Imagine being questioned about complex technical knowledge in front of your peers, supervisors, and members of the public—knowing that a wrong answer could lead to public ridicule. This is the reality ...

A year has passed since the brutal murder of George Floyd by the police. A year of countless protests, endless talks about inclusion and anti-racism, and millions holding their breath while watching ...

Embarrassment, shame, guilt, and humiliation all imply the existence of value systems. Whereas shame and guilt are the outcome of self-appraisal, embarrassment and humiliation are the outcome of ...

I picked up Stephen Nissenbaum’s The Battle for Christmas a few months ago to read some Christmas history. I found one section in the book pretty disturbing. It describes a late 19th-century activity ...

I must have been about seven years old, a junior in my prep school. I was standing in the dining hall surrounded by over a hundred senior boys and schoolmasters, all looking at me, some with pity, ...

Back in the 1980s, stack-ranking employees was seen as a state-of-the-art management practice. CEOs like Jack Welch at GE divided employees into three distinct segments: the top 20% of performers, the ...

Like anyone, I suppose, I take great pains to avoid humiliation. But as a fat person, humiliation is built into my everyday existence—just living in my body is coded as humiliating by the culture at ...

Tyler Clementi was described as quiet and shy, perhaps lacking the mental toughness to deal with the humiliation of having his sex life put on display. The Rutgers University freshman jumped off the ...

Trump gets a perverse sense of satisfaction from deflating his opponents—especially the heirs of the two great political dynasties from the last four decades, both of whom he gave demeaning nicknames.