Prominent accounts suggest that people feel self-conscious emotions when they evaluate their self-caused, identity-relevant behavior as a success or failure (Tracy & Robins, 2004)-even if they expected to succeed or fail. We propose a novel, alternative account that builds on those prior by considering expectations. People feel self-conscious emotions when they evaluate their self-caused, identity-relevant behavior as discrepant from expectations, with discrepancies progressing toward identity-r