Intentional embarrassment: a look at embarrassors' and targets' perspectives

Two thousand, one hundred and seven participants recounted situations in which they intentionally embarrassed another person (embarrassor accounts) or in which they perceived that they were intentionally embarrassed (target accounts). Specifically, this paper focused on differences in individuals' accounts of: (1) embarrassors' goals; (2) embarrassors' goal achievement; and (3) the degree of embarrassment felt by targets from embarrassors' and targets' perspectives. We asked 1136 participants to report a situation when they intentionally embarrassed another person. We asked another 971 participants to report a situation when they perceived that they were intentionally embarrassed by someone. Chi-square tests revealed strong effects for the perspective of the respondents on goals attempted and goals achieved. As expected, embarrassors were more likely than targets to report using embarrassment to negatively sanction another's behavior; targets were more likely than embarrassors to report that the embarrassors attempted the goal of self-satisfaction; embarrassors were more likely than targets to report that they were successful at achieving their goal; and embarrassors reported lower levels of target embarrassment than did targets. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.