Emotions · Clusters
Shame family
Family resemblance — these share a felt shape rather than a single defining feature.
Emotions organized around exposure of the self before a real or imagined witness. The cluster's spine is shame proper — the felt collapse of who-I-am under another's gaze. The siblings differ by what specifically is exposed (a deed, a body, a status) and how the self responds (hide, repair, double down, sink). Family resemblance, not identity: the self is on trial in each, but the verdict and its address differ.
Core
Sits squarely in this cluster
Shame
The full collapse: the self, not the act, is what's wrong. Tries to disappear; can't always.
Guilt
The act is wrong, not the self. Wants repair, addressable; usually points outward toward the wronged.
Humiliation
Shame done to me. The exposure is inflicted by another with intent or carelessness; agency runs in the wrong direction.
Embarrassment
Lower-stakes shame. A momentary social misstep, repairable through laughter or acknowledgement. The self survives.
Mortification
Embarrassment escalated into self-annihilation as a felt impulse. The body reads it as wanting to die.
Exposure Dread
Shame's anticipatory shadow. Not yet exposed; the body braces against the possibility.
Adjacent
Brushes against this cluster but lives more centrally elsewhere
Chagrin
A milder species — wounded self-regard mixed with regret. Closer to disappointment-in-self than shame proper.
Pride
Shame's structural inverse — the self displayed positively under witness. Earns its place here because the same gaze runs through it.
Pride As Defense
Pride performed to keep shame at bay. Belongs here twice: as pride structurally, as anti-shame functionally.
Images carrying these
A grid drawn from across the cluster — each image has been attested as carrying one of the member emotions, by curator pairing or by readers using Connect. The chip notes which emotion surfaced the image.
Expulsion of Negroes and Abolitionists from Tremont Temple, Boston, Massachusetts, on December 3, 1860
via Shame
Dish Depicting the Expulsion
via Shame
Bathsheba in the Bath
via Shame
Winter Morning, Unguarded
via Shame
Curtain of Gold
via Shame
One Small Clasp
via Shame
Elsewhere
via Shame
Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000), Gustav Klimt | The Met
via Shame