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EMBARRASSMENT AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

ERVING GOFFMAN

ABSTRACT Embarrassment, a possibility in every face-to-face encounter, demonstrates some generic properties of

interaction. It occurs whenever an individual is felt to have projected incompatible definitions of himself before those present. These projections do not occur at random or for psychological reasons but at certain places in a social establishment where incompatible principles of social organization prevail. In the forestall- ing of conflict between these principles, embarrassment has its social function.

An individual may recognize extreme embarrassment in others and even in himself by the objective signs of emotional dis- turbance: blushing, fumbling, stuttering, an unusually low- or high-pitched voice, quavering speech or breaking of the voice, sweating, blanching, blinking, tremor of the hand, hesitating or vacillating movement, absent-mindedness, and malapropisms. As Mark Baldwin remarked about shyness, there may be "a lowering of the eyes, bowing of the head, putting of hands behind the back, nervous fingering of the clothing or twisting of the fingers together, and stam- mering, with some incoherence of idea as expressed in speech."' There are also symp- toms of a subjective kind: constriction of the diaphragm, a feeling of wobbliness, con- sciousness of strained and unnatural ges- tures, a dazed sensation, dryness of the mouth, and tenseness of the muscles. In cases of mild discomfiture these visible and invisible flusterings occur but in less per- ceptible form.

In the popular view it is only natural to be at ease during interaction, embarrass- ment being a regrettable deviation from the normal state. The individual, in fact, might say he felt "natural" or "unnatural" in the situation, meaning that he felt comfortable in the interaction or embarrassed in it. He who frequently becomes embarrassed in the presence of others is regarded as suffering from a foolish unjustified sense of inferiority and in need of therapy.2

To utilize the flustering syndrome in analyzing embarrassment, the two kinds of circumstance in which it occurs must first be distinguished. First, the individual may become flustered while engaged in a task of no particular value to him in itself, except that his long-range interests require him to perform it with safety, competence, or dispatch, and he fears he is inadequate to the task. Discomfort will be felt in the situa- tion but in a sense not for it; in fact, often the individual will not be able to cope with it just because he is so anxiously taken up with the eventualities lying beyond it. Significantly, the individual may become "rattled" although no others are present.

This paper will not be concerned with these occasions of instrumental chagrin but rather with the kind that occurs in clear-cut relation to the real or imagined presence of others. Whatever else, embarrassment has to do with the figure the individual cuts be-

1 James Mark Baldwin, Social and Ethical Inter- pretations in Mental Development (London, 1902), p. 212.

2 A sophisticated version is the psychoanalytical view that uneasiness in social interaction is a result of impossible expectations of attention based on unresolved expectations regarding parental support. Presumably an object of therapy is to bring the indi- vidual to see his symptoms in their true psycho- dynamic light, on the assumption that thereafter perhaps he will not need them (see Paul Schilder, "The Social Neurosis," Psycho-Analytical Review, XXV [19381, 1-19; Gerhart Piers and Milton Singer, Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytical and a Cultural Study [Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1953], esp. p. 26; Leo Rangell, "The Psychology of Poise," International Journal of Psychoanalysis, XXXV [1954], 313-32; Sandor Ferenczi "Embarrassed Hands," in Further Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psychoanalysis [London: Hogarth Press, 19501, pp. 315-16).

264

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EMBARRASSMENT AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 265

fore others felt to be there at the time.3 The crucial concern is the impression one makes on others in the present-whatever the long-range or unconscious basis of this con- cern may be. This fluctuating configuration of those present is a most important refer- ence group.

VOCABULARY OF EMBARRASSMENT

A social encounter is an occasion of face- to-face interaction, beginning when indi- viduals recognize that they have moved into one another's immediate presence and end- ing by an appreciated withdrawal from mutual participation. Encounters differ markedly from one another in purpose, social function, kind and number of per- sonnel, setting, etc., and, while only con- versational encounters will be considered here, obviously there are those in which no word is spoken. And yet, in our Anglo- American society at least, there seems to be no social encounter which cannot become embarrassing to one or more of its partici- pants, giving rise to what is sometimes called an incident or false note. By listening for this dissonance, the sociologist can gen- eralize about the ways in which interaction can go awry and, by implication, the condi- tions necessary for interaction to be right. At the same time he is given good evidence that all encounters are members of a single natural class, amenable to a single frame- work of analysis.

