Humiliation is a particularly forceful phenomenon, but it is often misunderstood and conflated with shame, embarrassment, or guilt (Gilbert, 1998; Klein, 1991; Moïsi, 2009; Stamm, 1978; Tangney, Miller, Flicker, & Barlow, 1996). Researchers have given greater focus to shame than to humiliation. A study by Elison and Harter (2007) reviewed more than 50 articles and book chapters that focused on humiliation. Their study concluded that articles and books addressed the causes and correlates of humiliation, but only five provided data beyond informal or clinical observations. McCarley (2009) also noted that there is little empirical research on humiliation.
In the past 34 years, researchers have identified key situations that provoke humiliation. The presence of other persons, or an audience, is a necessary element for the provocation of humiliation (Gilbert, 1997; Hartling & Luchetta, 1999; Silver, Conte, Miceli, & Poggi, 1986; Stamm, 1978; Statman, 2000). Another necessary element is that a hostile agent diminishes the esteem and status of another person, resulting in humiliation (Elison & Harter, 2007; Gilbert, 1997; Hartling & Luchetta, 1999; Jackson, 1999; Klein, 1991; Lazare, 1987; Lindner, 2002; S. B. Miller, 1988; W. I. Miller, 1993, 1994; Stamm, 1978; Statman, 2000).
Yet another necessary element is that the humiliated person views the agent’s provocation of humiliation as unfair (Jackson, 1999; Klein, 1991; Statman, 2000). Humiliation, then, appears to result from an external provocation by a hostile agent who, by diminishing the esteem and status of a person, creates the conditions for humiliation that the humiliated person deems unfair. Similarities exist between humiliation, embarrassment, and shame, but humiliation is distinct, fundamentally, from embarrassment and shame. Self-blame is most prevalent in persons who experience shame. Persons may more likely experience humiliation than shame in response to events that elicit perceived devaluation (Pulham, 2009).
Humiliation sometimes involves the feeling of shame, but it is not useful to conflate shame and humiliation. Scholars find it difficult to differentiate shame, guilt, and embarrassment (Tangney et al., 1996). Although researchers, such as Helen B. Lewis and Donald Nathanson, tended to bracket shame and humiliation together, there appears to be important differences between them (Gilbert, 1998). Sayler (2004), in a Fielding Graduate University dissertation titled, Humiliation and the Poor: A Study of the Management of Meaning, stated that “Little study has been conducted on humiliation per se. Instead humiliation is a phenomenon that has historically been considered with other emotions that include shame, guilt, and embarrassment” (p. 5).
Shame and guilt are erroneously viewed as belonging to the same category (Elison, 2005). Humiliation is not a new term; however, an examination of the scholarly literature reveals an impoverishment regarding both the study of humiliation and conceptual distinctions between humiliation and shame (Moïsi, 2009).
In distinguishing humiliation from other emotions, Evelin Linder used a transdisciplinary approach that included political science, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, social psychology, and clinical psychology. Humiliation includes “a complex cluster of acts, feelings, and institutions, entailing at their core the holding down of a person, a practice which may be regarded as legitimate or illegitimate depending on its normative frame, and which is moreover played out differently by different cultures and people” (Lindner, 2007, pp. 20-21).
In one of the few studies focusing on humiliation, Hartling (1995) identified three reasons for the neglect of humiliation in the literature. First, psychological literature has typically placed greater emphasis on the self, especially in terms of development that stresses autonomy supported by Freud’s individualistic intrapsychic models of personality theory. Hartling recognized that any understanding of humiliation must also include a social dimension.
Second, the neglect of humiliation in the literature is because it is not a prominent experience of researchers (Hartling, 1995). Rather, researchers may be members of socio-economic groups whose power and privilege provides them with the privilege of deciding the questions and concepts for advanced scholarly exploration (McIntosh, 2007).
Further accounting for the neglect of humiliation in the scholarly conversation is the “nefarious advantages to those who employ [humiliating] behavior in their interactions with others” (Hartling, 1995, p. 9). Individuals and groups in power positions use humiliation to elicit control over, and compliance from, individuals and groups with less power, including those in corporate environments, classrooms, military, sports, politics, and domestic situations. “Identifying humiliation as a damaging form of human behavior might require perpetrators of humiliation (individuals or groups) to relinquish a powerful tool” (pp. 9-10). These reasons create a significant challenge to scholars endeavoring to research humiliation.
