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This paper aims to explore the role of the researcher’s emotions in ethnographic practice in accounting research. This paper focuses on shame as an emotion that lingers on, despite the efforts to work through those emotions.

The authors conducted a collective autoethnography to make sense of the fieldwork and after-fieldwork emotions and their consequences. This autoethnography began with the three authors discovering their shared feeling of shame.

Building on Hochschild’s theory (1979, 1983) on emotional labor, the authors demonstrate how shame emerged as a central and lingering emotion of the ethnographies beyond an emotional labor process. The authors show how a double shame appeared toward the field participants and the academic accounting community, affecting the writing and the work.

The authors demonstrate that the perception of the research community’s rules of feelings gives rise to emotions that ultimately change the work. The authors show how collective autoethnography can help accounting research to acknowledge and give room to emotions.

This research aims to conceptualize online shaming discourse in virtual communities and to serve as a practical guide for online community managers and members.

This conceptual study explores the construction of meanings in human interaction in online communities by presenting a conceptual model, “The Triple-Responsibility Model in Online Communities,” that is based on Kantian ethics.

The model includes characterizing the roles of core participants in online communities: writer, reader and group manager; and delineating four ethical principles – truth, necessity, proportionality and caution – that can help society find the golden mean between social change and respecting human dignity and concern for an individual’s public image and provide a theoretical contribution and practical guidelines.

It addresses shaming in virtual communities by suggesting a balance of several key principles, including truth, necessity, proportionality and caution. This is a new conceptualization of online shaming relevant to today's digital arena.

The guidelines can contribute to the ongoing political debate over what constitutes appropriate and justified regulation. Moreover, Facebook community leaders are responsible for formatting the group’s identity, the technical facets of group management and for setting group boundaries and determining the rules of participation. The posited rules may affect social media group managers, as they are called upon to leverage their privileged position and channel their media power into influencing online discourse.

The current study provides insights into how shaming can be used as a legitimate tool in society by implementing an ethical approach, resulting in guidelines that restrict online discourse for participants in virtual communities and affect the work of social media group managers and policymakers.

By presenting a new conceptual model, the authors suggest that ethics are a helpful tool and offer insights into how online communities' participants and managers should use their voice and balance between shaming and maintaining the dignity of the individual.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study into the lived experience of skin picking disorder (SPD) and to explore the psychological impact of the disorder.

Researchers employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, using Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

The study found that the sense of shame, common among participants, led to self-stigma, hiding, concealing and avoidance. Shame of SPD also interplayed with and compounded the shame of loneliness.

Limitations included a lack of a longitudinal component to the work. This is deemed important, as both the SPD and the experience of loneliness can shift over time as circumstances change, and individuals develop strategies for coping or, conversely, experience a worsening of the condition and the shame, loneliness and social isolation it can induce.

This study draws attention to the complex nature of both SPD and loneliness. It highlights how those living with the disorder are reluctant to seek help, resulting in low rates of treatment access and distrust in health providers.

As SPD is little understood, it can be erroneously deemed a “choice”; seldom discussed as a condition, it can lead to exclusion and withdrawal. The sense of shame of both appearance and behaviour interplays with and compounds the shame of loneliness and can force the individual into a further cycle of withdrawal and isolation.

While research suggests SPD should be acknowledged as a public health issue, research and literature is still relatively limited, and there are no qualitative phenomenological studies as yet that report on the lived experience of SPD.

In keeping with recent body image social trends, consumer demand for the adoption of plus-size models is increasing, although the use of thin models remains prevalent. The current study explores how consumers process information about fashion products displayed on different sizes of models in advertisements, focusing on model and consumer body sizes and both genders. As an underlying mechanism explaining how the relationship between model and consumer body sizes shapes consumer purchase intention, this study explores the role of guilt, shame and mental imagery.

The current study uses a text analytics technique to identify female consumers' general opinions of thin models in advertising. Employing a 3 (consumer body size: normal, overweight, obese) × 2 (model body size: thin, plus-size) × 2 (gender: male, female) between-subjects online experiment (n = 718), the main study comparatively analyzes the influences of plus-size and thin models on consumer responses.

The results reveal that, despite body positivity movements, thin models still generate negative emotions among female consumers. For obese female consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models produce fewer negative emotions but not more mental imagery than advertisements featuring thin models. Conversely, for obese male consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models generate more mental imagery but not more negative emotions than advertisements featuring thin models. The results also reveal that the relationship between consumer body size and guilt is moderated by perceived model size, which is also moderated by gender in generating mental imagery. While guilt plays a mediating role in enhancing mental imagery, resulting in purchase intention, shame does not take on this role.

This study is the first to present an integrated model that elucidates how consumers with varying body sizes respond to different sizes of models in advertising and how these responses impact purchase intentions.

Our findings only apply to contexts where consumers purchase fashion clothing in response to advertisements featuring thin versus plus-size models.

Exposing normal-size consumers to plus-size models generates less mental imagery, and thus, practitioners should seek to match the body sizes of the models featured in advertising to the body sizes of their target audience or ad campaigns that include both plus-size and thin models may help improve message persuasiveness in fashion advertising. Moreover, guilt-appeal advertising campaigns using thin models would appeal more to thin consumers of both genders than shame-appeal advertising.

