Clues of the humiliated: a quantitative exploration of shaming in Argentina

Abstract

This article aims to explore some conditions in which takes place the experience of feeling ashamed or humiliated. We analyzed information from the National Survey of Social Structure carried out in 2015 by the Research Program on Contemporary Argentine Society (pisac). It was a probabilistic, stratified and multi-stage sample in which were surveyed 8,265 households in towns with more than 2,000 inhabitants throughout the country. In one of the blocks of the questionnaire there were questions about whether in the last year someone in the household had suffered different situations, including having been belittled, embarrassed or humiliated. Throughout this writing, the responses to this questionnaire question are analyzed in relation to other variables. The exploration of the conditions that make the experience of humiliation more likely allows us to identify the profiles of the most exposed subpopulations and generate hypotheses through abductive reasoning.