By whom is the embarrassing incident caused? To whom is it embarrassing? For whom is this embarrassment felt? It is not always an individual for whose plight participants feel embarrassment; it may be for pairs of participants who are together having difficulties and even for an encounter as a whole. Further, if the individual for whom embarrassment is felt happens to be perceived as a responsible representative of

some faction or subgroup (as is very often the case in three-or-more-person interac- tion), then the members of this faction are likely to feel embarrassed and to feel it for themselves. But, while a gafe or faux pas can mean that a single individual is at one and the same time the cause of an incident, the one who feels embarrassed by it, and the one for whom he feels embarrassment, this is not, perhaps, the typical case, for in these matters ego boundaries seem especially weak. W"Then an individual finds himself in a situation which ought to make him blush, others present usually will blush with and for him, though he may not have sufficient sense of shame or appreciation of the cir- cumstances to blush on his own account.

The words "embarrassment," "discom- fiture," and "uneasiness" are used here in a continuum of meanings. Some occasions of embarrassment seem to have an abrupt orgasmic character; a sudden introduction of the disturbing event is followed by an immediate peak in the experience of em- barrassment and then by a slow return to the preceding ease, all phases being en- compassed in the same encounter. A bad moment thus mars an otherwise euphoric situation.

At the other extreme we find that some occasions of embarrassment are sustained at the same level throughout the encounter, beginning when the interaction begins and lasting until the encounter is terminated. The participants speak of an uncomfortable or uneasy situation, not of an embarrassing incident. In such case, of course, the whole encounter becomes for one or more of the parties an incident that causes embarrass- ment. Abrupt embarrassment may often be intense, while sustained uneasiness is more commonly mild, involving barely apparent flusterings. An encounter which seems likely to occasion abrupt embarrassment may, because of this, cast a shadow of sustained uneasiness upon the participants, transform- ing the entire encounter into an incident itself.

In forming a picture of the embarrassed individual, one relies on imagery from

3 The themes developed in this paper are exten- sions of those in the writer's "On Face-Work," Psychiatry, XVIII (1955), 213-31; "Alienation from Interaction," Human Relations (forthcom- ing); and The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (University of Edinburgh, Social Sciences Research Centre, Monograph No. 2 [Edinburgh, 1956]).

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266 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

mechanics: equilibrium or self-control can be lost, balance can be overthrown. No doubt the physical character of flustering in part evokes this imagery. In any case, a completely flustered individual is one who cannot for the time being mobilize his muscular and intellectual resources for the task at hand, although he would like to; he cannot volunteer a response to those around him that will allow them to sustain the con- versation smoothly. He and his flustered actions block the line of activity the others have been pursuing. He is present with them, but he is not "in play." The others may be forced to stop and turn their atten- tion to the impediment; the topic of conversation is neglected, and energies are directed to the task of re-establishing the flustered individual, of studiously ignoring him, or of withdrawing from his presence.

To conduct one's self comfortably in interaction and to be flustered are directly opposed. The more of one, the less, on the whole, of the other; hence through contrast each mode of behavior can throw light upon the characteristics of the other. Face-to- face interaction in any culture seems to re- quire just those capacities that flustering seems guaranteed to destroy. Therefore, events which lead to embarrassment and the methods for avoiding and dispelling it may provide a cross-cultural framework of sociological analysis.

The pleasure or displeasure a social en- counter affords an individual, and the affec- tion or hostility he feels for the partici- pants, can have more than one relation to his composure or lack of it. Compliments, acclaim, and sudden reward may throw the recipient into a state of joyful confusion, while a heated quarrel can be provoked and sustained, although throughout the indi- vidual feels composed and in full command of himself. More important, there is a kind of comfort which seems a formal property of the situation and which has to do with the coherence and decisiveness with which the individual assumes a well-integrated role and pursues momentary objectives having

nothing to do with the content of the actions themselves. A feeling of discomfiture per se seems always to be unpleasant, but the cir- cumstances that arouse it may have immedi- ate pleasant consequences for the one who is discomfited.

