Second-hand embarrassment, also known as vicarious embarrassment, is when you feel embarrassed for something that happened to someone else, not you. Imagine your friend is walking to the front of the class to present. Suddenly, as they are walking up, they fart. Everyone in the class, including the teacher, stares at your friend, with some of your peers even stifling their laughs. You start cringing, with your face turning red and flushed. This is a sign of second-hand embarrassment. But why exactly do we feel this way, especially since we aren’t the ones being embarrassed?

The only definite reason we feel vicarious embarrassment is because we are empathetic. When seeing someone go through a “cringeworthy” situation and feeling that same cringe yourself, you are able to understand what the other person is going through or feeling in that situation. In other words, you are able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. In a study done by researcher Sören Krach, when participants were given embarrassing situations to react to, an fMRI scan revealed that the anterior cingulate cortex and the left anterior insula, parts of your brain that are responsible for pain, light up. These results show that you’re able to sympathize Whether or not you feel embarrassed or how much cringe you feel is dependent on how close you are with that person. For example, you feel more second-hand embarrassment with family and friends than random strangers because you’re closer with them.

However, there’s also another case where you might feel a lot of cringe for someone who isn’t you. The first situation is what we have been talking about: where the person in the embarrassing situation is aware and is cringing as well. But the other situation is where the person in the situation is unaware that something embarrassing is happening to them, while you, as the observer, do. In this case, your embarrassment is also due to empathy. You might feel bad for the person, “Dang, they are going to be so embarrassed later” or you might just be embarrassed because if you were in that situation, that’s exactly how you would feel.

Don’t worry! There’s nothing wrong or life-threatening about feeling second-hand embarrassment. It just shows you at least have some empathy :)