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The study of shame has a long tradition in intra- and inter-personal psychology. This paper aims to investigate whether consumers can experience brand shame after self-relevant consumption incidents. Specifically, this research proposes that consumers follow a complex shame-inducing process in the aftermath of unpleasant experiences involving their favorite brand. The moderating role of relational tie strength between consumers and their favorite brand existing prior to symbolic failures is examined.

A scenario-based, online survey (n = 660) among consumers who have recently experienced a self-relevant failure with their favorite brand was conducted. Confirmatory factor analysis ensured the reliability and validity of the measurement model. For testing the conceptual model, data was analyzed by means of a moderated mediation analysis. The proposed model was tested against, among others, common method bias and alternative models. The findings were cross-validated with a scenario-based online experiment (n = 1,616).

Results show that brand shame is a key mediator between customer dissatisfaction and brand anger when self-relevant, symbolic failures happen. Moreover, strong consumer-brand identification triggers brand-detrimental effects. It is shown to influence the connection between consumers’ inward- (i.e. brand shame) and resulting outward-directed (i.e. brand anger) negative emotions on brands, which lead to consumer vengeance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to introduce the concept of situational brand shame to the literature on favorite brands. Furthermore, it shows that consumer-brand identification moderates the direct and indirect (via brand shame) unfavorable effects of failure-induced dissatisfaction on brand anger. This research adds insights to the investigation of the “love-becomes-hate” effect arising after self-relevant failures involving consumers’ most preferred brand.

The purpose of this opinion piece is to give voice to the living experience of shame within myself as the author, both psychologically and physically. This is in the hope to increase awareness among others who experience shame and mental health professionals tasked with supporting people in emotional distress.

The author has written a biographical piece outlining her experiences of living with shame and used rich, provocative and metaphorical language in describing the events which led to this and the impact this has had on my quality of life. The author has positioned shame as a character playing a role in her life.

This piece reveals the inner turmoil experienced when living alongside shame and the resilience and fortitude needed to understand the role of shame and how it developed. With this knowledge and awareness, the author has found it is possible to move forward in life.

The author has lived through adverse and challenging early life experiences within a difficult family environment. The author has shown that it is possible to undertake a healing journey and to come to an acceptance of shame within my own life and still move forward to create supportive relationships with others and a life worth living. These are often the stories of those people who survive great difficulty and still go on to help and support other people.

The author has found and experienced that loving and supportive relationships give the best chance of healing from early life adversities. The author has also found that shame plays an interesting role as both necessary and painful. Moving forward from the distress often associated with shame is a long journey but one that is possible.

The author has aimed to make clear that exploration and education about the lived experience of shame is both helpful for those who suffer and those who intend to help within the mental health professions. Listening to the stories of people with living experiences is vital and plays as important a role as academic theory and learning.

This is a subjective living experience of shame and, in that way, adds to the helpful canon of stories that can inform our understanding of distress and the ability to help. The author has described shame as a character playing a role in her life and belief that this is an interesting way to view this. This piece also contains stories regarding the genesis of shame which are unique to her. The author understands and makes clear that his experience does not necessarily translate or relate to anyone else but stands on its own merit. The author hopes to have much more to contribute in terms of others’ understanding of emotional distress and shame, especially considering its transdiagnostic nature.

This paper aims to describe and evaluate the impact of a compassion-focused therapy (CFT) group for adults with intellectual disabilities (ID).

People with ID are commonly subjected to stigmatising experiences that can contribute to feelings of shame. CFT targets shame and self-criticism by helping people to cultivate self-compassion. There is evidence to suggest that CFT can be meaningfully adapted for people with ID. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected using a mixed-methods design, aiming to gain a rich evaluation of the CFT group. Eight adults with ID were referred by their local community psychology team. An 11-week group protocol was based on materials from previous research. The protocol included the development of a “compassion box”, aiming to make CFT concepts more concrete and tangible. Questionnaires measuring psychological distress, self-compassion and negative social comparisons were completed pre- and post-group. Feedback from participants and carers were collated and facilitators’ observations were recorded.

Questionnaire findings were mixed, and some participants found the measures difficult to understand. Participants’ qualitative feedback and facilitators’ observations suggested that the group created feelings of safety and connectedness whilst facilitating engagement and action with shame and self-criticism. Several participants highlighted the usefulness of the ‘”compassion box”, although some barriers were noted.

This paper provides a rich description of how group CFT can be adapted to meet the needs of adults with ID and is the first study of its kind, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to evaluate the incorporation of the “compassion box”.

Children's food insecurity experiences are largely unrepresented in academic literature. Parents and caregivers cannot always accurately evaluate their children's attitudes or experiences, and even within the same family unit, children and their parents may report differing views and experiences of family food insecurity. The purpose of this narrative review is to identify studies that include children's voices and their perceptions, understanding, and experience of food insecurity in the household.