In spite of this variable relation between displeasure and discomfiture, to appear flustered, in our society at least, is con- sidered evidence of weakness, inferiority, low status, moral guilt, defeat, and other un- enviable attributes. And, as previously sug- gested, flustering threatens the encounter itself by disrupting the smooth transmis- sion and reception by which encounters are sustained. When discomfiture arises from any of these sources, understandably the flustered individual will make some effort to conceal his state from the others present. The fixed smile, the nervous hollow laugh, the busy hands, the downward glance that conceals the expression of the eyes, have be- come famous as signs of attempting to con- ceal embarrassment. As Lord Chesterfield puts it:

They are ashamed in company, and so dis- concerted that they do not know what they do, and try a thousand tricks to keep themselves in countenance; which tricks afterwards grow habitual to them. Some put their fingers to their nose, others scratch their head, others twirl their hats; in short, every awkward, ill-bred body has his tricks.4 These gestures provide the individual with screens to hide behind while he tries to bring his feelings back into tempo and himself back into play.

Given the individual's desire to conceal his embarrassment, given the setting and his skill at handling himself, he may seem poised according to some obvious signs yet prove to be embarrassed according to less apparent ones. Thus, while making a public speech, he may succeed in controlling his voice and give an impression of ease, yet those who sit beside him on the platform may see that his hands are shaking or that

4 Letters of Lord Chesterfield to His Son (Every- man's ed.; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1929), p. 80.

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EMBARRASSMENT AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 267

facial tics are giving the lie to his composed front.

Since the individual dislikes to feel or appear embarrassed, tactful persons will avoid placing him in this position. In addi- tion, they will often pretend not to know that he has lost composure or has grounds for losing it. They may try to suppress signs of having recognized his state or hide them behind the same kind of covering gesture that he might employ. Thus they protect his face and his feelings and presumably make it easier for him to regain composure or at least hold on to what he still has. However, just as the flustered individual may fail to conceal his embarrassment, those who per- ceive his discomfort may fail in their at- tempt to hide their knowledge, whereupon they all will realize that his embarrassment has been seen and that the seeing of it was something to conceal. When this point is reached, ordinary involvement in the inter- action may meet a painful end. In all this dance between the concealer and the con- cealed-from, embarrassment presents the same problem and is handled in the same ways as any other offense against propriety.

There seems to be a critical point at which the flustered individual gives up trying to conceal or play down his uneasi- ness: he collapses into tears or paroxysms of laughter, has a temper tantrum, flies into a blind rage, faints, dashes to the nearest exit, or becomes rigidly immobile as when in panic. After that it is very difficult for him to recover composure. He answers to a new set of rhythms, characteristic of deep emotional experience, and can hardly give even a faint impression that he is at one with the others in interaction. In short, he abdicates his role as someone who sustains encounters. The moment of crisis is of course socially determined: the individual's breaking point is that of the group to whose affective standards he adheres. On rare oc- casions all the participants in an encounter may pass this point and together fail to maintain even a semblance of ordinary interaction. The little social system they created in interaction collapses; they draw

apart or hurriedly try to assume a new set of roles.

The terms "poise," "sang-froid," and "aplomb," referring to the capacity to maintain one's own composure, are to be distinguished from what is called "gracious- ness," "tact," or "social skill," namely, the capacity to avoid causing one's self or others embarrassment. Poise plays an im- portant role in communication, for it guarantees that those present will not fail to play their parts in interaction but will continue as long as they are in one another's presence to receive and transmit disciplined communications. It is no wonder that trial by taunting is a test that every young per- son passes through until he develops a capacity to maintain composure.5 Nor should it come as a surprise that many of our games and sports commemorate the themes of composure and embarrassment: in poker, a dubious claim may win money for the player who can present it calmly; in judo, the maintenance and loss of com- posure are specifically fought over; in cricket, self-command or "style" is supposed to be kept up under tension.

