Withdraw or affiliate? The role of humiliation during initiation rituals

The Problematic Persistence of Tiered Grading in Medical School

Issue: The evaluation of medical students is a critical, complex, and controversial process. It is tightly woven into the medical school curriculum, beginning at the inception of the medical student's professional journey. In this respect, medical student evaluation is among the first in a series of ongoing, lifelong assessments that influence the interpersonal, ethical, and socioeconomic dimensions necessary for an effective physician workforce. Yet, tiered grading has a questionable historic pedagogic basis in American medical education, and evidence suggests that tiered grading itself is a source of student burnout, anxiety, depression, increased competitiveness, reduced group cohesion, and racial biases. Evidence: In its most basic form, medical student evaluation is an assessment of the initial cognitive and technical competencies ultimately needed for the safe and effective practice of contemporary medicine. At many American medical schools, such evaluation relies largely on norm-based comparisons, such as tiered grading. Yet, tiered grading can cause student distress, is considered unfair by most students, is associated with biases against under-represented minorities, and demonstrates inconsistent correlation with residency performance. While arguments that tiered grading motivates student performance have enjoyed historic precedence in academia, such arguments are not supported by robust data or theories of motivation. Implications: Given the evolving recognition of the deleterious effects on medical student mental health, cohesiveness, and diversity, the use of tiered grading in medical schools to measure or stimulate academic performance, or by residency program directors to distinguish residency applicants, remains questionable. Examination of tiered grading in its historical, psychometric, psychosocial, and moral dimensions and the various arguments used to maintain it reveals a need for investigation of, if not transition to, alternative and non-tiered assessments of our medical students.

Hazers' Personality Characteristics and the Perception of School Climate in Slovenia

This article presents the initiation rite for the admission of newcomers to Slovenian upper secondary education, which is called "pheasanting" and has similar characteristics to hazing. It examines the relationship between certain personality traits of hazers with their perception of the school climate and the severity of the hazing activities they engage in (subtle, harassing, and violent hazing). In a sample of 460 students in the fourth grade of upper secondary education, 25.4% of them had carried out hazing in the previous 3 years, of which 47% performed only subtle, 24% harassment, and 29% violent hazing. Violent and harassment hazers justified their actions much more often than subtle hazers by dominating and distorting of the consequences and by diffusing responsibility. They also had less empathy and perceived the school climate as enabling more aggressive attitude. However, violent hazers had the most negative attitude toward hazing, while harassment hazers found hazing most acceptable. Finally, some practical implications of the results at individual and school level are discussed.

Workplace Hazing: Toward an Organizational Science of a Cryptic Group Practice

The purpose of this paper is to establish a foundation for studying and managing new employee hazing in workgroups. Available empirical evidence indicates 25–75% of American employees encounter workplace hazing, but very little empirical research exists on this phenomenon. Workers are changing jobs more frequently than ever, which increases the cumulative impact and importance of new employee experiences, including hazing, a complex group-based phenomenon. Because hazing is a relatively universal social practice without a strongly established literature in the organizational sciences, we draw from multiple disciplines in reviewing and modeling the practice. The current research offers three major contributions: (a) a relatively exhaustive review of relevant empirical and theoretical work on hazing, (b) an initial, testable model for understanding workplace hazing as a multi-level phenomenon, including individual and group-level antecedents and outcomes, and (c) an outline of the need and support for considering both the dysfunctional and functional consequences of hazing, given the variety of forms it takes and reactions it evokes. Finally, we present actionable guidance for researchers seeking to study workplace hazing and discuss the organizational implications of our work for practitioners.

Infant Emotional Mimicry of Strangers: Associations with Parent Emotional Mimicry, Parent-Infant Mutual Attention, and Parent Dispositional Affective Empathy

Emotional mimicry, the tendency to automatically and spontaneously reproduce others’ facial expressions, characterizes human social interactions from infancy onwards. Yet, little is known about the factors modulating its development in the first year of life. This study investigated infant emotional mimicry and its association with parent emotional mimicry, parent-infant mutual attention, and parent dispositional affective empathy. One hundred and seventeen parent-infant dyads (51 six-month-olds, 66 twelve-month-olds) were observed during video presentation of strangers’ happy, sad, angry, and fearful faces. Infant and parent emotional mimicry (i.e., facial expressions valence-congruent to the video) and their mutual attention (i.e., simultaneous gaze at one another) were systematically coded second-by-second. Parent empathy was assessed via self-report. Path models indicated that infant mimicry of happy stimuli was positively and independently associated with parent mimicry and affective empathy, while infant mimicry of sad stimuli was related to longer parent-infant mutual attention. Findings provide new insights into infants’ and parents’ coordination of mimicry and attention during triadic contexts of interactions, endorsing the social-affiliative function of mimicry already present in infancy: emotional mimicry occurs as an automatic parent-infant shared behavior and early manifestation of empathy only when strangers’ emotional displays are positive, and thus perceived as affiliative.

