Human Communication. A Publication of the Pacific and Asian Communication Association. Vol. 11, No.2, pp. 237 – 254. Embarrassment: The Communication of an Awkward Actor Anticipating a Negative Evaluation

Embarrassment is often conceptualized as produced by either an awkward interaction or a negative social evaluation. The present study uses the Cupach and Metts (1994) and Sharkey and Stafford (1990) typologies to analyze these two influences. Respondents (n=327) describe embarrassing situations they experienced and explain why they were embarrassing. Chi-square results suggest a difference between awkward interaction and social evaluation as the primary influence on embarrassment in self-induced, actor-responsible situations and on other-induced, observer-responsible situations. Self-induced embarrassment predicaments are associated with a loss of personal script and an awkward interaction. Embarrassment caused by others shows a greater influence of perceived negative social evaluation. These results suggest that embarrassment is best conceptualized as a multidimensional phenomenon having multiple triggers and with multiple communication responses. Key Concepts: Embarrassment, Face, Awkward Interaction, Negative Evaluation, Typologies Lesley A. Withers and John C. Sherblom 239 Embarrassment is a powerful and pervasive force in human interaction (Verbeke & Bagozzi, 2002). It has been linked by scholars to speechlessness (Berger, 2004), verbal repair strategies (Meyer & Rothenberg (2004), avoidance behaviors, and organizational employee responses to management sanctions (Kobayashi, Grasmick, & Friedrich (2001). The present study analyses the personal experience and communication of embarrassment and examines its triggers to better understand its onset, process, variety, and predictable outcomes. Conceptualizing Embarrassment Embarrassment is said to occur when an expressive act threatens the assumptions of a participant's projected identity and discredits one’s interactional face (Goffman, 1956, 1967). Embarrassment, therefore, is "located not in the individual but in the social system" (Goffman, 1967, p. 108). How embarrassment is triggered, however, is open to dispute. Three alternative perspectives suggest that embarrassment occurs due to: (a) a disruption in the social interaction (Gross & Stone, 1964; Weinberg, 1968), (b) a loss of situational self-esteem (Modigliani, 1971; Sattler, 1965), or (c) the perception of negative social evaluation (Buss 1980; Edelmann 1981, 1990; Edelmann & Neto, 1985; Edelmann, et al., 1989). All three explanations draw on Goffman’s conceptualization of interactional face, but each interprets the implications of face threats differently. Gross and Stone (1964) and Weinberg (1968) describe embarrassment as a response to a disruption in the interpersonal-social interaction script. This disruption is precipitated by a threat to selfdefinition and face due to an error in personal judgment or behavior. Gross and Stone (1964) argue that embarrassment occurs when one of three essential aspects of face—identity, poise, or confidence—is disrupted by the social interaction. Weinberg (1968) suggests that these aspects have two dimensions. These dimensions identify the intended-unintended nature of one’s act and the appropriatenessinappropriateness of one’s behavior. Together these dimensions describe four basic types of embarrassing behavior, any one of which can disrupt the personal-social interaction script. The situational self-esteem and negative social evaluation perspectives both argue that embarrassment results from an act or behavior that is observed and has the potential to be negatively evaluated by others. The situational self-esteem perspective suggests that this results from a temporary loss of self-esteem and that this loss leads one to judge oneself badly. The resulting private disapproval of a publicly observed act produces embarrassment (Modigliani, 1971). Sattler (1965) agrees, indicating that people are embarrassed when their competence for interacting with social grace, their propriety for maintaining appropriate dress and social relations, or their social conspicuousness produce undesired attention is publicly challenged (Sattler, 1965). This public challenge threatens one's self presentation and situational self esteem, creates private disapproval, and produces embarrassment. Alternately, the negative social evaluation perspective traces the source of embarrassment back to child-rearing practices and suggests that embarrassment provides a punishment for social mistakes (Edelmann, 1981). Through its experience we learn self control, modesty, manners, and privacy. Hence, embarrassment represents a concern for what others think of us and threat of unwanted, negative social evaluation (Buss, 1980). We often blush when embarrassed, but children don't blush in their first few years of life suggesting that blushing is developed through socialization and, by implication; embarrassment is a socially based response (Buss 1980; Edelmann 1981, 1990; Edelmann & Neto, 1985; Edelmann, et al., 1989). From either of these perspectives embarrassment is precipitated by the threat of negative social evaluation, rather than by the awkward disruption to a personal-social interaction script. These two conceptualizations of embarrassment, as either a response to an awkward social interaction or a concern for negative social evaluation, provide the major influences on the development of models and typologies of embarrassment. The awkward interaction model incorporates elements of the situational self-esteem perspective of Gross and Stone (1964) and Weinberg (1968), and suggests