Embarrassment and Social Organization: A Multiple Identities Model

We empirically evaluate the proposition that the very same situational mechanisms that tend to evoke multiple identities—the processing of cognitive and affective information from the standpoint of discordant self-identifications—also produce variations in the experience of embarrassment. We integrate the classic Goffmanian model of the social sources of embarrassment with recent theorizing on the ecological features of encounters that invoke multiple identities (audience size, multiplexity, and audience heterogeneity). We use survey data obtained via the experience sampling method to show that these same mechanisms are connected to the higher self-reported levels of embarrassment in systematic and predictable ways net of fixed individual-level factors. We close by outlining the implications of our results for the revitalization of sociological research on embarrassment, specifically an approach that connects systematic features of the structural and relational position of persons with the concrete characteristics of situations in which interaction occurs.