Military hazing and suicidal ideation among active duty military personnel: Serial mediation effects of anger and depressive symptoms

BACKGROUND

Military hazing is one of most serious problems affecting suicidal ideation (SI) among active duty personnel, but has received limited research attention. Studies on hazing and SI indicate anger and depressive symptoms as mediators for SI.

METHODS

A sample of active duty military personnel (N = 944) completed an offline survey, consisting of the revised Conflict Tactics Scale-2, Composite International Diagnostic Interview Screening Scale, and revised Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale. Frequency, bivariate correlation, and serial mediation analyses were conducted to assess the serial effects of military hazing on SI, mediated via anger and depressive symptoms.

RESULTS

Military hazing, anger, depressive symptoms, and SI were positively related to each other in bivariate analyses. In serial mediation analyses, hazing was found to be a significant predictor of higher levels of anger, consequently triggering depressive symptoms, which, in turn, were associated with greater SI.

LIMITATIONS

Study limitations included the use of cross-sectional data with the use of retrospective self-report.

CONCLUSION

Hazing in the military is prevalent (17.6%), and SI is associated with serial effects of hazing, anger, and depressive symptoms with full mediation path. Findings suggest that policies that address reducing hazing and implementing clinical interventions specifically focused on symptoms of anger and depression may be important for decreasing SI in military personnel.

Feeling Hurt: Revisiting the Relationship Between Social and Physical Pain

Pain overlap theory has generated decades of controversy and still receives considerable research attention. A major advance has been the revelation that social and physical pain activate similar neural regions, providing suggestive evidence of a “piggybacked” alarm system that coevolved to detect social exclusion. Recent developments, however, have brought neural evidence for pain overlap into question. We analyze these developments from a social psychological perspective and identify the need for a reformulated approach. To meet this need, we provide a framework that a priori predicts generalized overlap and specific divergence across a range of biopsychosocial domains. The framework points to a functional pattern for similarities and differences, which can be utilized to generate testable hypotheses so that the field can move forward. To demonstrate the utility and promise of the framework, we identify key hypotheses relating to attention, motivation, and responses to pain, and review research relevant to these hypotheses.

Author Reply: Why Hate Is Unique and Requires Others for Its Maintenance

In this reply, I discuss some important issues raised in two commentaries. One relates to the distinction between hate and revenge, which also touches upon the more general problem of the usefulness of distinguishing between various related emotions. I argue that emotion researchers need to define specific emotions carefully in order to be able to examine such emotions without necessarily using emotion words. A second comment focusses on the factors influencing the development of hate over time. The question is whether there is an intrapersonal mechanism leading to an increase or decrease of hate over time. I think it is the social environment that is essential in the maintenance of hate.

Why We Hate

We offer a functional perspective on hate, showing that hate has a unique pattern of appraisals and action tendencies. Hate is based on perceptions of a stable, negative disposition of persons or groups. We hate persons and groups more because of who they are, than because of what they do. Hate has the goal to eliminate its target. Hate is especially significant at the intergroup level, where it turns already devalued groups into victims of hate. When shared among group members, hate can spread fast in conflict zones where people are exposed to hate-based violence, which further feeds their hate. Hate can be reassuring and self-protective, because its message is simple and helps confirming people’s belief in a just world.

When Is Humiliation More Intense? The Role of Audience Laughter and Threats to the Self

In personal accounts, humiliation is often reported as a very intense, painful, negative emotion. We report two scenario studies in which we explored two factors that may contribute to the intense character of humiliation: (1) unwanted, negative public exposure, and (2) a threat to central aspects of one's identity. Study 1 (N = 115) assessed emotional reactions to a public insult when an audience responded with either laughter or not and when someone from the audience offered support after the insult or no support was offered. Results showed that the intensity of humiliation increased when people laughed after the insult. However, support offered after the insult had no effect on reported humiliation. Study 2 (N = 99) focused on threats to different self-related values and showed stronger reports of humiliation when central self-related values were threatened than when less central self-related values were threatened. Study 2 also replicated the audience-effect from Study 1, but only when central self-related values were threatened and not when less central self-related values were threatened. Limitations of these studies (e.g., the use of scenarios) and potential avenues for future research, such as the (long-term) consequences of humiliation and humiliation in the context of social media, are discussed.

Conceptualising humiliation

Humiliation lacks an empirically derived definition, sometimes simply being equated with shame. We approached the conceptualisation of humiliation from a prototype perspective, identifying 61 features of humiliation, some of which are more central to humiliation (e.g. losing self-esteem) than others (e.g. shyness). Prototypical humiliation involved feeling powerless, small, and inferior in a situation in which one was brought down and in which an audience was present, leading the person to appraise the situation as unfair and resulting in a mix of emotions, most notably disappointment, anger, and shame. Some of the features overlapped with those of shame (e.g. looking like a fool, losing self-esteem, presence of an audience) whereas other features overlapped with those of anger (e.g. being brought down, unfairness). Which specific features are present may determine whether the humiliation experience becomes more shame- or anger-like (or a combination thereof).