"It worked on me"

This is the strongest defence of shaming, and it's usually sincere. "My dad called me useless every day of my life and it made me determined to prove him wrong. I turned out fine. Kids today are never told anything hard, and look at them."

Let's grant what's true in it. Shaming does get results, and fast. Call a child a baby for crying and she'll probably stop crying. Humiliate an employee over a late report and the next one will probably be on time. If the only measure is what happens in the next ten minutes, shaming is effective, which goes a long way towards explaining why it's so common.

The question is what else it produces, and over what time.

In one experiment, five and six year olds acted out small scenes in which they made a mistake and a teacher responded. Some heard criticism of themselves as people, along the lines of "I'm very disappointed in you". Others heard criticism of how they'd gone about it, with a prompt to think of another way. The children criticised as people felt worse, rated their work lower, and were less willing to keep going. The ones told about method came up with ways to fix the problem. The children were the same age and had made the same mistake.

A study that followed 976 families looked at harsh verbal discipline from parents when a child was thirteen, meaning shouting, swearing and insults such as "dumb" or "lazy". It predicted more behaviour problems and more depressive symptoms a year later. The misbehaviour didn't fall. It rose, and that drew more harsh words from the parents, in a loop. A warm relationship the rest of the time didn't cancel the effect.

The pattern isn't limited to children. A study of more than six thousand Americans aged fifty and over looked at those who weren't obese at the start. The ones who reported being discriminated against because of their weight were about two and a half times more likely to have become obese four years later. A study like this can't prove that the contempt caused the weight gain. If the contempt was meant to slim anyone down, though, there's no sign here that it did.

In a study of nearly five hundred jail inmates, those inclined to guilt were less likely to reoffend in the year after release. Shame had no such clear effect, and where it led to blaming others, it predicted more reoffending.

These are single studies, each with limits, and I've put the details in the notes. But they agree with each other and with the pattern from chapter 2. Shaming produces a wish to hide, so what it teaches, reliably, is hiding. The shamed child doesn't stop making mistakes. She stops telling you about them. The shamed employee gets better at covering his tracks and quicker to point at someone else. You get good behaviour while you're in the room, plus a person who now regards you as a danger to be managed.

The lesson also reaches whoever is watching. The sister who hears her brother called a slob learns what happens to people who slip up in this house, and she learns the wording.

I think that's the largest hidden cost. People bring their problems to those who are safe to bring them to. A parent who shames will be the last to hear about the bullying, the pregnancy or the debt. A manager who shames hears about the fault in the product after the customers do.

That leaves "I turned out fine". I'd answer gently, because there's a lot packed into it. Some of it is loyalty. Saying that shaming harmed you can feel like accusing a parent who also fed you, worked double shifts for you, and loved you in the way they knew. You can hold both. They did a great deal right, and this particular method cost you something.

Then there's the word "fine". You got through. Many people do, and often it's because of other things in their lives, such as a grandmother, a teacher, or a friend's family where the air was different. It's worth asking what you learned to hide along the way, and from whom. It's worth asking whose voice comments when you drop a glass. And if being driven to prove him wrong built your career, it's fair to ask whether the proving has ever felt finished.

"It worked on me" is often true in a narrow sense, and I'm not asking you to deny it. I'm asking you to look at the full price, including the part you're still paying. Then decide whether you want the people you love to pay it too.