/psych. That's snhu.edu/psych.

• 58:31Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.