The criterion of embarrassment is a type of biblical historical analysis in which a historical account is deemed more likely to be true if the author would have no reason to invent a historical account which might embarrass them. It is logically similar to statements against interest in a legal context. Certain Biblical scholars have used this as a meter for assessing whether the New Testament's accounts of Jesus's actions and words are historically probable.
The criterion of embarrassment is one of the criteria of authenticity used by academics, the others being the criterion of dissimilarity, the criterion of language and environment, criterion of coherence, and the criterion of multiple attestation.