THE HUMAN CONDITION / HOW EMBARRASSING : When We Make Fools of Ourselves

You think embarrassing moments are trivial--the kinds of things that cause a blush, a few giggles and are then forgotten?

Think again-- after you consider the diplomat who stood up at a reception and noticed his pants were undone. He sat down, tried to zip up, but caught his tie in his fly.

He waved off his hostess when she came to help, not wanting to call attention to himself. But by raising his head, he tightened the noose and started turning blue. One guest assumed he was having a heart attack and offered mouth to mouth. The whole room was atwitter by the time the hostess brought a scissors. The diplomat snipped his tie and dashed for the door.

Incident over? Certainly not.

Within hours, all of D.C. had heard. People smirked when they saw the unfortunate man. He became a figure of fun, image impaired, useless diplomatically. Called back to his country, he was banished to a bureaucrat’s desk. Career kaput.

*

Edward Gross, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, tells this and other tales in a book he is writing about embarrassment, which he calls “a powerful emotion that can take a devastating toll.” (He says the diplomat’s story is true, but won’t identify the man--”Why embarrass him even more?”)

Embarrassing things happen to all of us. They can involve individuals, groups, whole governments. They can be public or private. And their effects can be mutual or one-sided, trivial or catastrophic.

The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychology calls embarrassment a “social emotion”:

“The power of embarrassment derives from the importance of social interactions. But while some interactions are important . . . this does not quite explain why every social interaction should be loaded with the potential to produce embarrassment.”

According to some, we are embarrassed because we think others think we are inadequate.

Others say embarrassment comes when our sense of self has been upset. For example, a timid person might be embarrassed by someone saying, “That outfit looks nice on you.”

One thing is sure: embarrassment shouldn’t be ignored.

“People need to recognize its importance and learn how to deflect, avoid or deal with it,” says Gross, a sociology professor.

He has studied embarrassment since the 1960s, when he taught at a Midwestern university and came across a secret committee of five faculty members appointed to run a division for an incompetent, high-level dean.

“Why are you doing what he’s paid to do? Why not just replace him?” Gross asked the committee head.

“It would be too embarrassing for those who selected him, for the school and for the dean himself,” Gross was told. “So the whole thing had to be covered up, and damn the expense.”

From then on, Gross says, he realized embarrassment was “a very frightening and powerful emotion” that could stop interaction and lead individuals and groups to do costly things.

“Ask anyone,” he insists. “If the person is honest, they’ll probably remember embarrassments that altered a relationship or career.”

So we asked:

* Martha R., of West Los Angeles, still recalls a night 30 years ago when she was 22, married one year and very pregnant.

“It was 3 a.m., the baby was pressing on my bladder and I had to urinate. I didn’t want to wake my husband, so I crept out of bed and felt my way to the bathroom without turning on a light. I backed in, sat down and landed on something warm and hairy--my husband’s legs. He’d been dozing, eyes closed, on the seat. He screamed and jumped so high that I thought he was having a heart attack. I was so embarrassed I almost had the baby right there.”

* Donny D., an attorney in West Hollywood, remembers how his parents learned he wasn’t a virgin any more.

“They were away and I took my high school girlfriend home to bed. I heard the garage door open, leaped into my pants and reached the front door as my father was turning the key.

“I pleaded, ‘Dad, could you and Mom please take a walk around the block?’ They turned and left without a word. When they came back, my girlfriend was at the dining room table, fully dressed. They saw how embarrassed I was and never mentioned the matter again.”

* Gustav B., 78, is so embarrassed that he has not looked his granddaughter in the eye since Jan. 3, 1992, when he passed out while standing beside her at her wedding in an elegant New York hotel.

Doctors who were guests converged on the unconscious man, laid him out with his shiny shoes pointed heavenward, only inches from the bride’s hem.

They undid his tuxedo jacket, his shirt, the top button of his pants; they agreed not to move him until paramedics arrived.

Meanwhile, the couple said their vows under a canopy of orchid boughs with the bare-chested body of Grandpa Gustav stretched out alongside.

What is so embarrassing, the patriarch says, is that he ruined the wedding and there was nothing really wrong with him. In all his excitement, he’d neglected to eat or drink anything substantial for 24 hours and he’d fainted dead away.

“He has isolated himself, even though we’ve told him we’re not mad,” his granddaughter says.

*

There’s almost always a way to turn things around in such situations.

Gross cites the case of a world-acclaimed scholar who recently addressed a packed seminar of younger professors eager to absorb his wisdom. It was immediately evident, Gross says, that age had dulled the genius’ senses. His remarks were so mindless that the audience stared at the floor rather than at him.

“But the seminar leader turned the whole embarrassing situation around,” Gross reports. “Instead of letting the speaker and the group drift out in dismay, he got up and thanked the guest not just for his remarks, but also for his entire body of work. He enumerated all the extraordinary contributions he’d made over the years.

“This forced everyone to recall why they had come in the first place, and the debt of gratitude they owed this man. It made them want to honor him, since it was obvious he was not well. They rose with a great surge of bravos and applause--and in the end, his embarrassing moment turned to one of triumph.”

Although embarrassment takes many forms, Gross says, “it always manages to halt the action, to cut a relationship or a conversation cold.”

Jocelyn Bayle, instructor at the Dale Carnegie executive training firm, agrees.

She’s seen top-level executives blackout when they get in front of a group. “They may be well-prepared and know exactly what they want to say. Then they stand up and draw a complete blank. Their mouths open but nothing comes out.”

Bayle says this is usually because the would-be speaker is embarrassed about some aspect of his appearance or personality. “And usually, it’s a misperception,” she says. “The thing they’re embarrassed about is usually not something an audience would focus on.”

*

Betty L., 29, a marketing executive in Woodland Hills, still cringes at how she bungled the chance to get her first great job. “I’d had umpteen interviews in the chief’s office and was about to be hired when he invited me out for a fancy French lunch,” Betty says.

“I’d grown up pretty poor and was ill at ease in that kind of restaurant. My white suit seemed out of place; I didn’t know what to order, how to pronounce the items, what forks to use. I was so intensely embarrassed that I kept blushing and couldn’t converse. I can’t remember what occurred--it’s a total blank. I didn’t get the job.”

Embarrassment stops you in your tracks. It is not a private matter, like shame, Gross says. In fact, there are four criteria for embarrassment in his definition.

* A failure takes place, for which you feel responsible.

* The failure or problem occurs suddenly, with no time to regroup. (Given time, a person can plan to overcome embarrassment.)

* It takes place publicly in front of the eyes of others.

* The “others” are people whose opinion you value. (If you don’t care what they think, you won’t be embarrassed.)

So how to account for the equanimity of President Bush after he upchucked all over Japan’s heads of state? And of Vice President Quayle, whose image survived the misspelling of potato ?

“It could be because they feel above the fray; they may consider their social positions so lofty that they don’t care what others think.

“Members of the upper class traditionally feel this way,” Gross says. “British aristocracy, for example, behaves as if servants are invisible; they do and say outrageously intimate things in front of the help with no embarrassment because they do not care at all what the servants think of them.”

There is a long tradition for this, Gross adds. “In the Middle Ages, highborn couples would engage in sex in front of their servants, often asking the servants to assist. The principals were unembarrassed and able to perform because the servants were like inanimate objects, whose presence was of no concern.”

Gross, by the way, is unembarrassed by the fact that he has found no publisher thus far for his book.