Hawk, S. T., Fischer, A. H., & Van Kleef, G. A. (2011).

Taking your place or matching your face: Two paths to empathic embarrassment. Emotion, 11(3), 502-513. doi:10.1037/a0022762

Study Number 1 Method: The participants consisted of eighty female undergrad students at a Dutch university, with the average age being 22. Participants received either currancy or class credit. The first study was a 2 x 2 factorial design, revolving around using 60s videos of a confederate dancing. There were two types of videos: one which invovled the confederate dancing and performing physical gestures normally associated with embarrasment (i.e., touching their face or looking away) and the other video included the confederate doing the exact same dance but without the gestures that implied embarrasment. Participants were asked to either examine the video from an objective stance or a perspetive taking stance. Paricipants were then seperated into two groups: the objective group and the group imagining the feelings of the confederate. After separated into these two groups, they are then assigned randomly to either view a video of the confederate in either the embarrasing video or the non-embarrasing video. Participants were then asked to complete an emotion invenotory first for themeselves and then for the actor/confederate. The participants were then asked to provide demographic informationa and were debriefed. Results: The confederate was definitely rated as being more embarrassed in the video where she acted embarrassed. However, there was no significant difference in the ratings depending on what stance the observer was told to take. As expected, particpants asked to try to empathize with the confederate reported higher feelings of embarrassment when viewing both videos, but higher in the condition where they view the confederate acting embarrassed. The participants in the objective condition felt more empathetic embarrassment when viewing the confederate acting embarrassed than the other video, however both were significantly lower than the other condition. Study 2 Method: This study was very similar however the experiements wanted to invoke spontatnious perspective taking rather than overtly telling the participant to do so. The participants were placed into two groups: one which they perform the same task that they will later view the confederate performing and the other group performed a similarly embarrassing task before seeing the confederate dance. This experiment was a 2x2 factorial design where the experimenter manipulated the participants non-verbal behavior and the particpants experience with the confederate's task. This study consisted of 94 participants from a university in the Netherlands given either class credit or cash for participating. During the experiment participants were asked to either sing a song or dance along to the song (the song was the same in both conditions and it was also the same song the confederate would later dance to). The pariticipant was then placed in a cubicle and made aware of the webcam that would eventually record them. They were then made to watch the video of either the embarrassed or nonembarrassed confederate while their non-verbal behaviors were recorded to be analyzed. They then answered a short questionaire to examine the participant's level of embarrassment. Results: In general, particpants who saw an embarrassed confederate felt more empathetic embarrassment than those who saw the unembarrassed confederate with those with the past common exoerience felt more empathetic embarrassment. Contrastly, when displays of embarrassment were

absent those who sang reported more empathetic embarrassment. In regards to perspective taking a similar trend was seen. The absense of embarrassed behavior decreased perspective taking with those who had the shared experience. Finally, there was no significant difference in mimicry when seeing an embarrassed confederate versus a non-embarrassed confederate. Both these studies were significant and relevant to our current research as it deals directly with invoking feelings of embarrassment among participants. These studies in particular examine how an exoerimenter can manipulate particpants into feeling more or less embarrassed for others. These manipulations are imporant because they help us better understand why people feel empathetic embarrassment.