Trust me, I’m embarrassed

If you believe economic theory as it is popularly espoused today then we are all consumers just waiting for the best bargain for ourselves, ready to act only when it serves our own best interest. Check out the level of political debate in Australia over climate change. It has come down, and I do mean down, to a debate over which policy will have the least monetary effect on individuals and the organisations they work for. It is not a debate about the nature of our place on the Earth and the intrinsic value of what we do here. The assumption, based on economic rationalist theory, is that all people care about is themselves. This is a classic illustration of how to assume is to make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. As a new study has just illustrated very clearly, our relationships with those around us, and with the world are driven by unconscious, and sometimes altruistic, forces that are beyond “rational”.

Researchers recently conducted a series of experiments around the issue of embarrassment. People typically recognise embarrassment as someone gazing downwards and to one side while smirking or grimacing.

In the first experiment they filmed college students talking about embarrassing moments such as making inaccurate assumptions about people based on their appearance (for example assuming a woman who was overweight was expecting a baby), and doing embarrassing things like breaking wind in public. The researchers scored each participant for how much embarrassment they showed. Then the subjects played a game called the “Dictator\’s Game”. This is used to measure altruism. Each player receives ten raffle tickets and is invited to keep some and give the rest to a partner. Correlating these results with those of the first experiment, the researchers found that the participants who gave away more raffle tickets were also the ones who scored higher on embarrassment.

In another experiment the participants observed while a trained actor played a role where he is told he has received top marks in a test. The actor responds showing either embarrassment or pride. The participants then played games with the actor, while the researchers measured the level to which they trusted him or not. They then correlated these measures with whether the participants had observed the actor showing pride or embarrassment in the earlier part of the experiment. Each time, the results were the same: participants trusted the actor more if they had observed him showing embarrassment, and they trusted him less if they had seen him showing pride.

The researchers concluded that observers rate embarrassment as a sign that someone is more prosocial and as a result are more willing to give to those people. People who can feel embarrassment tend to be more sharing themselves and are unconsciously judged as more trustworthy by others and so that in turn people are willing to share resources with those people.

This, and other subliminal signalling, is the basis of a circle of unconscious and unselfish connection that drives much of human behaviour.

Gee, economic modellers and policy makers, could it be that human beings are more than an economic unit operating solely to maximise their own short-term individual gain? Surely not! Dare we imagine a world we people are treated as caring, altruistic, and capable of sacrifice? How would policy-making change if our assumptions changed to match the reality? As Sam Cooke sang, what a wonderful world it would be.