This narrative review aimed to address the following questions: (1) “What research studies of household food insecurity include children's voices?” and (2) “Across these studies, how do children perceive, understand and experience food insecurity in the household?”. A database search was conducted in October 2022. After inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, 16 articles remained for review.

The findings from this review were organised into three themes: Theme 1: Ways children coped with accessing food or money for food; Theme 2: Food-related strategies children used to avoid hunger; and Theme 3: Children attempt to mask food insecurity.

Future research should further explore the long-term consequences of social pressures and informal economic engagement on children's well-being and social development. By addressing the social determinants of food insecurity, this study can strive to create supportive environments that enable all children to access adequate nutrition and thrive.

Overall, the findings of this review demonstrate the significant social pressures that shape children's responses to food insecurity. Results suggest that children's decision-making processes are influenced by the desire to maintain social standing and avoid the negative consequences of being food insecure. As such, this review underscores the need for a comprehensive understanding of the social context in which food insecurity occurs and the impact it has on children's lives. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing effective interventions and policies addressing the multifaceted challenges food insecure children face.

This review has highlighted a need for interventions to incorporate trauma-informed strategies to protect children from and respond to the psychologically distressing experiences and impact of living in food insecure households.

The study aims to introduce The Compass Project (TCP), designed to determine whether strengthening morality and practicing emotion management can reduce youth antisocial attitudes and behaviours and increase prosocial attitudes and behaviours.The programme activities are informed by the existing evidence base and incorporate theoretical explanations of the mechanisms that link psychological moral and emotional traits and behaviour.

This paper will offer a description of the programme design and content, TCP 2022 pilot study and crucially, discuss the utility of delivering programmes like TCP in wider settings (schools, youth offending teams and other youth organisations). TCP is currently being delivered in UK schools as a multi-site, longitudinal, RCT design.

Participant feedback from TCP 2022 pilot study is used to illustrate the potential impact of TCP for young people in future. The authors identify five challenges faced by researchers conducting youth intervention studies: access, recruitment, continued attendance, nature of participation (enthusiasm, engagement and task-focus) and full participant completion of data measures.

This pioneering study offers a novel methodology to increase law-abiding moral attitudes and behaviours in young people. This paper adopts a forward-thinking and scientific approach to identify practical solutions to key challenges faced when delivering youth interventions and is relevant for youth practitioners and academics worldwide.

TCP seeks to achieve improved youth attitudinal outcomes (such as law-aligned morality, empathy for others, measured decision-making and consideration of the consequences of action) and improved youth behavioural outcomes (such as improved quality of relationships with others, increased helping and prosocial behaviours, reduced antisocial behaviour and delinquency and reduced contact with criminal justice system-related organisations).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, an evidence-based morality strengthening and emotion programme of this kind, closely aligned with a moral theory of rule-breaking, has not been developed before.

While the causes and effects of begging are well known, solutions on how to eradicate begging are still elusive in many parts of the developing world. The purpose of this study is to examine the different ways through which community leaders at the local level can contribute to the eradication of begging in one of Ghana’s most densely populated suburbs in the city of Accra.

This study was undertaken using the qualitative approach, and primary data was collected through interviews, participants observation and focus group discussions with beggars, community leaders and officials of non-governmental organisations at Nima, a suburb of Accra.

Begging in the suburb of Nima is increasingly becoming a business venture. It is no more an activity that is the preserve of only the weak, the poor, the elderly, the physically challenged, the needy and the marginalised in society. This paper argues that the eradication of begging requires multiple approaches and that community-based leaders must play a central role. This paper identified the provision of alternative sources of livelihood, the naming, shaming and condemnation of unjustified begging in the community, strict boarder control, returning foreign beggars to their home countries, the formulation and enforcement of community anti-begging by-laws and regular sensitisation programs on begging as crucial in reducing or eliminating begging.

While focusing on one Muslim-dominated suburb in Accra ensures a detailed discussion of strategies of eliminating begging from a cultural and religious perspective, the findings of this study may not be applicable to non-Islamic settings and communities where cultural or religious leadership structures do not exist.

This study has demonstrated that the eradication of begging in society cannot have one-size-fit all solution. This paper shows that in societies where cultural and religious leadership structures exist, they must play important roles in the design and implementation of strategies that seek to reduce or eliminate religious begging in society. This implies that formal government agencies and their associated laws alone will not be enough to eradicate or reduce begging under such contexts.

Measures to eradicate begging have often ignored the role of community leaders. This paper contributes to our understanding on this by specifically examining the phenomenon of begging at the micro level and exploring the different ways community leaders can contribute to the eradication of begging in society.

