Our Emotions in Conflict: Dignity, Identity, and Humiliation
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
by Julia Davies
Donna Hicks, best-selling author of the book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, is most known for her unique approach to conflict transformation. She makes the case that dignity, our inherent value and worth as humans, is the root of conflict. Her argument is that dignity is inherent in every one of us – we’re born with it, and it’s part of us as human beings. Our dignity is sacred and therefore very vulnerable to being harmed, injured, or wounded. Dignity is oftentimes misconflated with respect; however, the distinction is important. Respect is something earned; dignity is intrinsic to personhood.
Hicks goes on to explain that she feels that any conflict can be boiled down to each party’s need to be treated with dignity. This is supported by many other psychologists and academics who agree that “need frustration” is at the center of conflicts.
As humans, we all have basic needs, including safety, belonging, identity, distributive justice, inclusion, and participation. Identity groups are often the way people express and meet these needs. Therefore, when one group’s basic needs are either denied or not met, the out-group is blamed, and inter-group conflict ensues. The most destructive and intractable conflicts in the world occur between identity groups – racial, religious, ethnic, or cultural groups – and this is one explanation as to why.
We all want to be treated with dignity, and when we aren’t, we feel humiliated. Humiliation is described as the “nuclear bomb of emotions” and alters our behavior much more than other negative emotions such as anger or grief. 1 We don’t actually automatically understand certain conditions to be negative or positive. As long as all people accept justifications for the condition, even an objectively bad condition doesn’t have to be bad (for example, poverty as a “divine order”). There can be negative emotions associated with the condition, such as pain or discomfort, but if there is no shared awareness or mutual agreement that “this is a problem,” then the condition won’t be met with outrage or conflict. In other words, our response to our condition is usually based on our perception of others’ conditions compared to our own.
For example, when I lived in Rwanda, I did not have hot water for showers because there wasn’t hot water for showers. I felt the pain of taking cold showers and a longing for hot water, but I didn’t feel any anger or outrage. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that I didn’t have hot water, and no one else did either. However, if I was at my house in New Jersey and there wasn’t hot water, I would feel very differently. I would probably be angry and upset, since everyone else had hot water except me, and I always take hot showers at my house. It’s a stupid example and not exactly illustrative of “humiliation,” but the point is that how bad something seems is usually only relative.2
The good news is that humiliation is not an automatic trigger for violence. Being intentional about making the other person feel that they are being treated with dignity is a way to positively transform conflicts. In other words, avoid making someone feel humiliated. Best-selling author Dale Carneige wrote that good leaders “let the other person save face.” He then quoted French author Antoine Sant-Exupéry, who similarly wrote, “I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.”3
So how do we avoid making someone feel humiliated? Hicks offers the “ten elements of dignity.” These include accepting others’ identities, making others feel physically and psychologically safe, acknowledging different emotions, working to understand different perspectives, making others feel that they belong, recognition and gratitude, benefit of the doubt, justice and fairness, encouraging independence, and personal accountability.
Although dignity is something that is intrinsic to who we are, we self-define much of our dignity or worthiness as a person based on how we identify ourselves. Ask yourself, Why am I worthy of love? or What makes me proud of myself? Oftentimes, the answers will be how we identify, such as, because I am a good mother, a loving son, a devoted Christian.4
There are many reasons for the link between identity and conflict. Some academics believe that an individual’s self-worth or dignity is linked to group membership, and to have a positive self-worth means favorable evaluations of one’s own group, which often bleeds into unpleasant comparisons with other groups. In other words, when expressing commitment and affections to our own group, we tend to devalue out-groups.
Similarly, in-group conformity and cohesiveness can become weaponized as group norms pressure in-group members to encourage discriminatory behavior toward the out-group. Colloquially described as “groupthink,” this phenomena can mean that seemingly irrational decisions can replace independent critical thinking. Combined with a state of fear and anxiety (such as war), this is one reason academics explain how ordinary people with no past of violent crime can take a machete to their neighbor, as in the case of Rwanda.
Another important consideration is the potential for weaponization of identities by charismatic leaders. In situations of conflict, more aggressive leaders come to the front, regardless of their level of destructiveness, while cooperative leaders tend to lose power. These charismatic leaders are often the ones with the most decision-making power over the group.
Identity politics, or “us” vs. “them,” is an old story, and pitting groups against each other is a tried and true tactic. Leaders deliberately arouse the anger of one group against another to increase their own power or status because they can bolster their popularity by playing one group of people off another.
This serves leaders’ own interests while cloaking actions in terms of serving the vulnerable people they claim to represent. Instead of focusing on social issues that people of many identities face, such as food, housing, and healthcare, people are separated into groups, and only those within the same group can work with each other to solve said issues. This is neither inherently left nor right, nor unique to America and Europe.
Every person is born with inherent worth and dignity simply by being human. When we are treated without regard to this worth, we experience feelings of humiliation and often turn to destructive and irrational behavior. Therefore, the way we treat one another needs to be with respect for everyone’s inherent worth. This sense of worth is often tied to our identities and can be used to perpetrate division and conflict – and often is – but it can also be used to build bridges and transform conflict.
Footnotes
Humiliation arises when people feel lesser in status or worth, while shame is when people feel they have violated a social norm or moral standard – similar, but not the same. Evolutionary psychologists say that for all of human history, humans’ survival depended on acceptance from their tribe. We were more vulnerable to predators, hunger, and the elements if rejected from our group, so shame acted as a deterrent from rejection. This is thought to be the reason why public speaking is constantly ranked one of people’s top fears.
I think this can be used to explain why social media in particular and globalized media at large is so bad for mental health. On social media, we are constantly exposed to people’s “highlight reel” or the top 1% of whatever our algorithm is showing us, making us feel perpetually less adequate. No longer are we only comparing ourselves to the few hundred people we encounter in our daily lives, but billions across the globe, creating unreal perceptions and a skewed sense of “less than”-ness. Similarly with globalized media, we are told to care about every issue, everywhere in the world, creating constant feelings of inadequacy and inability.
Dale Carneige, How to Win Friends and Influence People: The Only Book You Need to Lead You to Success.
Political scientists call this “salience of ethnic identities,” and it is commonly used to theorize the causes of violent conflicts. Identities can also be weaponized because of their link to our sacred values and beliefs. I wrote about this more here.
Julia is a Peace Catalyst intern in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is a recent graduate of Ohio State University, where she majored in history and political science with research distinction. During her three-month study abroad program in Rwanda, Julia worked with youth groups and women’s associations addressing transgenerational trauma and promoting forgiveness. Her research on collective memory and genocide memorials and their role in promoting reconciliation has given her a unique perspective on the power of peacebuilding. Learn more about Julia here.