Measuring shame across five countries: dimensionality and measurement invariance of the external and internal shame scale Marcela Matos 1 & Ana Galhardo 1,2 & Mariana Moura-Ramos 1,3 & Stanley R. Steindl 4 & Catherine Bortolon 5,6 & Yoichi Hiramatsu 7,8 & Tahlia Baumann 4 & Rebecca Xin Qi Yiu 4 & Cláudia Ferreira 1 Accepted: 17 June 2021 # The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract Shame is a universal emotion, albeit having a bewildering constellation of causes, valuations, and behavioural consequences that differ across social ecologies. This transdiagnostic emotion may be categorized into two distinct components: external and internal shame. The External and Internal Shame Scale (EISS) has proven to be a brief and reliable instrument to assess external and internal shame, as well as a global sense of shame. The current study aims to corroborate the validity of the EISS and expand its utility, by investigating its dimensionality and testing its measurement invariance in samples from five eclectic countries from Europe, East and Southeast Asia and Australia. Differences in EISS scores across the five countries were also explored. This cross-national study included 1405 participants recruited in community samples of adults from Portuguese, French, Australian, Singaporean and Japanese populations, who completed the EISS in four different languages. An hierarchical model with two factors (external and internal shame) loading on one global factor (global shame) revealed good fit to the data in the total sample and in each of the five countries’ samples, and the instrument showed good reliability across countries. The EISS factorial structure also proved to be invariant across countries. Differences in global shame, external and internal shame scores were found between the countries. By supporting the factorial structure, reliability and measurement invariance of the EISS across countries, this study contributes to expand the use of the EISS across nations and in different languages, both in research and clinical settings. Keywords Shame . External shame . Internal shame . Factorial structure . Cross-national Introduction Shame is a universal human emotion, existing at individual, interpersonal, social and cultural levels. Many theorists regard shame as vital to our sense of self as a social agent, and to our social interactions and moral behaviour (Dearing & Tangney, 2011; Gilbert, 2007; Gilbert & Andrews, 1998; Tracy & Robins, 2004). In spite of its adaptive value in human psycho- social development and functioning, shame can be an overpowering, painful and incapacitating emotion. A robust body of research has ascertained that shame can be an inca- pacitating and pathogenic emotion associated with a whole * Marcela Matos marcela.matos@fpce.uc.pt 1 University of Coimbra, Center for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive Behavioral Intervention (CINEICC), Rua do Colégio Novo, Apartado 6153, 3001-802, Coimbra, Portugal 2 Instituto Superior Miguel Torga, Coimbra, Portugal 3 Clinical Psychology Unit, Reproductive Medicine Unit, Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal 4 School of Psychology, Compassionate Mind Research Group, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 5 LIP PC2S Lab, Department of Psychology, University Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France 6 Centre référent de réhabilitation psychosociale et de remédiation cognitive, Centre Hospitalière Alpes Isère, Grenoble, France 7 Research Center for Child Mental Development, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuo-ku, Chiba 260-8670, Japan 8 The Japanese Centre for Compassionate Mind Research and Training, Tokyo, Japan Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02019-5