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Qualitative Study of Agents’ Perception on Social Humiliation
Authors: Soheila Sadeghi Fassaei , Narmin Nikdel
Number of views: 489
Introduction
Social humiliation is a problem which occurs during communication sometimes attentively and sometimes inattentively. Increasing growth of psychological problems and social consequences can drag our attention toward a new problem in the field of pathology and raise new questions about humiliation which have been ignored for a long time. The object of this paper is to map a conceptual space for humiliation, to be understood as an emotion and a social process occurring within a network of social relationships. The word humiliation has its roots in the Latin word humus, earth. This entails a spatial orientation, a downward orientation, literally a ‘de-gradation.’ ‘Ned-verdigelse’ (Norwegian), ‘Er-niedrig-ung’ (German) and ‘a-baisse-ment’ (French) all mean ‘de-gradation.’ All these words are built on the same spatial, orientational metaphor which places itself within a framework of relations. Analysis of the etymology of the word humiliation thus shows that it is, at its core, the sense of a downward push (Linder, 2000, 2). The term is synonymous with notions such as humiliation, losing face, being made to feel like a fool, feeling foolish, hurt, disgraced, indignity, debased, denigrated, dishonored, disrespected, defamed, humbled, scorned, slighted, slurred, shamed, mortified, rejected , and being laughed at (Klein, 1991: 4). We believe that humiliation is a universal human experience; however, the particularities of this experience can only be understood within the social, cultural, and historical context in which these events occur. Humiliation appears in countless forms. It can be (1) an internal experience (e.g., a feeling, an emotion), (2) an external event (e.g., a degrading interpersonal interaction, bullying, abuse, violent conflict, even genocide), or (3) systemic social conditions (e.g., intractable poverty, discrimination, forced dislocation) ( Hartling, Lindner, Spalthoff and Britton, 2013: 56). Humiliation and responses to humiliation can have destructive implications at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional and international levels. Humiliation takes an active part in a large scope of situations that people encounter during life, from extreme, war related conflicts to ordinary ones (e.g. at work and academic institutes) (Fisk, 2001; Lindner, 2002; Smith, 2001; Uitto, 2011). Because humiliation is believed to be related to anger and aggression, both inward and outward directed, it can lead to retaliation and revengeful behavior, but also to avoidance and withdrawal from the situation (Elison & Harter, 2007; Jackson, 2000; Klein, 1991; Lindner, 2002; Miller, 1988). Humiliation generally leads to unconstructive behaviors to resolve a conflict. This is how humiliation contributes to the enduring nature of conflicts (Goldman & Coleman, 2005; Lindner, 2002). The present research investigated various dimensions of humiliation and social actors in terms of the types of experiences that they consider as examples of humiliation.
Methods and Materials
Using a qualitative approach, the current study attempted to apply semi-structured interviews with 40 men and women in Tehran in order to examine the perception of participants toward humiliation based on their lived experiences and their narratives. Thematic analysis is the most common form of analysis in such a qualitative research. It emphasizes pinpointing, examining, and recording patterns (or "themes") within the data. Themes are patterns across data sets that are important to the description of a phenomenon and are associated to a specific research question. The themes become the categories for analysis. Thematic analysis is performed through the process of coding in six phases to create established, meaningful patterns. These phases are: familiarization with data, generating initial codes, searching for themes among codes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the final report. The method of analysis should be driven by both theoretical assumptions and research questions and provides a flexible method of data analysis which allows for researchers with various methodological backgrounds to engage in this type of analysis. Reliability with this method is a concern because of the wide variety of interpretations that arise from the themes. In order to Increasing reliability multiple researchers participated in the coding procedure simultaneously.
Discussion of Results and Conclusion
In terms of the subjective intended meanings of the participants, 4 different types of humiliation are as: (1) goal related, that is, humiliating relationships in which the humilator performs as act of humiliation with a specific goal to scorn the other, (2) power related, which occurs when the victim has a lower status than the humilator. For example, boss in related to his/her staff or teachers in relation with students, (3) neglect related, which is an unintended form of humiliation in which the humilator is actually innocent and the humiliated thinks that humiliation was intentional and (4) dishonored related, when the humilator has been a victim of humiliation somewhere in the past and humiliation occurs as a result of that unpleasant experience. According to the findings extracted from analysis, the examples of humiliations varies on the basis of the goals and the frames in which humiliation occurs. It could be classified in two types including verbal (like applying bad words and mocking) and non-verbal (direct and indirect). Diversity and complexity of interactions among people makes it difficult to provide a comprehensive kind of conceptualization about the concept humiliation. Therefore, findings of this research should be looked upon as just the beginning of a sociological study about humiliation.
Keywords: Humiliation, Violence, Qualitative Method