Does Online Public Shaming Prevent Us From Being Able To Grow And Change?

Shame has served human beings in an evolutionary function in providing a person the opportunity to take refuge in a private space, a sort of embryonic state, to reflect and think deeply about one’s past behavior and this is how maturation and the process of growth take place. Certainly, the shame attached to incarceration following an arrest is supposed to provide this function. This is supposed to be the “healthy” function shame provides within society interested in controlling behavior. However, pathological shaming that is imposed to “tear down” and humiliate another, over and over again, in a self-serving fashion, designed to facilitate the humiliator/abuser image or make them feel better about themselves, does not provide a beneficial evolutionary function in my opinion. Online shaming associated with social media platforms is provoked primarily by envy and high degrees of narcissism. Many parents may use the technique of shaming to discipline a child and help the child reflect on unacceptable behaviors thereby providing the space needed to mature and grow. However, one needs to assess whether or not the “shaming,” as a disciplinary practice, is encouraging positive changes in moral competence in both affective and cognitive mechanisms. Shaming can be abusive and one can evaluate its ineffectiveness when observing downward changes in the child’s moral and cognitive mechanisms, which may create a manipulative, violent outburst of anger, or a demonstratable lack of empathy and concern for another. Shaming, when it is used in a negative and abusive fashion, can erode a person’s sense of self-identity and affect their self-autonomy thereby creating psychological erosion.

In a paper entitled, The Relationships Between the Dark Triad, the Moral Judgment Level, and the Students’ Disciplinary Choice found in the Journal of Individual Differences, the authors cited findings from a paper on modern moral psychology published in Berlin Germany that asked “Can morality be taught? They wrote:

“An adequate measurement of moral competence should assess both the affective and the cognitive mechanisms and should be sensitive to positive changes as a function of moral learning and intervention or to downward changes as a function of competence erosion (Lind, 2002).”

Shaming as a mechanism to the way of moral learning can be effectively delivered provided it is followed-up with a sensitive speech that is appropriately delivered and the child receives information on why their behavior was socially unacceptable in the first place and then given the adequate time to reflect and think about their choices. This is a scenario in which a parent is in full right and authority to deliver the “shaming”. With regard to the online environment, over personalized platforms within social media, it has been questioned since the use of these social platforms are designed to promote one’s self-image and “best self” if they don’t actually help to boost levels of narcissistic behavior. Narcissistic behavior contributes to online bullying and shaming. It is pertinent to ask while online, “Who has the right to “teach” another human being lessons of humility and moral competence?

Sources:

Krick, A., Tresp, S., Vatter, M., Ludwig, A., Wihlenda, M., & Rettenberger, M. (2016). The Relationships Between the Dark Triad, the Moral Judgment Level, and the Students’ Disciplinary Choice. Journal of Individual Differences, 37(1), 24–30.

Lind, G. (2002). Ist Moral lehrbar? Ergebnisse der modernen moralpsychologischen Forschung [Can morality be taught? Research findings from modern moral psychology] Berlin, Germany: Logos.

Updated answer to include the following paper on January 30,2021 at 1:22 PM EST:

Taylor, D., & Strutton, D. (2016). Does Facebook usage lead to conspicuous consumption? The role of envy, narcissism, and self-promotion. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 10(3), 231–248.