Significance

The question of whether a psychological system is adaptive or maladaptive, and whether it is universal or culturally variable, depends on the researcher’s frame of reference, and different frames can yield radically different answers. Yet natural selection is the only known naturalistic process capable of producing complex functionality, making theories of adaptive function a privileged metatheory. We illustrate this with shame. Shame has been viewed as maladaptive because it motivates evasions and other behaviors condemned by victims and third parties, and as culturally constructed, varying along individualism–collectivism and honor–nonhonor dimensions. In contrast, data from six countries and two US regions suggest that shame is everywhere organized to protect individuals against reputational damage, supporting its status as an adaptation.

Abstract

Because shame leads to evasions, aggression, and other behaviors that victims and third parties find undesirable, a prominent theory regards this emotion as maladaptive. By contrast, an alternative, adaptationist theory asks whether shame might benefit the actor. Indications that an individual now offers fewer benefits or imposes greater costs on others, if they reach others’ minds, lead the individual to be socially devalued: Others become less inclined to help and more inclined to harm her. Thus, an adaptationist theory views shame as a neurocognitive adaptation designed to minimize the leakage of reputation-damaging information and the cost of being devalued. Here, we report tests of two predictions derived from the adaptationist theory across six countries—the United States, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Japan, and China—and two cultural regions within the United States—Southern states (honor) and Northern states (nonhonor). First, failures that indicate reductions in abilities more highly valued by others will elicit more intense shame. Second, failures will trigger greater shame when they occur in public rather than in private. The data supported both predictions in all six countries and in both US cultural regions. The improbable fit between the severity of the devaluative threat and the intensity of shame suggests that this emotion is an adaptation. Further, the replication of these findings across regions that vary widely along the individualism–collectivism and honor–nonhonor dimensions suggests that shame is part of human nature rather than a cultural construction.

Reference: Argaman, Y., Sznycer, D., Crusius, J., van Leeuwen, F., Ohtsubo, Y., Ishihara, H., Zhuang, J.-Y., Zhou, Q.-J., Castelain, T., Neto, F., Neto, J., & Kron, A. (2026). Cross-cultural evidence that shame is a defense against reputational damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 123(13), e2526787123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2526787123