Lindner embraced the scholarship of William Ury and William Ian Miller in her exploration of the historical foundations of humiliation. Lindner self-identified being particularly indebted to Ury who argued that human history includes three major types of societies: hunter-gatherers; agriculturalists; and knowledge society, which is currently emerging. Lindner (2007) pointed out that Ury’s categorization follows a Weberian ideal type approach. In his ground-breaking book, Humiliation and Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence, Miller (1993) delved deeply into the historical aspects of honor. Lindner based her humiliation scholarship and research on such concepts as honor, human rights, and dignity.
A dialogue focusing on human dignity forms a significant turn in the humiliation core conversation. There appear to be at least two competing perspectives of human dignity.
Human dignity is the conceptual foundation upon which to build a multiplicity of understandings of humiliation. Lindner (2001b) conceptualized humiliation as a stripping away of dignity. Margalit (1998) offered a similar proposition in his ground-breaking work, The Decent Society, arguing that without human dignity as a conceptual foundation, the concept of humiliation does not exist.
Dignity, as the conceptual foundation of humiliation, finds general acceptance in the scholarly community; however, not all those scholars who are part of the humiliation core conversation share this position. Statman (2000), for example, used Darwinism as the basis of his argument and cautioned against basing humiliation on a conceptual foundation of human dignity.
The humiliation core conversation finds two dichotomous perspectives of human dignity. The traditional perspective of human dignity focuses on inherency/innateness. This perspective dominates the scholarly conversation. The second perspective of human dignity focuses on recognition and respect. A review of the literature finds evidence that the dominant notion is problematic and, for the most part, unchallenged.
Statman does not use the inherency of human dignity as the conceptual foundation of humiliation. Statman (2000) stated, “If we hold a descriptive account of dignity, it is difficult to see how such a loss can occur, especially when we bear in mind that the feature that entitles humans to dignity belongs to all members of the species, irrespective of their individual capacities or behavior” (p. 525). Paraphrasing his words, Statman seems to say that if we hold an inherent perspective of dignity, it is difficult to see how a loss resulting from humiliation can occur, especially when we bear in mind that the feature that entitles humans to dignity belongs to all members of the species, irrespective of their individual capacities or behavior.
Macklin (2004) challenged the scholarly community to rethink its conceptualization of dignity, noting that the concept of human dignity has remained almost entirely unanalyzed. “It is as if everyone knows what dignity is—or, at least, can recognize it when they see it” (p. 212).
Weinrib (2004/2005) lent her voice to the core conversation and provided a succinct history of the concept of human dignity that demonstrates the rather dramatic evolution scholarship has taken with the conceptualization of human dignity. Human dignity has roots in the Roman term, dignitas, denoting intrinsic worth that, in Roman society, connoted an elevated political and social status. Cicero (106 – 43 BCE) modified the meaning of human dignity, imbuing it with a human being’s distinctive rational capacity. Judaism and Christianity further shaped the concept of human dignity through the development of theological notions of humankind’s position in the divine order. During the Renaissance, Petrarch linked dignity with the notion that God created humankind in God’s image; hence, human beings possess an immortal soul and have dominion over the animal kingdom. During the Enlightenment, scholars accentuated the importance of human capacities of rationality, stripping away religious notions. Rationality entitles human beings to equal treatment. Kant elaborated on the inherent dignity of autonomous human beings and held that human beings are to act in a way that respects the dignity of self and the dignity of others.
In my review of the literature, I sought to find a bridge between the perspective of inherent human dignity and an alternative perspective of dignity, namely that of recognition and respect. Although she held to a notion of inherent human dignity, the voice of Hannah Arendt, a mid-20th century political theorist, lends itself to this conversation and appears to bridge these two dichotomous understandings of human dignity (namely, inherency versus recognition/respect).