The individual is likely to know that cer- tain special situations always make him un- comfortable and that he has certain "faulty" relationships which always cause him uneasiness. His daily round of social encounters is largely determined, no doubt, by his major social obligations, but he goes a little out of his way to find situations that will not be embarrassing and to by-pass those that will. An individual who firmly believes that he has little poise, perhaps even exaggerating his failing, is shy and bashful; dreading all encounters, he seeks always to shorten them or avoid them alto-

5 One interesting form in which this trial has been institutionalized in America, especially in lower- class Negro society, is "playing the dozens" (see John Dollard, "Dialectic of Insult," American Imago, I [1939], 3-25; R. F. B. Berdie, "Playing the Dozens," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychol- ogy, XLII [1947], 120-21). On teasing in general see S. J. Sperling, "On the Psychodynamics of Teasing," Journal of the American Psycho-analytical Associa- tion, I (1953), 458-83.

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268 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

gether. The stutterer is a painful instance of this, showing us the price the individual may be willing to pay for his social life.6

CAUSES OF EMBARRASSMENT

Embarrassment has to do with unful- filled expectations but not of a statistical kind. Given their social identities and the setting, the participants will sense what sort of conduct ought to be maintained as the appropriate thing, however much they may despair of its actually occurring. An indi- vidual may firmly expect that certain others will make him ill at ease, and yet this knowledge may increase his discomfiture instead of lessening it. An entirely unex- pected flash of social engineering may save a situation, all the more effectively for being unanticipated.

The expectations relevant to embarrass- ment are moral, then, but embarrassment does not arise from the breach of any moral expectation, for some infractions give rise to resolute moral indignation and no uneasi- ness at all. Rather we should look to those moral obligations which surround the indi- vidual in only one of his capacities, that of someone who carries on social encounters. The individual, of course, is obliged to re- main composed, but this tells us that things are going well, not why. And things go well or badly because of what is perceived about the social identities of those present.

During interaction the individual is ex- pected to possess certain attributes, capaci- ties, and information which, taken together, fit together into a self that is at once co- herently unified and appropriate for the occasion. Through the expressive implica- tions of his stream of conduct, through mere participation itself, the individual effectively projects this acceptable self into the interaction, although he may not be aware of it, and the others may not be aware of having so interpreted his conduct. At the same time he must accept and honor

the selves projected by the other partici- pants. The elements of a social encounter, then, consist of effectively projected claims to an acceptable self and the confirmation of like claims on the part of the others. The contributions of all are oriented to these and built up on the basis of them.

When an event throws doubt upon or dis- credits these claims, then the encounter finds itself lodged in assumptions which no longer hold. The responses the parties have made ready are now out of place and must be choked back, and the interaction must be reconstructed. At such times the individual whose self has been threatened (the indi- vidual for whom embarrassment is felt) and the individual who threatened him may both feel ashamed of what together they have brought about, sharing this sentiment just when they have reason to feel apart. And this joint responsibility is only right. By the standards of the wider society, per- haps only the discredited individual ought to feel ashamed; but, by the standards of the little social system maintained through the interaction, the discreditor is just as guilty as the person he discredits-some- times more so, for, if he has been posing as a tactful man, in destroying another's image he destroys his own.

But of course the trouble does not stop with the guilty pair or those who have identified themselves sympathetically with them. Having no settled and legitimate ob- ject to which to play out their own unity, the others find themselves unfixed and dis- comfited. This is why embarrassment seems to be contagious, spreading, once started, in ever widening circles of discomfiture.

There are many classic circumstances under which the self projected by an indi- vidual may be discredited, causing him shame and embarrassment over what he has or appears to have done to himself and to the interaction. To experience a sudden change in status, as by marriage or promotion, is to acquire a self that other individuals will not fully admit because of their lingering attach- ment to the old self. To ask for a job, a loan of money, or a hand in marriage is to

6 Cf. H. J. Heltman, "Psycho-social Phenomena of Stuttering and Their Etiological and Therapeutic Implications," Journal of Social Psychology, IX (1938), 79-96.

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EMBARRASSMENT AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 269

project an image of self as worthy, under conditions where the one who can discredit the assumption may have good reason to do so. To affect the style of one's occupational or social betters is to make claims that may well be discredited by one's lack of familiar- ity with the role.