The goal was emancipatory, to characterise and dislodge oppressive management practices, to allow for the possibility of seeking an alternative organisational construction free of postcolonial/subaltern subordination and discrimination in a local, well-documented narrative.

The study was informed by a postcolonial/subaltern perspective and drew on the employment experience of an Aboriginal woman, Canada’s first Indigenous Dean of a law school. The researcher employed a combination of case study and critical discourse analysis with the aim of advancing rich analyses of the complex workings of power and privilege in sustaining Western, postcolonial relations.

The study made several conclusions: first, that the institution, a medium-sized Canadian university, carefully controlled the Indigenous subaltern to remake her to be palatable to Western sensibilities. Second, the effect of this control was to assimilate her, to subordinate her Indigeneity and to civilise in a manner analogous to the purpose of Indian residential schools. Third, that rather than management’s action being rational and neutral, focused on goal attainment, efficiency and effectiveness, it was an implicit moral judgement based on her race and an opportunity to exploit her value as a means for the university’s growth and status.

Through a postcolonial/subaltern perspective, this study demonstrated how management practices reproduced barriers to the participation of an Indigenous woman and the First Nations community that an organisation was intended to serve. The study demonstrated how a Western perspective – that of a university’s administration, faculty and staff – was privileged, or taken for granted, and the Indigenous perspective subordinated, as the university remained committed to the dispossession of Indigenous knowledge and values.

Although photographs in sustainability reports are useful in conveying complex messages, they may also be used to manipulate the presentation of disclosures to exploit the limited cognitive processing capacity of humans. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the features of photographs aimed at capturing individuals’ attention through visual structures and evoking specific emotions through carefully chosen content. Furthermore, it examines whether such framing practice is explained by incentives for legitimizing behaviours and influencing reputation.

The authors conduct a content analysis of photographs in 154 sustainability reports published by US companies. The authors captured the nature of photographs, the context in which they are being used, their themes and emotional content and layout and interaction features to understand how photographs are used for attribute framing to influence information processing. Furthermore, the authors statistically examine the framing practice between companies with different characteristics to identify any patterns for the impression management use of photographs in sustainability reports.

Photographs are often large with a horizontal orientation to capture attention and show content viewed at eye level and in either medium or close-up shots to engage viewers. Furthermore, photographs are emotionally loaded with different themes such as depictions of people, technology and nature. These themes are used to predominately evoke positive emotions of awe, nurturance, pride, amusement and attachment. This practice is often used by companies in environmentally sensitive areas that have close consumer relationships or are covered controversially in the media.

The authors reveal reporting practices and identify photographic features that attract attention and convey emotions that go beyond aesthetic qualities. This is important because emotions conveyed through photographs can be potentially misleading and influence judgements subconsciously.

The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive value of psychopathy features on crime-related emotional states in forensic male patients with offence histories who were mandated to Dutch clinical care.

The study had a retrospective design in which psychopathy features were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. For each patient, information on the events leading up to the crime and a description of the crime itself were extracted from the hospital record to assess emotional states. These crime-related emotional states were assessed using the mode observation scale. The sample consisted of 175 patients with offence histories.

Multiple regression analyses indicated that affective features of psychopathy were a negative predictor for feelings of vulnerability in the events leading up to the crime but not predictive of loneliness. The interpersonal features were predictive of deceit during criminal behaviour.

This study leads to a better, more nuanced and substantiated understanding of which emotional states play a prominent role in criminal behaviour and how these states are affected by psychopathic traits. This knowledge can influence existing treatment programmes for patients with offence histories.

Several studies have examined the relationship between emotional states and criminal behaviour and between psychopathy and emotions, but less is known about the predictive relationship between psychopathy features and crime-scene-related emotional states.

At times, a traditional minority group that opposes a change in the patriarchal structure is violent toward women who wish to adopt modern lifestyles. This study aims to examine online comments regarding a shooting at a café in an Arab-Bedouin city in Israel, where women were employed as servers. The event was framed in Israeli media as an act of backlash by young men, who call themselves “The Modesty Guard.”

In this qualitative study, the authors collected 916 online comments that were published on five main online news sites. A thematic and rhetorical analysis of online comments was conducted.

The findings uncovered five main themes: the expression of support for Bedouin women; ideas for dealing with the Modesty Guard; blaming Bedouin tradition for the shooting; comparison of the violent behavior to a parallel phenomenon among Charedim; and criticism of the lack of treatment by Israeli security forces. The responses reflected a supportive stance toward Arab-Bedouin women, who were open to progress. Conflict discourse, however, expressed alienation and increased social-national schism between the Jewish majority and Arab-Bedouin minority groups in Israel.

This study sheds light on the backlash phenomenon in Negev Bedouin society. Moreover, it exposes the lack of significant supportive actions and a lack of understanding of the deep processes unfolding in this traditional society.