Children's self‐attribution of embarrassment

An experiment is reported which examines the possibility that the self‐attribution of embarrassment emerges in two stages: firstly, ‘primitive’ embarrassment, caused by others' overt reactions towards the self, and latterly, ‘mature’ embarrassment, resulting from others' assumed evaluations of the self. One hundred and ninety‐two children, aged between 5 and 13 years, were asked to report, and justify, their likely emotional reactions in hypothetical situations involving either a rule violation or a solo performance under one of three conditions: no audience, passive audience or active (i.e. deriding) audience. As predicted, the proportion of 5‐ and 8‐year‐olds who self‐attributed embarrassment was significantly greater in the active than in the passive audience condition. This effect was not present amongst 11‐ and 13‐year‐old subjects, for whom any audience was potentially embarrassing. Justifications too indicated a shift with age from concern with others' manifest reactions to their subjective evaluations of the self.