The physical structure of an encounter itself is usually accorded certain symbolic implications, sometimes leading a partici- pant against his will to project claims about himself that are false and embarrassing. Physical closeness easily implies social close- ness, as anyone knows who has happened upon an intimate gathering not meant for him or who has found it necessary to carry on fraternal "small talk" with someone too high or low or strange to ever be a brother. Similarly, if there is to be talk, someone must initiate it, feed it, and terminate it; and these acts may awkwardly suggest rankings and power which are out of line with the facts.

Various kinds of recurrent encounters in a given society may share the assumption that participants have attained certain moral, mental, and physiognomic standards. The person who falls short may everywhere find himself inadvertently trapped into making implicit identity claims which he cannot fulfil. Compromised in every en- counter which he enters, he truly wears the leper's bell. The individual who most iso- lates himself from social contacts may then be the least insulated from the demands of society. And, if he only imagines that he possesses a disqualifying attribute, his judgment of himself may be in error, but in the light of it his withdrawal from contact is reasonable. In any case, in deciding whether an individual's grounds for shyness are real or imaginary, one should seek not for "justi- fiable" disqualifications but for the much larger range of characteristics which actual- ly embarrass encounters.

In all these settings the same fundamen- tal thing occurs: the expressive facts at hand threaten or discredit the assumptions a participant finds he has projected about his identity.7 Thereafter those present find

they can neither do without the assumptions nor base their own responses upon them. The inhabitable reality shrinks until every- one feels "small" or out of place.

A complication must be added. Often im- portant everyday occasions of embarrass- ment arise when the self projected is some- how confronted with another self which, though valid in other contexts, cannot be here sustained in harmony with the first. Embarrassment, then, leads us to the matter of "role segregation." Each individual has more than one role, but he is saved from role dilemma by "audience segregation," for, ordinarily, those before whom he plays out one of his roles will not be the individuals before whom he plays out another, allowing him to be a different person in each role without discrediting either.

In every social system, however, there are times and places where audience segre- gation regularly breaks down and where individuals confront one another with selves incompatible with the ones they extend to each other on other occasions. At such times, embarrassment, especially the mild kind, clearly shows itself to be located not in the individual but in the social system wherein he has his several selves.

DOMAIN OF EMBARRASSMENT

Having started with psychological con- siderations, we have come by stages to a structural sociological point of view. Prece- dent comes from social anthropologists and their analyses of joking and avoidance. One assumes that embarrassment is a normal

7 In addition to his other troubles, he has dis- credited his implicit claim to poise. He will feel he has cause, then, to become embarrassed over his em- barrassment, even though no one present may have perceived the earlier stages of his discomfiture. But a qualification must be made. When an individual, receiving a compliment, blushes from modesty, he may lose his reputation for poise but confirm a more important one, that of being modest. Feeling that his chagrin is nothing to be ashamed of, his embar- rassment will not lead him to be embarrassed. On the other hand, when embarrassment is clearly expected as a reasonable response, he who fails to become em- barrassed may appear insensitive and thereupon be- come embarrassed because of this appearance.

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270 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

part of normal social life, the individual be- coming uneasy not because he is personally maladjusted but rather because he is not; presumably anyone with his combination of statuses would do likewise. In an empirical study of a particular social system, the first object would be to learn what categories of persons become embarrassed in what re- current situations. And the second object would be to discover what would happen to the social system and the framework of obligations if embarrassment had not come to be systematically built into it.

An illustration may be taken from the social life of large social establishments- office buildings, schools, hospitals, etc. Here, in elevators, halls, and cafeterias, at news- stands, vending machines, snack counters, and entrances, all members are often formal- ly on an equal if distant footing.8 In Benoit- Smullyan's terms, situs, not status or locus, is expressed.9 Cutting across these relation- ships of equality and distance is another set of relationships, arising in work teams whose members are ranked by such things as prestige and authority and yet drawn to- gether by joint enterprise and personal knowledge of one another.

