Is the Antidote to Embarrassment in a Jar?
The Wall Street Journal:
Feeling embarrassed can motivate people to want to save face—literally. A study published in the journal Psychological Science found people recalling embarrassing events tended to want to apply face creams that promise to restore skin. These people also were more likely to want to hide their face with large, dark sunglasses than people not feeling embarrassed.
In the study, researchers at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto explored symbolic ways people cope with embarrassment in experiments involving more than 200 Hong Kong students, about 21 years old. Two-thirds were women.
In the first experiment, 33 subjects wrote about an embarrassing experience and 18 wrote about a typical school day. Both groups then rated photos of men and women wearing various sunglasses, and indicated how likely they were to buy a pair. Participants who wrote about embarrassment were more likely to buy large, dark sunglasses than smaller, lighter models, compared with the other group.
Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines.
Please login with your APS account to comment.