Miller proposed the concept of Vicarious Embarrassment (VE), which refers to the experience of feeling embarrassed on behalf of someone else when witnessing their behavior violating social norms or moral standards in a public setting^[1]. Recent research on embarrassment has highlighted the significance of interpersonal distance as a crucial factor influencing vicarious embarrassment. This study aims to investigate the specific impact of interpersonal distance, defined here as friends, annoying people, and strangers, on vicarious embarrassment. In this experiment, 30 college students will be presented with text-based stimuli depicting both awkward and non-embarrassing situations. Participants will then imagine themselves as bystanders observing friends, annoying people, and strangers experiencing these situations while engaging in an alternative embarrassment judgment task. Cognitive and behavioral data will be recorded to explore the cognitive mechanism underlying how interpersonal distance affects vicarious embarrassment. The findings revealed that: (1) When imagining their friend going through an embarrassing situation, participants rated it significantly higher than when imagining an annoying person or a stranger in such a situation; (2) For unpleasant individuals facing embarrassing situations, low levels or even absence of vicarious embarrassment were observed instead pleasure was induced.

Ren Hong. The Effect of Interpersonal Distance on Vicarious Embarrassment. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2024) Vol. 7, Issue 4: 131-135. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2024.070421.

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