In many large establishments, staggered work hours, segregated cafeterias, and the like help to insure that those who are ranked and close in one set of relations will not have to find themselves in physically intimate situations where they are expected to main- tain equality and distance. The democratic orientation of some of our newer establish- ments, however, tends to throw differently placed members of the same work team to-

gether at places such as the cafeteria, caus- ing them uneasiness. There is no way for them to act that does not disturb one of the two basic sets of relations in which they stand to each other. These difficulties are especially likely to occur in elevators, for there individuals who are not quite on chatting terms must remain for a time too close together to ignore the opportunity for informal talk-a problem solved, of course, for some, by special executive elevators. Embarrassment, then, is built into the establishment ecologically.

Because of possessing multiple selves the individual may find he is required both to be present and to not be present on certain oc- casions. Embarrassment ensues: the indi- vidual finds himself being torn apart, how- ever gently. Corresponding to the oscilla- tion of his conduct is the oscillation of his self.

SOCIAL FUNCTION OF EMBARRASSMENT

When an individual's projected self is threatened during interaction, he may with poise suppress all signs of shame and em- barrassment. No flusterings, or efforts to conceal having seen them, obtrude upon the smooth flow of the encounter; participants can proceed as if no incident has occurred.

When situations are saved, however, something important may be lost. By show- ing embarrassment when he can be neither of two people, the individual leaves open the possibility that in the future he may effec- tively be either.'0 His role in the current interaction may be sacrificed, and even the encounter itself, but he demonstrates that, while he cannot present a substainable and coherent self on this occasion, he is at least disturbed by the fact and may prove worthy

8 This equal and joint membership in a large or- ganization is often celebrated annually at the office party and in amateur dramatic skits, this being ac- complished by pointedly excluding outsiders and scrambling the rank of insiders.

9 fmile Benoit-Smullyan, "Status, Status Types, and Status Interrelations," American Sociological Review, IX (1944), 151-61. In a certain way the claim of equal institutional membership is rein- forced by the ruling in our society that males ought to show certain minor courtesies to females; all other principles, such as distinctions between racial groups and occupational categories, must be suppressed. The effect is to stress situs and equality.

10 A similar argument was presented by Samuel Johnson in his piece "Of Bashfulness," The Rambler (1751), No. 139: "It generally happens that assur- ance keeps an even pace with ability; and the fear of miscarriage, which hinders our first attempts, is gradually dissipated as our skill advances towards certainty of success. The bashfulness, therefore, which prevents disgrace, that short temporary shame which secures us from the danger of lasting reproach, cannot be properly counted among our misfortunes."

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EMBARRASSMENT AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 271

at another time. To this extent, embarrass- ment is not an irrational impulse breaking through socially prescribed behavior but part of this orderly behavior itself. Fluster- ings are an extreme example of that im- portant class of acts which are usually quite spontaneous and yet no less required and obligatory than ones self-consciously per- formed.

Behind a conflict in identity lies a more fundamental conflict, one of organizational principle, since the self, for many purposes, consists merely of the application of legiti- mate organizational principles to one's self. One builds one's identity out of claims which, if denied, give one the right to feel righteously indignant. Behind the ap- prentice's claims for a full share in the use of certain plant facilities there is the organiza- tional principle: all members of the estab- lishment are equal in certain ways qua members. Behind the specialist's demand for suitable financial recognition there is the principle that the type of work, not mere work, determines status. The fumblings of the apprentice and the specialist when they reach the Coca-Cola machine at the same time express an incompatibility of organiza- tional principles."1

The principles of organization of any social system are likely to come in conflict at certain points. Instead of permitting the conflict to be expressed in an encounter, the individual places himself between the oppos- ing principles. He sacrifices his identity for a moment, and sometimes the encounter, but the principles are preserved. He may be ground between opposing assumptions, thereby preventing direct friction between them, or he may be almost pulled apart, so that principles with little relation to one another may operate together. Social struc- ture gains elasticity; the individual merely loses composure. NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

BETHESDA, MARYLAND

11 At such moments "joshing" sometimes occurs. It is said to be a means of releasing the tension caused either by embarrassment or by whatever caused embarrassment. But in many cases this kind of banter is a way of saying that what occurs now is not serious or real. The exaggeration, the mock in- sult, the mock claims-all these reduce the serious- ness of conflict by denying reality to the situation. And this, of course, in another way, is what embar- rassment does. It is natural, then, to find embarrass- ment and joking together, for both help in denying the same reality.

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