The Empathy–Shame Paradox: What K-Pop Demon Hunters Can Teach Us About Shame and Empathy in the Workplace
I, like most parents of younger kids in 2025, have now watched K-pop Demon Hunters with my daughter more times than I can count. Each night is often punctuated by a dance party to “Golden” or “Takedown” (often both), and when I can’t sleep, I often find the lyrics to “Soda Pop” running through my head involuntarily.
Like with most pop culture media, the more you watch something, the more nuanced it becomes. And, given that I split my time between thinking about Cognitive Humanity and K-Pop Demon Hunters, it got me thinking about one of the movie's central themes—shame—and how it relates to empathy.
The empathy–shame paradox offers a compelling lens for understanding how internal conflict can shape external disconnection. When we experience shame, although deeply human, our capacity for empathy is diminished; rather than drawing people into solidarity through a shared vulnerability, it tends to drive self-protective reactions that distance, judge, or “others” others.
Shame as a Self-Conscious Emotion
Shame is distinguished by its globalised sense of self-condemnation, “I am bad”, as opposed to guilt’s narrower focus on behaviour, “I did something bad”, (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Because shame undermines identity, it often provokes defensiveness, concealment, or aggression.
It compels withdrawal and makes the empathic stance toward others more difficult. We observe this throughout the film with Rumi, as she conceals her identity from her friends/bandmates. She’s so wrapped up in her own shame spiral that it never even occurs to her that they would possibly understand.
Othering as a Coping Strategy
One of the most fascinating outcomes of shame is the tendency to other. By locating flaws, faults, or differences in others, individuals temporarily displace their own vulnerability (Brown, 2006). The process creates a paradox: rather than recognising that shame itself is a shared human experience, people narrow empathy to shield their sense of self. We do this by:
Distancing acts as a defence against perceived exposure. This can look like avoiding meetings or collaborating on a project, or using hierarchy, job titles, or procedures to keep others at arm’s length.
Judgment externalises self-criticism, often harshly. Self-criticism in this case can look like criticism of others for self-preservation - publicly correcting others, micromanaging, or criticizing a colleague’s competence.
Dehumanisation to amplify differences to avoid recognising common humanity. This behaviour can be more subtle. It can take the form of stereotyping a specific department (“IT is always difficult”) or of showing little curiosity about others’ contexts or constraints.
In a workplace setting, affective resonance is evident when a manager notices a team member speaking hesitantly in a meeting and automatically feels a subtle echo of that tension—a tightening in their own chest or a sense of unease. This embodied response prompts the manager to slow the conversation, invite clarification, or offer reassurance. The emotional signal arises before deliberate reasoning and creates the conditions for cognitive perspective-taking (“They may be anxious about being judged”).
When shame is activated instead—such as when the manager feels exposed or fears appearing incompetent—their attentional resources collapse inward. Neural systems prioritise self-monitoring (“How do I look?” “Am I failing here?”), muting affective resonance with the other person (Michl et al., 2014). As a result, the manager may miss or dismiss the employee’s emotional cues, respond curtly, or interpret hesitation as incompetence rather than vulnerability. In this state, both affective resonance and perspective-taking are compromised, reducing empathy despite intact intellectual understanding of others’ roles or pressures.
In the case of K-pop Demon Hunters, we see this happen right before the final musical scene, where Rumi can “wake up” her bandmates and help them shed their shame. Without giving too much away for those that haven’t watched yet, we see this happen as Mira and Zoey seemingly are put under a spell of their own shame, causing this echo of tension that bounces off one another.
Self-Compassion and Empathy as Transformation
Self-compassion is one way to interrupt this shame cycle. Neff’s (2003) framework highlights that recognising one’s struggles as part of common humanity is key to re-establishing empathic openness. Self-compassion allows us to acknowledge our inner struggles without judgment. The more individuals develop shame resilience—the capacity to notice, name, and normalise shame—the less prone they are to othering, and the more available they become for relational empathy (Brown, 2006).
In workplaces, shame structures undermine collaboration and trust (Edmondson, 1999) as this shame makes us preoccupied with our own perceived flaws, fears of judgment, and sense of inadequacy. When someone feels ashamed, their primary concern becomes self-protection and the management of their own distress, which reduces their capacity—or willingness—to notice, understand, or care about what others are experiencing.
We often see this in psychologically unsafe workspaces because empathetic actions (taking accountability for mistakes, vulnerability, and listening) feel too risky in a culture of judgment and scrutiny.
When shame is a common experience, it breeds a fear-based culture where everyone is focused on not appearing weak. This undermines the communal safety needed for empathy to flourish.
In organisations, fostering empathy requires addressing shame directly by helping people feel safe, valued, and able to process mistakes without fear of humiliation or rejection. Where shame persists, empathy almost always diminishes, thereby creating the empathy–shame paradox. This push-pull we see throughout the movie in Rumi is ultimately resolved by allowing her shame to be exposed. This exposure allowed her shame to be acknowledged and processed, thereby creating a threshold for more profound empathy, transforming both our inner worlds and the social fabric of our workplaces for the better.
I’ve heard they’re working on a sequel. I, for one, can’t wait to see what topic it’ll tackle next.
