Experiencing Shame While Becoming Professionals

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Shame is a self-conscious emotion that individuals experience when they fail to meet identity-relevant expectations. Experiencing shame involves significant emotional distress and may prompt disengagement and impair belonging. Settings of professional education may be particularly suited for triggering shame episodes by cultivating identity-relevant expectations, incurring high intrapersonal stakes, and inviting damaging self-assessments. We explore the instantiation of shame, shame experiences, and shame-resolution through the lens of four perspectives and contexts: 1) sociopsychological shame within engineering education and professions, 2) emergent individual and cognitive differences that predict academic shame and shame recovery, 3) shame as a social emotion that occurs within interactions and the situated phenomenon of teaching, and 4) mechanisms for a healthy resolution of shame within professional medical education.

Sub Unit

• Division I - Education in the Professions

Chairs

• James Huff, Harding University

• William E. Bynum, Duke University

Papers

• Professional Shame as a Sociopsychological Experience: Insights From Studies in Engineering Education Research - James Huff, Harding University

• Why Do High Achievers Feel Shame and How Do They Recover? - Jeannine E. Turner, Florida State University

• Shame Within Social Interactions: Implications of Examining Shame in Teaching Contexts - Alberto Bellocchi, Queensland University of Technology

• Shining Light on Shame Within Medical Education to Drive Emotionally Resilient Learning in the Professions - William E. Bynum, Duke University