First empirical evidence of the intensity of humiliation

[GYre0ePJhZ]

Recent scientific article based on project utilizing EEG to measure intensity of humiliation. Snippets of food for thought from the Psychology Today article:

• Humiliation is defined as the emotion you feel when your status is lowered in front of others.

• Otten and Jonas ... concluded that the participants' responses to humiliation were both more negative than to anger, and more intense than to happiness.

• Taken to the extreme, instilling humiliation in a victim is a basic tactic of torturers, prison guards, and certain kinds of domestic abusers.

• Making sure your criticism or teaching is presented in a way that preserves the other person’s self-respect is the most basic way to avoid causing humiliation.

 

I find it particularly interesting that humiliation was objectively found to be more intense than both happiness and more negative than anger.

 

Links:

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201407/the-one-emotion-really-hurts-your-brain

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17470919.2013.855660

 

 

[Bipedal Primate]

Thank you for posting. This was very interesting.

[DaVinci]

This might explain why humiliation finds it way into relationships with a large power disparity.

[MMX2010]

Thanks very much for posting this.