Despite the fact that shame is recognized as a significant factor in clinical encounters, it is under-recognized, under-researched and under-theorized in health prevention, assessment and cross-cultural contexts. Thus, this study aims to investigate the psychometric properties of the most widely used scale, the “Other as Shamer Scale” (OAS), to assess the risk and proclivities of external shame in adults. As in health care, there is a barrier between what is known through research in one culture and what is acceptable in practice in another culture.

The Urdu version was prepared using the standard back-translation method, and the study was conducted from June 2021 to January 2022. The translation and adaptation were completed in four steps: forward translation, adaptation and translation, back translation, committee approach and cross-language validation. The sample, selected through the purposive sampling method, is comprised of 200 adults (men = 100 and women = 100), with an age range of 18–60 years (M = 28, SD = 5.5), spanning all stages of life. The Cronbach's alpha reliability and factorial validity of the OAS were assessed through confirmatory factor analysis and Pearson correlation analyses. Internal consistency and test–retest reliability (at a two-week interval) were used to evaluate the reliability. Statistical analyses were performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 22) software.

Preliminary analysis revealed that the overall instrument had good internal consistency (Urdu OAS a = 0.91; English OAS a = 0.92) as well as test–retest correlation coefficients for 15 days (r = 0.88). The factor loading of all items ranged from 0.69 to 0.9, which explained the significant level and indicated the model's overall goodness of fit.

Findings suggest that this scale has significant psychometric properties and the potential to be used as a valid, reliable and cost-effective clinical and research instrument. This study contributes to scientific knowledge and helps to develop and test indigenous cross-cultural instruments that can be used to examine external shame in Pakistani people.

Although microfinancing is considered a key tool for fostering women's entrepreneurship development, there is growing concern regarding the impact of loan repayment strategies on the mental health of women entrepreneurs. This study seeks to unravel the implications of microfinance loans on the mental well-being of women entrepreneurs.

A carefully structured questionnaire was distributed to a purposive sample of one hundred women entrepreneurs in Lagos State using a mixed-method research approach. Also, interviews were conducted using an interview guide, which directly mirrored the questionnaire administered to five focus groups within Lagos State.

The study found that loan repayment and recovery strategies positively and significantly impact women entrepreneurs' mental well-being, with psychological distress serving as a measure for measuring mental well-being. Additionally, other factors such as the number of dependants and household headship trigger psychological distress, while age in business was associated with a reduction in psychological distress.

This study contributes to the existing literature by delving into the psychological implications of loan repayment strategies on the mental health of female entrepreneurs in Lagos State, Nigeria. Furthermore, it employs a triangulation research approach to validate questionnaire responses through focus group discussions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

This paper aims to discuss the impact of fraud on individuals’ wellbeing by drawing on insights from the academic literature. It also highlights literature gaps and suggests new avenues for future research.

This paper is based on a comprehensive literature review to gain insights into the impact of fraud on individuals’ wellbeing and identify literature gaps. The review is not limited to a particular date or a specific discipline.

The results reveal a general consensus in the literature that fraud severely and negatively impacts individuals’ wellbeing. Fraud’s impact on victims goes beyond financial hardship. It could result in stress, anger, upset, worries, fear of future victimisation, shame, loss of self-esteem, health deterioration, loss of confidence in financial matters, suicide ideation, unemployment, homelessness, less happiness and life satisfaction and broken relationships. However, research on how fraud impacts individuals’ wellbeing is scarce and has yet to receive substantial attention.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first comprehensive literature review compiling evidence on the impact of fraud on individuals’ wellbeing.

Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children’s literature around fatness.This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children’s books featuring fat protagonists.

This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext.

This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children’s literature with fat protagonists.

The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters.

The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists.

These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures.

There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children’s picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.

This paper aims to systematically review over two decades of academic articles on romance fraud to provide a holistic insight into this crime and identify literature gaps.

More than two decades of peer-reviewed academic journal articles from 2000 to 2023 were systematically reviewed using multiple search engines and databases for relevant papers, identified through searches of paper titles, keywords, abstracts and primary texts.

The findings reveal 10 themes: i) the definitions and terminology of romance fraud; ii) romance fraud’s impact on victims; iii) the profile of romance fraud criminals and victims; iv) romance fraud methods and techniques; v) why victims become susceptible to romance fraud; vi) the psychology of romance fraud criminals; vii) the links between romance fraud and other crimes; viii) the challenges of investigating romance fraud; ix) preventing romance fraud and protecting victims; and x) how romance fraud victims can be supported.

The paper reveals implications regarding the future direction of policy and strategy to address the pervasive low reporting rates and narratives of shame bound with victims of this crime.

Romance fraud is a serious crime against individuals with impacts beyond financial losses. Still, this fraud type is under-researched, and the literature lacks a holistic view of this crime. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic literature review providing a holistic view of romance fraud. It combines evidence across the academic landscape to reveal the breadth and depth of the current work concerning romance fraud and identify gaps in the understanding of this fraud crime.