How Avoidance Shapes the Recall and Reporting of Shame, and Whether a Brief Intervention Can Mitigate Its Effects

Abstract

Shame is a self-conscious emotion characterized by a global, negative evaluation of the self and a powerful action tendency toward concealment, avoidance, and withdrawal. This thesis tested the idea that these defining features of shame interfere with its own measurement, and examined whether a brief, approach-oriented intervention could reduce barriers to engaging with and reporting on shame experiences. In Studies 1a (N = 237) and 1b (N = 289), participants recalled and rated memories associated with shame and with comparison emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, anxiety, and, in Study 1b, guilt). Across both samples, participants rated shame memories as harder to recall, less clear and vivid. They also expressed lower confidence that shame was the emotion they had experienced and reported feeling shame less often than other emotions. These differences held relative to both positive and other negative emotions, although shame and guilt differed only in frequency. This suggests that difficulties with accessing and reporting emotional experiences may extend to moral, self-conscious emotions more broadly. Study 2 (N = 233) used a randomized experimental design to test a brief video-based intervention in which a therapist modelled the benefits of attending to shame and framed it as valuable and informative, compared to a validated mindfulness active control. Participants in the intervention condition wrote shame narratives with significantly greater experiential depth and drew on more recent shame memories, whereas self-reported ease of recall, clarity, confidence, and frequency did not differ significantly between conditions. Together, these findings suggest that shame’s avoidant action tendencies may influence the degree to which shame can be accurately captured using self-report measures. Additionally, a brief approach-oriented framing may support individuals’ engagement with their shame experiences, with implications for both measurement and clinical practice.