Emotions help individuals to deal with life situations whether it is a joyful or unpleasant event. It is completely healthy to express our emotions. Different researchers identified basic emotions as joy, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, and fear. Self-conscious emotions are basically about self and forms in the process of self-evaluation and self-reflection. Therefore, self-conscious emotions entail reference to self in terms of various emotions such as pride, shame, guilt, remorse, jealousy, and embarrassment, and so on.
Individuals develop self-conscious emotions depending on how they understand the rules, standards, norms, and values of the social environment. Self-conscious emotions are influenced and shaped by how we view ourselves and how we believe others perceive us. Understanding this interconnectedness can be complex. Now let’s try to understand Sheldon’s self-conscious emotional experiences.
I previously described Sheldon’s emotional orientation to some degree when making a point of his arrogance and enjoyment when it comes to physics. It is not fair to generalize one’s self-conscious emotions to every situation although it might be often consistent. So, I will look at one vignette when Sheldon was invited to collaborate with one of his colloquies, Bert, on a science project in Geology.
We know so far that Sheldon does not respect any other fields other than physics. Moreover, his hubristic personality does not let him respect other physicists as well. Sheldon keeps his collaboration with Bert secret as he feels ashamed of working with him who is in the geology field. He is ashamed of working with Bert because his ego thinks that he is not “smart.” We understand this when Sheldon caught up by his friend colloquies when Bert brought Sheldon’s jacket and saying, “you forgot your jacket in my office” while Sheldon’s friends were around. Sheldon expressed embarrassment due to his pride. Accordingly, Bert decides at that moment that he does not want to work with Sheldon anymore.
Sheldon goes to Bert’s office to ask to work again by promising that he will be less mean to him even though he does not believe this idea internally. Sheldon does not even apologize to Bert for the inappropriate behavior. His excessive pride keeps him away from apologizing to someone who is not important according to his values. The reason he goes was only Sheldon’s desire to do that physics work rather than wanting to work with Bert. Then, Sheldon just finds out his friend, Leonard and Bert start a collaboration to do the work Sheldon wants to do. Sheldon becomes surprised and betrayed when he sees their collaboration. Even though it is hard to figure out the reasons for Sheldon’s jealousy and remorse. I can tell that Sheldon still focuses on what “his ego” wants rather than the social awkwardness that he caused. He still does not apologize while trying to convince Bert to work with him. Consequently, Bert denies his offer for help. Sheldon left with his anger as a result of his pride and shame he expressed earlier.