Arendt’s work acknowledged that of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), most particularly on his insistence that human existence confers no moral entitlements and that all such entitlements rely upon authoritative forms of recognition found in definite communities (Isaac, 1996). Arendt (1958/1998) posits that the world is what human beings make of it. Human efforts and agreements provide the only assurances of human rights and human dignity.
Arendt discussed persons who, by virtue of their statelessness, have no rights because no organized body recognizes them. Rationality, or even being born into the human family, is insufficient to be recognized as providing a legitimate claim to rights (Arendt, 1968). More so, members of a social community must recognize and incorporate its members. Arendt (1968) provides an ontological argument for human dignity in the existence of a common world culturally shared. Human dignity is possible in the reality of a common world and common experiences (Parekh, 2008). Arendt (1968) posited that human beings are not born equal, but become equal as members of a group on the strength of the decision to guarantee mutually equal rights to each person. This is an important segue that appears to bridge two conversations; namely, the conversation regarding the inherency of human dignity and the conversation regarding human dignity as a social construction that involves the human acts of recognition and respect.
Johannes Fischer, a scholar at the Universität Zürich (Institut für Sozialethik), argued that human beings, nomen dignitatis (that is, a dignity-conferring name), possess dignity through the processes of recognition and respect. The social world serves as the foundation of human dignity (Fischer, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). This view contrasts sharply with the natural world perspective that a human being possesses dignity inherently by virtue of birth as a human being.
How scholars explain the normative meaning of the expression, human being, is the most fundamental question regarding the concept of human dignity (Fischer, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). Arriving at some understanding of human dignity requires that scholars consider the specific structure of the social world in contrast to the natural, or biological, world.
In the natural world, things are what they are independent of recognition and respect. In other words, properties are inherent independent of recognition and respect.
The social world contrasts sharply with the natural world because human recognition and respect forms the basis of the social world. Recognition is equated with acknowledgement; and it is that which governs social belonging and social status (Fischer, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). “[Recognition] governs who belongs to the social world or to a particular group within it, as well as the social status a person has within this world” (Fischer, 2009a, p. 2). Respect focuses on the human claims and rights persons have based on social belonging or a certain social status (Fischer, 2009a, 2009b, 2010).
Those who do not recognize human dignity make a moral mistake (Fischer, 2009a). Being a member of the human community is a social status based on recognition and respect. Human beings owe recognition and respect to each other precisely because of human beings’ biological human properties. Membership of the social world is a normative status based on due recognition (Fischer, 2009a). “It is important to see that a creature has not to be recognized as a human being … because it is a human being in this sense, but rather, it is a human being in this sense because it has to be recognized as such¸ due to its natural human properties” (Fischer, 2009a, p. 3).
Other scholars appear to confirm the importance of recognition in the scholarly conversation regarding human dignity. “All humans yearn for recognition” (Lindner, 2007, p. 39). Lindner (2007) also finds that there is a significant literature in philosophy on the politics of recognition. Honneth (1995) sums up this notion with a rather direct statement: “Due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people. It is a vital human need” (p. x).
Why do the various scholarly voices not agree regarding the inherency of human dignity? A transferal of the paradigm of the natural world to the social world appears to provide the answer. This transferal creates the impression that only something which is already there can be recognized (Fischer, 2009a). Therefore, human dignity has to be already there before recognition is possible. Naturalism, then, provides the basis, or grounding, for human dignity “beyond the social world within the biological nature of human existence” (p. 4).
The scholarly conversation about human dignity, then, divides itself over an emphasis on the social world or the natural world. This is crucial because it requires scholars to reconsider the differentiation between the biological (natural) concept of human existence and a social concept of human existence. This distinction shapes any definition, or understanding, of human dignity. Fischer’s (2009a) social conceptualization of human dignity led him to define it as follows:
[H]aving human dignity means being a creature which is to be recognized and respected as a human being in the sense of a member of the human community, and which is to be treated accordingly. And this is equivalent to being a member of [the] human community. (p. 4)
How does this understanding of human dignity alter the dominant perspective of humiliation? In other words, does an agent of humiliation have the power to strip another human being of his or her inherent dignity, or is humiliation, more precisely, the loss of social status and recognition?
