May 26, 2025

What Do We Mean by Self-Conscious Emotions?

Such emotions show up when we look inside ourselves and judge our actions or feelings. Having these emotions asks people to understand their own identity and be able to measure their words and actions against standards. They happen when we notice that we are being looked at or judged by people or even by ourselves.

Some main traits of self-conscious emotions are:

For these emotions, you have to use your brain in different ways, such as being aware of yourself, forming images of yourself, and judging yourself against different standards.

All of these emotions are built around the concept of the self in some way.
Our feelings regarding others’ opinions often play a role when these emotions appear, even if we’re not with others.
Self-conscious feelings are generally connected to our feelings or opinions about ourselves when we judge how we behave.
They help encourage behavior that matches the rules and beliefs most important to us.
They divide self-conscious emotions from basic emotions by noting how much thinking and experience are needed to experience them. Although infants can laugh or cry, children have to develop a solid idea of who they are and how social rules work before they can feel self-conscious emotions.

The next section explains what Self-Conscious Emotions are.

Self-conscious emotions come from a collection of related feelings that express themselves differently. By looking at these different feelings, we can better see their effect on us every day.

Pride

Pride is the positive part of the range of self-conscious emotions. It happens when we judge what we do, achieve, or have positively. Having our self-esteem boosted makes us feel good about ourselves and notice and adopt behaviors that fit our values. There are two separate types of pride.

The healthy sort of pride is the one we feel for genuine accomplishments and hard work. It helps build self-confidence and pushes for further good habits.

With hubristic pride, someone’s pride becomes so big it leads to arrogance and often results in social problems.

Shame

Shame is the most powerful among the group of self-conscious emotions. In this experience, individuals worldwide feel that they are basic. Feeling ashamed is usually followed by a wish to hide, run away, or flee the problem. Unlike guilt, which fixates on some specific things someone did, shame covers a person’s entire sense of self.

Guilt

Guilt centers on particular things a person has done instead of all the person is. Individuals who feel guilty feel sorry about their actions, not about themselves. Its specific nature means that guilt often leads to positive action, sparing the person from a great loss of self-esteem.

Embarrassment

Embarrassment happens when we act in ways that go against society’s rules, often by mistake. It usually leads to a feeling that we are being viewed negatively by others. Being embarrassed means we admit to others that we notice social wrongs and care about fulfilling social norms.

Empathic Embarrassment

We sometimes develop this kind of self-conscious emotion when we feel embarrassed for someone else. It shows us taking perspectives from others and being aware of common social behaviors.

Explaining Psychology through a psychological approach

These emotions are built on different brain and thought changes as we grow. These mechanisms show why self-conscious emotions are special to humans and why they are not formed until we are older.

Cognitive Prerequisites

Being aware that you are distinct helps you experience feelings of self-consciousness. Recognizing that people can be noticed and assessed is a part of this.
According to the Theory of Mind, using self-conscious feelings means we are aware that others may hold different beliefs and feelings than we do. Thanks to this, we can picture how someone else sees us.
Individuals should learn the standards and rules in society to judge their actions relative to them.
To feel self-conscious emotions, understanding why our actions happen and what comes from them is very important.

Neurological Basis

Researchers have discovered that some brain areas are involved in the experience of self-conscious emotions. Social thinking and thinking about ourselves are achieved mainly through the involvement of the prefrontal cortex. These two brain areas, the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, are also involved in feeling and understanding emotions when we evaluate ourselves.

Experiments with neuroimaging have uncovered that self-conscious emotions make active use of several networks.

Utilizing information from one’s knowledge
How do we pay attention to social aspects
working on your emotions
Learning systems connected to personal history

Evolutionary Perspective

Self-conscious emotions most likely grew out of a need to live and work together in social groups. These emotions benefit people in different ways.

Don’t isolate yourself from your social circle
Follow the group’s expectations.
Contest for rank within the group
Reconstruct relationships after causing arguments

Self-conscious emotions are useful to individuals because they help regulate their actions in ways that benefit their survival among others.

Growing Up

Self-conscious emotions appear according to a regular schedule that matches growth in thinking and social relationships. Knowing about this process allows parents, educators, and child development professionals to assist children in healthy emotional growth.

A Look at the Development Process

During birth to 18 months, children can feel basic emotions even if they do not yet think about how they feel. At this age, they haven’t learned to tell themselves apart from others or judge their actions.
At about 18-24 months, when children show they recognize their image in a mirror, the development of self-conscious feelings starts. Younger children start to react with embarrassment and simple pride.
Within 2-3 years, as children come to know social norms and expectations, they start to have more complex feelings about themselves. Both shame and guilt appear, but it is sometimes hard for children to tell them apart.
In years three to six, children find themselves caring more about how they act in front of others, since they have a clearer picture of social rules. Youngsters often feel proud when doing what’s right and ashamed or guilty when they do wrong.

