Revisiting the “self” in self-conscious emotions [Registered Report Stage 1 Protocol]

ABSTRACT: Self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment, are often considered uniquely human tools for navigating social status. They are theorized to require explicit self-awareness, that is, the capacity to represent oneself as an object of attention or evaluation. Yet, whether self-awareness is pre-requisite for self-conscious emotions remains contested. In this Registered Replication Report, we will re-examine a landmark developmental study by Lewis and colleagues (1989). We will test associations between mirror self-recognition, marking the emergence of self-awareness, and embarrassment across four embarrassment-inducing tasks in 223 9-24-month-old infants. We will directly replicate the original study and extend it using fine-grained behavioural coding and physiological blushing indices. If embarrassment depends on mirror self-recognition, infants who demonstrate successful mirror self-recognition should display more embarrassment, and infants who do not should show little or none. Embarrassment in both groups would challenge traditional accounts, suggesting that it may emerge before mirror self-recognition.ITEMS: Stage 1 Registered Report Protocol