Abstract: People often judge how embarrassing an activity or condition is on the basis of its perceived prevalence. They infer prevalence in part by considering how often they hear other people discussing it. But how often a condition is discussed is a function not only of its prevalence but also of how embarrassing it is. If people fail to take this into account, they will tend to judge embarrassing conditions as being rarer, which will accentuate their embarrassment, and, in turn, further amplify their reluctance to disclose those conditions - a "spiral" of shame and silence. We present results from two studies that support the existence of such a feedback process. The first, a cross-sectional survey study, asked respondents a series of questions about different embarrassing and non-embarrassing conditions. Respondents (1) indicated whether they had the conditions, (2) judged how embarrassing the conditions were, (3) reported whether they had disclosed, or would disclose, having the conditions to others, and (4) estimated what fraction of survey respondents had the conditions. As predicted, reports of disclosure were negatively related to judgments of embarrassment, and when embarrassment was greater, estimates of prevalence were lower, both for conditions that respondents had and for conditions they did not have. The second, an experimental study, manipulated whether people received a high or low estimate of population prevalence for 5 different conditions, and found that receiving a high prevalence estimate reduced embarrassment and increased self-reported willingness to disclose the condition to others, and vice versa.