"What's The Strangest Thing You've Ever Been Caught Doing?" (35 Answers)

If you’re a fan of popular reality shows, I don’t need to tell you how secondhand embarrassment feels. This phenomenon is often followed by uncontrollable cringe, an immediate tense in the body as if you were ready to evacuate it, aka “get outta here.” Reading these stories may too give you this feeling, and if they did, the chances are you’re far from the only one.

So you may wonder what exactly happens to us and our brains when we feel embarrassed for someone else. Emma Azzopardi, a psychotherapist and developing clinical psych, argues that our experience of secondhand embarrassment tells us much more about ourselves than we’d think. Turns out, it is related to our ability to empathize with the embarrassment or shame that another might feel, she told Refinery29.

"As social animals, empathy is a key trait that evolved to help us to be part of a community and to live harmoniously within it. We recognize embarrassing situations for others through neural pathways activated in the anterior cingulate cortex and the left anterior insula regions of the brain. These are regions implicated in the experiencing of 'social pain' related to the situations that others, rather than us, find themselves in. It is these same cortical structures that are involved in the mental responses we would have if we witness the physical pain of another person."