Mark R. Leary, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University addressed humiliation in terms of an individual’s social status. A horror of humiliation is the fear of a loss of social status (Leary, 2001). Similarly, humiliation can be understood as the fear of being discarded and replaced by someone more attractive, compounding the pain of betrayal, rejection, and humiliation (Shettel-Neuber, Bryson, & Young, 1978).
The lack of recognition and respect, especially in the form of social exclusion and ostracism, evokes humiliation. Many acts of exclusion involve the disruption of a power balance between two interdependent parties. The humiliator places his or her needs and desires above those of the humiliated person. The humiliator discounts, disrespects, and excludes the humiliated person. It is possible for the humiliated person to become a social outcast (Leary, 2001).
Baumeister and Dewall join their voices with Arendt and Fisher, bringing a communal and co-constructivist perspective into the scholarly conversation. The environment provides most beings what they need to live; however, humans, in contrast, are relational beings and obtain what they need from each other and from their culture. Furthermore, human beings have the mechanisms, including motivation, cognition, and self-regulation, to obtain and maintain inclusion (Baumeister & Dewall, 2005).
Donald C. Klein (1923 – 2007), who developed the term, Humiliation Dynamic, provided deep insights into the humiliation core conversation. The Humiliation Dynamic is used to socialize and is a “major weapon in the oppression of women, people of color, and other stigmatized groups” (Klein, 1991, p. 93). Humiliation plays a role in the development of our self-understanding. Klein’s voice supports the notion of recognition as an element of the Humiliation Dynamic. When people are humiliated, they “become less than those who exclude [them], often as if in their eyes, you do not exist at all” (p. 97). The ideas and potential contributions of humiliated persons go unacknowledged and unrecognized. “To be excluded or made less involves being put out of the circle of inclusion, control, and intimacy enjoyed by those who are the perpetrators of one’s humiliation” (p. 97).
Naming and defining people are useful tools of recognition and exclusion. For example, terms such as “obese” and “overweight” are tools of recognition and exclusion. “The importance, significance, and ramifications of naming and defining people cannot be over-emphasized. From Genesis and beyond, to the present time, the power which comes from naming and defining people has had positive as well as negative effects on entire populations” (Bosmajian, 1983, p. 1). Naming can be inclusionary, but it can be exclusionary, too. There is power in naming. Bosmajian (1983) stated in this regard that
The power which comes from names and naming is related directly to the power to define others—individuals, races, sexes, ethnic groups. Our identities, who and what we are, how others see us, are greatly affected by the names we are called and the words with which we are labeled. The names, labels, and phrases employed to “identify” a people may in the end determine their survival. The word “define” comes from the Latin definire, meaning to limit. Through definition we restrict, we set boundaries, we name. (p. 5)
In naming and labeling, human beings co-construct the world, not once, but repeatedly. Naming and labeling is a form of recognition, but is also a form of exclusion and ostracism. George Herbert Mead coined the term “the looking glass self” to explain, or symbolize, how a human being’s sense of self is an internalized collection of a multiplicity of interactions with real and imagined others. The sense of self, therefore, is a reflection of others’ reactions. Clearly, the looking glass metaphor speaks to the image of recognition. Individuals’ co-constructions of themselves in the world reflects a continuum of interactions with others, and events. Human beings are relational and experience, define, and respond in-relation-to-others.
Public condemnation can produce feelings of humiliation. Public condemnation likely causes humiliated persons to think that their humiliator(s) have failed to recognize and respect their dignity as members of human society (Elison & Harter, 2007). Miller (1993) wrote one of the few specific books on humiliation and sees humiliation as related to pretensions, or, more accurately, an emotion of pretension deflation. Humiliation strikes when someone reveals aspirations and beliefs that another individual, or group, considers beyond the individual. Humiliation is the emotional experience of being recognized as an interloper, or intruder, having entered into a territory, in which she or he will not find acceptance or recognition (W. I. Miller, 1993).
