Philosophical essay on shame, guilt, and social cooperation with no concrete allegations

Forthcoming (August 2011) Future Science edited by Max Brockman, Vintage Press, New York. weeks during which they were exposed to the human gaze.” The feeling of being watched enhances cooperation and so does the ability to watch others. To try to know what others are doing is a fundamental part of being human. So is fitting in. The more collectivist the human society, the more important it is to conform and the more prominent the role of shame.* Shame serves as a warning to adhere to group standards or be prepared for peer punishment. Many individualistic societies, however, have migrated away from peer punishment toward a third-party penal system, such as a hired police force, formal contracts, or trial by jury. Shame has become less relevant in societies where taking the law into one’s own hands is viewed as a breach of civility. Perhaps this is why it makes us uncomfortable to contemplate shaming people: Shame invites the public in on the punishment. Consider the scaffolds, scab lists during union strikes, or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Or the proposal made by prominent conservative William F. Buckley Jr. in 1986 to tattoo people with AIDS. These instances of shaming now seem an affront to individual liberty. Getting rid of shaming seems like a pretty good thing, especially in regulating individual behavior that does not harm others. In eschewing public shaming, society has begun to rely more heavily on individual feelings of guilt to enhance cooperation. Guilt prevails in many social dilemmas, including one area of my own research: overfishing. At the root of the problem of overfishing is the human appetite. Wild fish catches are declining, and many of us seek to avoid the guilt brought on by eating unsustainable seafood. 3M. Bateson, D. Nettle, & G. Roberts, “Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting,” Biol. Lett. 2:3, 412-14 (2006). “D. M. T. Fessler, “Shame in two cultures: Implications for evolutionary approaches,” Jour. Cogn. & Culture 4, 2 (2004). HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023722