During childhood and adolescence, self-conscious feelings cultivate, but they become more detailed as mental ability improves.

Things That Shape Development

The way parents manage their children’s actions affects the way children develop their self-conscious emotions. If family life includes solid limits and plenty of warmth, it generally develops healthy self-conscious emotions.

Different cultures highlight what is important about certain self-conscious emotions. Shame may be the main means of keeping behaving well for some, but for others, it is guilt or pride.

Self-conscious emotions emerge and are developed as parents, teachers, and other adults interact with children.

The way children develop self-conscious emotions depends on their temperament, their personality, and how fast their brain grows.

Supporting Sound Development

Parents and caregivers can help children develop self-conscious emotions in many ways.

Guiding children by how they behave instead of who they are
Notice and reward what people do well, not simply what they achieve
Encouraging empathetic thinking and seeing things through another’s eyes
Learning how to react emotionally in proper ways
Ensuring that places are safe to talk and feel.

Connection between Learning and Mental Health

These feelings can impact mental health in many good and bad ways. Learning how mental illnesses are linked provides mental health professionals with strategies to help and helps people notice when their emotions cause problems.

Adaptive Functions

If they are working properly, self-conscious emotions offer many benefits to mental health.
Because of these feelings, individuals can follow what they believe in and what society expects, which benefits their mental health.
Accountability and social awareness shown through the right self-conscious emotions can help people build strong relationships.
Self-conscious feelings push people to find ways to better themselves and submit to self-improvement.
Because of these feelings, individuals can exhibit and keep up with right and wrong behaviors.

Problematic Patterns

Even so, self-conscious emotions can result in mental health problems if they get out of control.
Depression frequently connects with having too much shame and too much guilt. Self-critical ways of thinking can maintain and worsen depression in people.
Avoiding embarrassment and feeling shame can make someone with an anxiety disorder, particularly social anxiety and avoid certain situations.
Eating disorders often start and continue because someone feels shame or discomfort around their body appearance.
Various personality disorders are marked by strong shame, out-of-place pride, or not enough guilt.

Clinical Considerations

Experts who address self-conscious feelings should take several factors into account.
Carefully studying how often, strongly, and appropriately self-conscious emotions appear in a client’s life.
Treatment Strategies: Helping clients feel self-conscious emotions in ways that are beneficial to them rather than making them disappear.
Considering that a person’s culture helps form how they feel about themselves and what those feelings mean.

How our understanding of self-conscious emotions should change as people age.

The Role of Self-Conscious Emotions in Work Life

Various situations in the workplace help trigger self-conscious emotions and affect people’s behavior. Understanding all that influences workplace well-being is key for managers, workers, and organizational psychologists.

What Creates Common Workplace Problems

Self-conscious emotions often appear during performance evaluations, mainly when a person’s performance is not as good as it should be.
When people make presentations or join meetings, they may feel embarrassed and experience anxiety.
Professional blunders often cause professionals to feel guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed, depending on how serious and noticeable they were.
Getting noticed and doing well can bring pride. The kind of pride experienced and how we handle it can potentially affect your future and your relationships.
At work, our connections with people present multiple chances for self-conscious emotions to occur.

How It Affects Excellence

People’s performance at work is deeply shaped by their self-conscious emotions.
Motivation: The right kind of pride can increase motivation and make a person happy at work, yet too much shame or guilt can immobilize them.
Fear of feeling ashamed may stop employees from speaking up with innovative ideas.
Normal guilt can give people incentive to learn, but shame often keeps them from improving, since it brings about habits of steering clear of challenges.
Team dynamics: Teamwork suffers when a person’s self-conscious emotions influence the way they get along with coworkers.

Management Strategies

Problematic inner feelings can be addressed by proper managers by helping employees in the following ways:
Making Psychological Safety Happen: Making sure employees have a safe space to make errors and learn from them.
Giving Definite Guidelines: Concentrate on examples of behavior and their outcomes, rather than on someone’s attributes.
Honoring Successes Rightly: Appreciating your achievements in ways that lift your sense of pride but don’t involve comparing with others.
Showing how to respond appropriately to their self-conscious emotions.
Giving employees resources and teaching them how to manage their emotions.

How Social Media Affects People

How we experience self-conscious emotions has been completely changed by the rise of technology. The ability to compare ourselves with others, evaluate our actions online, and appear in public on social media greatly increases how often and strongly we feel self-conscious emotions.

Amplified Self-Presentation

People on social media are forced to make decisions about their online image all the time, starting with their profile photos and going on to create posts. Continually changing what you present about yourself can cause self-conscious emotions to become stronger.

