Many researchers believe that humiliation is often a driving-force behind social conflicts. Scientists have stressed the role that humiliation plays in international politics and high school shootings. The experience of humiliation is often described as a strong emotional reaction to being ostracized or rejected in the sense of being made to feel small or worthless. Humiliation signals to victims that they are rejected in the sense that they are seen as inferior. Research has shown that rejection by a potential romantic partners conveys a message that a person is perceived to lack sufficient desirable qualities to be a worthy partner and this induces humiliation. Experiences of social rejection can create serious deficits in the satisfaction of social needs, even potential of pathological consequences. In this paper, the interest is in rejection and humiliation in intergroup settings. The question is whether it is possible to feel humiliated by just observing members of one’s ingroup being rejected. In this article, the writers examine the possibility of vicarious group-based rejection and the possibility that vicarious rejection triggers emotional responses that are similar to being rejected oneself.

Powerlessness, anger and humiliation

Powerlessness is central to the experience of humiliation. The victim is forces into passivity. Some have suggested that this loss of power may lead to inertia. This is the tendency toward inaction that suppresses aggressive responses and it should be accompanied with action-inhibiting emotions like fear and shame. But, in line with previously findings on social rejection, the writers believe that humiliation is more likely to be associated with action-oriented emotions, like anger. The writers think that humiliation is associated with feelings of powerlessness and anger.

Vicarious group-based humiliation

Studies have found similarity of personal and group-membership based experiences. Research has shown that being ostracized by a member of an outgroup on the basis of one’s group membership triggers levels of distress equal to those triggered by being ostracized as an individual. Regardless of what the perpetrator represents. The writers know of only one study in which group-based humiliation was empirically examined. The researchers of this study found that feelings of humiliation were associated with powerlessness and with anger. The writers of this current article want to go a step further and they propose that humiliation can also be experience vicariously, that means after just observing the rejection of members of the ingroup rather than being personally rejected as an individual or member of a group. Empathy studies have shown that people may vicariously experience other people’s pain. Vicariously experienced pain activates the same brain regions as directly experienced pain and it triggers associated responses. Research on vicarious social pain is also emerging. Studies have shown that observing ostracism activates relevant brain regions and corresponding feelings in observers. This means that witnessing others being ostracized can make the observer feel ostracized himself. The same results have been found for vicarious embarrassment. However, empathic responses to vicarious rejection depend on emotional closeness to the victim. People closer to the victim will show more empathic responses. The writers expect that similar results will be found when the person’s relationship with the victim is defined by group membership. Some studies have shown that situations that involve members of one’s ingroup but not the person himself/herself can trigger emotional reactions that are similar to those of people who are directly involved.

Study 1

The goal of this study was to test the experimental rejection paradigm for inducing humiliation by examining whether people who are rejected indeed feel humiliated and whether this humiliation is associated with anger and powerlessness. The participants were assigned to one of two treatments: being included or ostracized in a game of Cyberball. In the Cyberball paradigm, the participants believe themselves to be playing a ball-toss game with two or three other players, who are actually computer-programmed confederates. Some of these are programmed to initially include and then exclude the participant. This creates rejection. If the participants are repeatedly excluded, one can speak of ostracism. Previous research with this paradigm has shown that being ostracized in the game leads people to feel angry and sad. In this first study, the writers also included a between-subjects factor (exposure: public vs. private) in order to explore whether the sensation of being publicly exposed enhances humiliation after rejection. In the public condition, webcams were attached to the screen and participants were told that the interaction would be observed by a group of psychology students. This was, of course, not true. After the game, participants were asked to rate on a Likert-scale how they felt during the game. Humiliations, powerlessness, shame, fear, happiness and anger were measured.

The results showed that humiliation was predicted by the ostracism manipulation. Being ostracized triggered stronger feelings of humiliation than being included. Ostracized participants also felt more powerless than included participants. They also experienced more anger. The people in the inclusion condition felt happier than people in the ostracism condition.

Study 2

In this study the research paradigm of Study 1 was used to test the proposition that vicarious group-based rejection can cause feelings of humiliation. The writers included an extra condition in which subjects observed other ingroup members being rejected by members of a salient outgroup. Previous research has shown that even if people are rejected by members of a despised outgroup (like the KKK) they show strong rejection effects. The writers of this article predicted that vicarious group-based humiliation is mainly ingroup-based. This means that it is more strongly triggered when members of an outgroup reject members of the ingroup than when they reject members of an outgroup. The Cyberball paradigm was used with three condition. In the personal rejection condition, the participant himself/herself was ostracized by two members of an outgroup. In the vicarious ingroup rejection condition, participants observed one ingroup member being ostracized by two outgroup members. In the vicarious outgroup rejection condition, participants observed one outgroup member being ostracized by two members of another outgroup. The same dependent measures as in study 1 were taken after the game.

The results show that more humiliation was experienced when participants were ostracized or when members of their ingroup were ostracized than when members of an outgroup were ostracized. Feelings of powerlessness were significantly higher after personal rejection than after rejection of ingroup members or than after rejection of outgroup members. Anger in response to personal rejection was stronger than anger in response to vicarious ingroup rejection or vicarious outgroup rejection. No significant difference was found between vicarious rejection of the ingroup and of the outgroup.

Study 3

In the third study, the number of perpetrators and victims were balanced. In this study, a procedure in which participants were first included and in the next round explicitly rejected, or in which they watched others being rejected, was applied. The participants were told specifically that the perpetrators did not consider them worth interacting with. The writers predicted that both personal rejection and observed rejection of ingroup members would trigger higher levels of humiliation, powerlessness and anger than observed rejection of outgroup members or no rejection.

The results yet again showed that participants experienced more humiliation when they were personally rejected or when members of their ingroup were rejected than when members of an outgroup were rejected or when no rejection happened. People also felt more powerless when they personally were rejected or when someone from their ingroup was rejected than participants in the other conditions. Participants also felt angrier when they were rejected or when members of their ingroup were rejected than when no rejection occurred or members of an outgroup were rejected.

These results show that people can experience humiliation vicariously after observing ingroup members (but no outgroup members) being rejected. They also show that humiliation is accompanied by anger and powerlessness.