Humiliated persons have the perception that the person who humiliates treats them as contemptible, inferior, or ridiculous. As relational beings, each human being’s survival depends on the degree to which society recognizes, accepts, and respects him or her. To that end, people go to great lengths to achieve this acceptance and respect. Stated another way, many people do whatever they feel is necessary to avoid the humiliation of ostracism, looking weak, or appearing foolish (W. I. Miller, 1993).
To a very large degree, Lindner (2001a) framed her definition of humiliation on the work of Miller (1993) and Margalit (1998). Viewing humiliation from a more global perspective, Lindner (2001a) described the phenomena of humiliation in the following way:
Humiliation means the enforced lowering of a person or group, a process of subjugation that damages or strips away their pride, honor, or dignity. To be humiliated is to be placed, against your will and often in a deeply hurtful way (although in some cases with your consent) in a situation that is much worse, or much “lower,” than what you feel you should expect. Humiliation entails demeaning treatment that transgresses established expectations. It may involve acts of force, including violent force. At its heart is the idea of pinning down, putting down or holding against the ground. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of humiliation as a process is that the victim is forced into passivity, acted upon, and made helpless. (p. 4)
Lindner’s perspective is richly deserving of critical analysis in the scholarly community. The literature supports Lindner’s conception of humiliation, but with one exception; namely, humiliation does not and cannot strip away human dignity.
Linda Hartling, Director of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies Institute, who is closely associated with Evelin Lindner, the Founding President, uses an appreciative lens and understands humiliation as a profound relational violation, an assault on one’s essential need for relationships. Humiliation threatens one’s survival by threatening one’s vital connections (Hartling, 2005).
Humiliation is a powerful weapon used by individuals, or groups, with power upon individuals, or groups, with less power. However, some events, or actions, can be humiliating to one person, or group, and not another; that is, humiliation can sometimes be relative (Manning, 2005). There exists an implication that humiliation is a social construction or relational experience that includes a relationship between a minimum of two persons. The literature indicates that humiliation does not exist apart from a relationship. Working through humiliation requires an examination of relationships with others (Manning, 2005).
Wasserman (2004) used relational theory in her dissertation research project in which she identified discursive processes that provide the conditions for individuals to stay engaged with others such that the engagement is transformative. Relational theory is a relatively new tool that can help frame questions about identity in relationship with others. The connectedness of human beings forms the basis of, and potential for, healthy human development. Growth is a process that occurs in the context of relationships with others. As I have indicated, humiliation occurs in the context of relationships with others, too. I illustrate this phenomenon in Figure 1.
Human growth moves toward entropy with the introduction of humiliation. Because humiliation is the denial of relationship with others (e.g., ostracism, excommunication, exclusion, denial of recognition), it precludes human growth resulting in alienation and entropy. On the other hand, connectedness and positive human relationships provide a framework for human growth and development.
Figure 1. Transformative growth model.
It is through connection, or mutual empathy, that people find the ability to be moved, to respond, and to move the other (Surrey, 1991; Wasserman, 2004). It seems, then, that people experience upward transformative human growth through the discursive process of positive human relationships. Conversely, humiliators force humiliated people into a downward momentum where they can potentially fall into a state of entropy.
Humiliation involves social and personal elements. Loosely borrowing from Wasserman’s (2004) exploration of discursive processes, deeply humiliated persons are precluded from transformative human growth because their humiliator(s) attempt to exclude certain others from full acceptance in a human community. One such method of humiliation is to obfuscate membership in a human community; in other words, fail to recognize and respect human beings. Social identity theory submits that human beings base their sense of identity on their membership(s) in various groups. Social identity theory posits that in-group members seek negative aspects of out-group members, thus enhancing in-group members’ self-images. From a social constructionist perspective, human beings continuously define social identity in social encounters (Wasserman, 2004).
Humiliation appears, then, to be the antithesis of the discursive process of transformative growth because a more powerful person, or group, invokes a process that annihilates discursive processes that lead to transformation and growth by severing social inclusion and acceptance, thereby leading to the painful humiliation found in the absence of recognition. Based on the current arguments wrought by various scholars, the literature supports the following definition of humiliation. Humiliation is an intentional, or unintentional, intrusion into the human developmental path by a more powerful person, or group, leading to the failure of recognition and respect.
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