Emotions are subjective, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all self-centered. Human beings are social by nature. Because of that, we experience vicarious emotions, feelings about other people’s feelings.
Mudita, for example, is the pleasure taken in other people’s pleasure. Fremdscham is something close to the opposite of mudita. It’s an embarrassment in reaction to the shame of another person.
Think of a cringeworthy moment, but one in which someone else’s actions cause you to cringe in sympathy for them. That feeling that makes you cringe, even though you yourself haven’t been embarrassed, is fremdscham.
Perhaps you watch an ambitious colleague walk up to a powerful executive to make an “elevator speech”, not realizing that his fly is unzipped, and he’s got a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
Though there isn’t an English word that’s exactly equivalent to fremdscham, the emotion is familiar enough to English speakers to have spawned an entire genre of humor. Cringe comedy is fueled by our agonized reaction to situations in which characters are put in excruciatingly humiliating situations.
