But unlike the more reflexive emotions of joy, pain, anger or disgust, which emerge within the first year, children can experience the self-conscious emotions only after they have developed an awareness of themselves, which starts to form around the age of two. Self-conscious emotions emerge only after a child has begun to develop abstract intellectual capacities. As a result, they are not manifest in children until about the age of three years.
Children express shame, guilt, hubris and pride through body language.
In these panels, drawn from videotapes, children express shame. In short, the shamed person has the look of someone who evaluates his or her entire being as unworthy. Shame is sometimes confused with guilt, but guilt is more specific and less intensely negative.