Humiliation: Definition, Rituals, & Trauma​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Humiliation is the painful sensation we experience when others’ actions, and sometimes our own actions, make us feel inferior and even question our own worth.​
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We all have our quirks as consumers of media. Some people do not like sex scenes, or scenes of violence, or scenes where children are in danger. Ever since I was a child, I have been unable to tolerate scenes of humiliation in movies and television shows. I can almost always see them coming, and I feel my stomach drop and my heart ache each time. Whether it is the cool kid bullying the nerd in high school, the earnest and naïve young 
man getting rejected as he confesses his love to a woman, or the protagonist losing in a competition, I just hate to watch people—even fictional characters—suffer in this way.

Perhaps this is because I have certainly experienced my fair share of humiliating moments, and my empathic side feels it so acutely when I see other people having a similar experience. As a therapist, I cannot save everybody from humiliation, but I can try to help us all cope. Humiliation is an inevitable part of life, unfortunately, but why is this the case? Let’s look together at the psychological science of humiliation.​
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What Is Humiliation? (A Definition)​

Humiliation is the experience of feeling hurt as we sense that we are being put down, ridiculed, or seen as less than (Hartling & Luchetta, 1999). In particular, we feel humiliated when a part of our identity seems to be called into question or devalued. The sensation of humiliation is one of sadness or shame associated with these thoughts.
 
If we return to the examples I gave from movies and television shows, we can see how these characteristics are present in those situations. Bullies often tease and insult people about the very traits those people like about themselves; rejection by a love interest can signal to us that we are not desirable as a partner; and people competing in tournaments are usually very invested in excelling at that activity, so it is painful to lose.
 
Most situations where somebody experiences humiliation also involve a witness (Klein, 1991). This emphasizes the highly social nature of humiliation. When our identities are threatened by something we do, or something another person does to us, and there are witnesses to the event, that seems to amplify the humiliation we feel. This is why bullies tend to seek out and enjoy having an audience, and why forgetting your lines in the school play is much more humiliating if it happens during an actual performance rather than during a rehearsal the week before.

Humiliation Synonyms​

There are several words that are close in meaning to the word humiliation, some of which we will look at in more detail in a moment. Words such as degradation, embarrassment, disgrace, and indignity come to mind. However, the idea of humiliation is very specific in involving several people—a witness, a humiliator, and a humiliated—and in involving a threat or blow to one’s identity.​

Causes of Humiliation

Let’s look more closely at the ingredients that go into an instance of humiliation (Torres & Bergner, 2010). First, people can only be humiliated if they lay claim to a status of some kind that can be undermined, threatened, or disproven. For example, if I take on a new hobby such as skiing and struggle with it, I may or may not feel humiliation. If I have a growth mindset about skiing, I may recognize that it is appropriate for me to struggle in the early stages of learning something new, and I may be less likely to feel humiliation. By contrast, if I see myself as a natural athlete or as somebody who learns new things easily, I may feel humiliated if I fall down skiing in front of other people.
 
That brings us to the second key ingredient: Humiliation requires a public moment where we fail to live up to the status or identity that we want to claim. If we never put our identities to the test, we will not experience humiliation. We must encounter a moment when other people threaten our identity, or we fail to live up to the identity we have chosen, to experience humiliation.
 
The third ingredient is a bit more complicated: Humiliation can only happen if the people witnessing the event are in a position to pass judgment on the person experiencing humiliation. This matters because in some situations we can be immune to humiliation. For example, if a parent overcooks and burns dinner, but only their young child and her friend witness it, the parent may be upset—but not humiliated. The two small children do not know enough about the situation to understand how the parent’s behavior potentially undermines their status as a capable adult.
 
A final, somewhat optional, ingredient in humiliation is a larger status change for the humiliated person. In their own mind or in the minds of the witnesses, the person’s status that they would claim may be so undermined that it no longer seems valid to claim that status. For example, making a mistake when doing something very simple and routine might lead an expert to question their whole ability to do their job.

Examples of Humiliation

Humiliation is likely to happen in situations where people feel less than, small, or powerless (Elshout et al., 2017). For example, I bet most of us have, at least once in our life, waved to somebody who did not see us. Suddenly we start to question whether that person even really likes us.
 
Perhaps you can think of other small moments throughout your life. Calling your teacher “mom” or ending a work call with “I love you,” texting something sensitive to the wrong person, or liking someone’s social media post when you don’t want them to know you were looking at their profile.
 
Here’s another common situation that can be humiliating: when a friend group suddenly ostracizes somebody (Leask, 2013). All the ingredients for humiliation are present here, especially a sense of injustice and a lack of control over the situation.

Psychological Effects of Humiliation

Psychologists have known for a long time that experiences of humiliation are associated with all kinds of unpleasant or negative emotions (Garfinkel, 1956). Especially painful experiences of humiliation may lead people into depression, anxiety, and even suicidality. Repeated humiliation may also set the stage for the development of posttraumatic stress disorder.
 
