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Embarrassment is a funny thing; some people would be mortified if they were on the receiving end of these interactions. Others, however, probably wouldn't even flinch even if they were as wrong as the people on this list.
Experts say that, in general, we humans are a pretty easy species to embarrass. True, it's an emotion most of us feel on an almost daily basis. But is there any point to embarrassment? We'd probably not feel it at all if we could, but there is a purpose that being embarrassed serves in our social interactions.
We're social animals; we've lived in groups for as long as we've been around as a species. Embarrassment is nature's way to correct our course when we transgress in a social situation.
"Group living has been important to us for a long time, and even if you don't intentionally want to violate a social norm, you sometimes do. Embarrassment serves the function of immediately and strongly displaying, ‘Oops, I didn't mean to do that,'" psychologist Christine Harris, PhD explains.
Surprisingly, being more prone to embarrassment makes people like you more. In 2012, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that people who are more embarrassable tend to be more prosocial. What's more, they behaved more generously than those who didn't get embarrassed as easily.
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It's hard to tell whether a person online gets embarrassed. In real life, a red face and avoiding eye contact are pretty telling signs that a person is feeling embarrassment. Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University Mark R. Leary explained to The BBC that blushing is how bodies show we're uncomfortable with unwanted attention.
People's trust for easily embarrassed people translates into romantic relationships as well. Researcher Matthew Feinberg, the co-author of the Berkeley study, says that people find embarrassable people more attractive. "If they are looking for a long-term partner, it could show that you are prosocial, cooperative – someone who isn’t going to cheat."
Still, many of us hate feeling embarrassed. So much so, that there's apparently even a case of lethal embarrassment. There's a case, published in the British Medical Journal of 1860, of a housemaid reportedly giving up the ghost after getting caught stealing food. However, today doctors think that it was a sudden rush of adrenaline that made her leave this mortal coil, not embarrassment per se.
