The Self-Conscious Emotions: How are they Experienced, Expressed, and Assessed?
Article first published online: 23 SEP 2009
© 2009 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Social and Personality Psychology Compass
Volume 3, Issue 6, pages 887–898, December 2009
How to Cite
Robins, R. W. and Schriber, R. A. (2009), The Self-Conscious Emotions: How are they Experienced, Expressed, and Assessed?. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3: 887–898. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00217.x
- Issue published online: 27 NOV 2009
- Article first published online: 23 SEP 2009
The self-conscious emotions (e.g., embarrassment, guilt, pride, shame) are a special class of emotions that critically involve the self, including the capacity to form stable self-representations and to evaluate oneself relative to internal and external standards. In this article, we summarize five areas of recent research on self-conscious emotions: (a) the cognitive elicitors, or causal appraisals, that generate them; (b) their non-verbal expressions; (c) the underlying neural processes; (d) the degree to which their experience and expression varies across cultures; and (e) the measures that have been developed to assess them. In each section, we provide recommendations for future research directions.