This makes a lot of sense, right? We can only endure so many blows to our sense of self before our sense of self becomes eroded or degraded. And while many people experience this growing sense of depression, some lash out from a place of humiliation instead (Garfinkel, 1956; Klein, 1991), experiencing rage and resisting their experiences of humiliation.
 
In fact, humiliation seems to lead certain people into violence (Winlow & Hall, 2009). For example, I remember my high school history teacher proposing that George W. Bush had gone to war with Iraq to make up for the humiliation his father experienced in his own unsuccessful war in the Middle East. And by the same token, men in countries the United States has invaded might experience humiliation as a result and be drawn to seek revenge, to reclaim their status as defenders and owners of their homelands (Lindner, 2001).

Humiliation & Trauma​

We can also understand humiliation, when deliberately exercised against another person, as a way of causing trauma to that person (Leask, 2013). This is particularly true for people who have been repeatedly hurt by others in childhood and are set up to experience rejection as painful and humiliating.​

Humiliation vs. Embarrassment

Humiliation and embarrassment are similar experiences, but not quite the same (Babcock, 1988). Embarrassment and humiliation both involve some kind of interaction with another person: We have to be seen having the experience in order to feel embarrassed or humiliated. The difference lies in that embarrassment often features a behavior on the part of the embarrassed person that they very well could change.
 
For example, I might arrive at work and realize I put on wildly mismatched socks that really stand out. While this is embarrassing, it is also fixable—I can simply be more conscious of my clothing choices tomorrow morning. By contrast, a humiliating situation at work would involve something that is less within my control and that threatens my sense of self in more profound and integral ways. If my supervisor takes time during a meeting to highlight all the ways that I did a poor job completing a recent project, even going so far as to suggest that I might need to be reassigned to less complex work, I move from the realm of embarrassment to the realm of humiliation.

Humiliation vs. Shame

There are also important similarities and differences between humiliation and shame (Klein, 1991). One similarity is that shame, unlike embarrassment, shares with humiliation the aspect of involving a judgment about one’s whole self, especially with regards to how good or socially attractive we are (Gilbert, 1997). In either shame or humiliation, we may feel angry, exposed, or afraid of others’ reactions. Shame differs from humiliation in that it is caused primarily by our own behaviors; we perceive the things we have done as reflecting negatively on who we are as a person. By contrast, in humiliation we usually perceive others’ behaviors, or their perceptions of us, as reflecting negatively on who we are as a person. We often perceive our shame reactions as justified, since they come from behaviors of our own. However, experiences of humiliation are typically experienced as undeserved or unfair—a deeper blow to our self-esteem, since we cannot address them to the degree that we can address shameful experiences.

Humiliation Rituals

Humiliation rituals are surprisingly common in our culture, and I think they serve the purpose of telling people, “This is who you must be for us to accept you.” One example that springs readily to mind is that of college students who want to join fraternities or sororities. The hazing rituals that remain so common among these organizations are used to tell potential members that they must submit to the norms of the group, that they must humble themselves to be worthy of joining the group (Mechling, 2008). I would argue that military training involves many similar experiences of ritualized humiliation, and that the effect is to bring the trainees into a position of submission to the rules and priorities of the military branch that they serve.​

Humiliation in Relationships

By its nature, all forms of humiliation take place in relationships; without somebody to judge us as less than, we cannot be humiliated. One relational context in which humiliation is especially likely to occur is when people attempt to build romantic connections with each other (Baumeister et al., 1993). As I noted above, being rejected in one’s romantic advances typically brings up a sense of humiliation, as we feel the other person has passed judgment on the quality of our character, looks, or overall personhood.​

Humiliation Tactics

When humiliation is undertaken deliberately and systematically, we can think of it as being like bullying (Evans & Smokowski, 2016). People who are deliberately humiliating others are trying to build up their own good appearance while tearing down the other person’s. Any tactics that make a person feel dehumanized or powerless can serve as humiliation tactics (Silver et al., 1986).

Quotes on Humiliation

  • “Humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.” ― Chuck Palahniuk
  • “In fact, all of us are very susceptible to having our humiliating experiences turn to shame, especially when the person who is putting us down is someone with whom we have a valued relationship or someone whom we perceive to have more power than we do . . .” ― Brené Brown
  • “You have to bear either the humiliation of being in need or the hardships of doing it all alone by yourself.” ― Noha Alaa El-Din
  • “Make way for the sweetest humiliation when you underestimate [others’] intelligence while overestimating your knowledge.” ― Criss Jami
  • “Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just.” ― Bernard of Clairvaux
  • “We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully.” ― Mother Teresa
  • “One man’s transparency is another’s humiliation.” ― Gerry Adams
  • “Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.” ― John Donne

Articles Related to Humiliation

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Humiliation

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Humiliation​

I know we have all experienced humiliation, and few of us look forward to it happening again. Is humiliation a thoroughly negative experience we should simply avoid at all costs? As some of the quotes above suggest, humiliation, like other emotional experiences, may have something positive to offer us as well. For more on this provocative idea, I recommend watching the following TEDx talk:​

Video: Harnessing the Power of Humiliation​

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