structural:scholar_edition, linguistic:translation, information:extraction, structural:expansion
Comparison with guilt

According to cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict, shame arises from a violation of cultural or social values while guilt feelings arise from violations of one's internal values. Thus shame arises when one's 'defects' are exposed to others, and results from the negative evaluation (whether real or imagined) of others; guilt, on the other hand, comes from one's own negative evaluation of oneself, for instance, when one acts contrary to one's values or idea of one's self. Shame is more attributed to internal characteristics and guilt is more attributed to behavioral characteristics. Thus, it might be possible to feel ashamed of thought or behavior that no one actually knows about (because one is afraid of what they find), and conversely, feeling guilty about the act of gaining approval from others.

Psychoanalyst Helen B. Lewis argued that, "The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done is the focus." Similarly, Fossum and Mason say in their book Facing Shame that "While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one's actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person."

Following this line of reasoning, Psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman concludes that "Shame is an acutely self-conscious state in which the self is 'split,' imagining the self in the eyes of the other; by contrast, in guilt the self is unified."

Clinical psychologist Gershen Kaufman's view of shame is derived from that of affect theory, namely that shame is one of a set of instinctual, short-duration physiological reactions to stimulation. In this view, guilt is seen as a learned behavior consisting primarily of self-directed blame or contempt, and the shame that results from this behavior, making up a part of the overall experience of guilt. Here, self-blame and self-contempt mean the application, towards (a part of) one's self, of exactly the same dynamic that blaming of, and contempt for, others represents when it is applied interpersonally.

Kaufman saw that mechanisms such as blame or contempt may be used as a defending strategy against the experience of shame and that someone who has a pattern of applying them to himself may well attempt to defend against a shame experience by applying self-blame or self-contempt. This, however, can lead to an internalized, self-reinforcing sequence of shame events for which Kaufman coined the term "shame spiral". Shame can also be used as a strategy when feeling guilty, especially when the hope is to avoid punishment by inspiring compassion.