Psychologists from Poland studied how the experience of humiliation is related to happiness levels. It turned out that people who more often feel humiliated are usually less happy, and rumination - the intrusive repetition of the same negative thoughts about unpleasant events and worries - plays an important role in this connection. The work was published in the journal Current Issues in Personality Psychology.
Humiliation is a severe experience that leaves vivid memories and affects self-esteem and relationships with people. It is associated with emotional stress and depressed mood. Rumination, in turn, prolongs and intensifies negative emotions and hinders recovery after unpleasant events.
The authors of the work - Natalia Cicecka and Sonia Antosz from SWPS University in Katowice, as well as Aleksandra Zhenda from the University of Silesia - conducted an online survey via social networks. It involved 323 adult residents of Poland, including 212 women and 107 men. The participants' ages ranged from 18 to 79, with an average of 26; about half had higher education.
Participants completed questionnaires assessing happiness levels, proneness to rumination and the experience of humiliation. The latter measures two aspects: past experience of humiliation and fear of humiliation in the future. The rumination questionnaire assessed the general tendency toward repetitive negative thoughts, rather than reflection specifically about humiliating events.
The results showed: the more humiliation a person reported, the less happy they were and the stronger their tendency to ruminate. Fear of future humiliation was slightly more strongly associated with low happiness than past experiences. People prone to rumination were also more often less happy, especially those who considered their repetitive thoughts useless.
Statistical analysis indicated that rumination partly explains the link between humiliation and happiness. In other words, people with a more pronounced sense of humiliation ruminated more, and stronger rumination, in turn, was associated with less happiness. However, this chain explained only part of the link, and humiliation remained closely associated with low happiness even taking rumination into account. This concerns a statistical association, which by itself does not prove a causal relationship.
The authors conclude that a sense of humiliation may have a destructive effect on self-reported happiness through rumination about difficult experiences and fear of future humiliation. Knowledge of the role of rumination and humiliation in perceived happiness may help in diagnosis and treatment, especially of anxiety and affective disorders.
The study has limitations. The design of the work does not allow conclusions about causality, and since all measurements were conducted at a single point in time, the analysis cannot establish that humiliation led to rumination, which then reduced happiness. In addition, all data are based on self-reports, which leaves room for distortion. The sample was recruited via social networks and was predominantly young and female, so the results may not extend to the entire population.