Always sharing and documenting parts of life heightens your study of yourself and your actions.
Because everyone online can view your social media, you feel it’s necessary to keep your image perfect.
Easy access to others’ slides helps people compare themselves regularly, which can bring negative feelings about themselves.
Bullying over the Internet and Humiliating Someone in Public
Being connected online can make humiliation and shaming happen on a much larger scale than ever before.
Mistakes often go viral and are seen by many people around the world.
If someone can post anonymously, they may write damaging comments that ruin someone else’s day.
The Things We Leave Online: Our actions online can be saved and recalled for a very long time.

Positive Aspects

Rich positive experiences regarding self-conscious emotions can also be found on social media.
Being part of an online community allows you to get validation and support to deal with difficult feelings about yourself.
Counting Success: Platforms let individuals post and talk about their wins, encouraging a good sense of pride.
Watching people around you feel or react to self-conscious emotions helps you learn and feel less alone.

Rules for Using Social Media in a Healthy Way

Handling self-conscious feelings in the world of technology:
Pay attention to the way using social media can change your mood and how you see yourself.
Truly rely on being yourself instead of making a good image of yourself.
Learn how to adjust the privacy settings to help prevent sharing your information with people you don’t know.
It helps to take breaks from your scrolling time and build up time to invest in real-life connections.
In this process, learn how to check the authenticity of the content you find on social media.

How to Deal with Self-Conscious Feelings

To grow healthy connections with self-conscious emotions, you should use planned actions and keep practicing over time. They can help people feel these emotions safely while decreasing the chance of harmful influence.

Cognitive Strategies

By looking at things differently, you may find you feel less bothered by self-conscious emotions.
Instead of saying to yourself, “I’m so stupid for missing that detail,” tell yourself, “I am learning valuable lessons from what happened.”
People who think about others’ views can gain a new understanding of their own self-conscious emotions.
Personal Review: Often checking to see if your standards help or pressure you too much.
Practicing mindfulness means not judging your emotional reactions while these feelings are present.

Behavioral Interventions

Slowly facing things that make someone feel watchful or self-conscious can increase self-confidence.
By doing the things that scare us and watching the results, we can find out if our assumptions are true.
Training how to interact with others can cut down on events that can make us feel low about ourselves.
Treating Yourself as You Would a Friend: Use the same kind gestures you’re likely to use for friends who are facing challenges.

Ways to Manage Feelings

Teaching yourself that experiences of self-consciousness are normal for everyone, not just for you.
Preferring healthy activities that help you take your mind off your feelings whenever you get under online pressure.
Use relaxation methods to cope with your body’s reactions to feeling very self-conscious.
Processing Emotions: It’s good to write or share thoughts with reliable friends about the emotions you feel about yourself.

Building Resilience

Gaining confidence about handling tough situations and feelings is an important goal.
Having people around you who listen and give practical advice for personal growth.
Develop a variety of aspects to your identity so you don’t need one thing to define you.
Values Clarification: Discovering your values and using them to choose how you behave instead of relying only on advice from outside sources.

Perspectives from Culture and Society

The way self-conscious emotions show up is largely shaped by different cultural and social settings. Studying these variations means you become more aware of the many ways different cultures express emotions.

Cultural Variations

In groups that value togetherness, caring about others’ opinions is the main way to control behaviors, whereas in cultures that prize individualism, shame is no longer useful, and guilt takes over.

Judgment Cultures: Within these cultures, special attention to reputation results in people experiencing certain self-conscious emotions about how they are seen by the community and their family.

Empirical Results Collected in Cross-Cultural Research

Both broadly accepted and culture-specific traits of self-conscious emotions have been found in research.
Similar emotions regarding others are found everywhere, implying that biology is involved.
How these feelings are triggered and understood is very different between cultures.
Though the order of development is normally the same for all groups, cultures may focus on different developmental achievements.

Things to Inform Practice

Understanding cultural views about self-conscious emotions is very important.
When working with patients on self-related emotions, therapists must consider the person’s cultural background.
Teachers and administrators need to see how students’ cultural backgrounds might affect the way they feel these emotions.
Organizations should keep in mind that cultural differences in emotions and control exist, and this should affect the creation of workplace policies and practices.
Public health and community interventions should consider local cultures to be successful.

TL;DR Summary

Self-conscious emotions happen when a person thinks about themselves and needs to be aware of their actions and thoughts to feel them. Pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment are examples of major emotions, and each one fulfills different functions for insight and in our social relationships.
From the ages of 18 to 24 months, children develop these emotions after learning about themselves, and they keep growing throughout childhood as they get more intelligent.
Unsuitable or ongoing self-conscious emotions may play a role in depression, anxiety, and various mental health problems.
Today, social media gives us more chances to feel insecure by allowing others to compare and judge us online, so we need to find new ways to interact with the internet healthily.
Across cultures, behaviors that express self-conscious emotions can vary because some give importance to shame while others pay attention to guilt or pride.
Managing Well: To stay healthy, you can reframe your thoughts, try different ways to change behaviors, focus on controlling emotions, and learn to support and care for yourself from others.