Following proposals regarding the criteria for differentiating emotions, the current investigation examined whether the antecedents and facial expressions of embarrassment, shame, and guilt are distinct. In Study 1, participants wrote down events that had caused them to feel embarrassment, shame, and guilt. Coding of these events revealed that embarrassment was associated with transgressions of...

The few studies on the psychophysiology of embarrassment have suggested involvement of parasympathetic activation. However, blushing, the hallmark of embarrassment and a prominent symptom in social phobia, is more likely to be produced by cervical sympathetic outflow. Hitherto, there has been no evidence of parasympathetic innervation of the facial blood vessels. In this study, a group of socia...

BACKGROUND Embarrassment can be a considerable problem for patients with essential tremor (ET) and is a major motivator for treatment. Depression is also a common feature of ET; as many as 35 % of patients report moderate to severe depressive symptoms. Our goal was to assess the associations between these motor and psychosocial factors (tremor, depression, embarrassment) in ET, with a particula...

Riches I applaud the efforts of Holmes et al (Pediatrics 2014;133:766–768) to provide guidance to clinicians asked to write narrative evaluations of medical students. As the authors correctly point out, thoughtful comments “provide meaningful feedback to the student about performance, and formulate strong statements for the Medical Student Performance Evaluation,” or MSPE. I have 1 concern rela...

Wherever the rapid evolution of interactive technologies disrupts standing situational norms, creates new, often unclear situational audiences, or crosses cultural boundaries, embarrassment is likely. This makes embarrassment a fundamental adoption and engagement hurdle, but also a creative design space for human-computer interaction. However, research on embarrassment in HCI has remained scatt...