The shameless use of shame in elections

There’s something to be said for shame. The week I spent in Pakistan I never once saw plumber’s crack, side boob, or a hairy beer gut peeking out from under a tooshort shirt. Also nobody overshared about their sex lives. It was a vacation from too much information.

In an honor and shame culture, community approval or disapproval and the possibility of being ostracized constrain how people behave. Guilt culture, by contrast, relies on an internalized moral code to direct people’s moral decisions. Conscience and sensitivity to public standing act as internal and external incentives to discourage destructive and disruptive behavior in every society. In individualistic societies guilt is the dominant socialcontrol mechanism, and in traditional societies, it is honor and shame.

Even in a highly individualistic society like ours, public shaming still occurs. In fact, shaming has gone to a whole new level thanks to social media and ubiquitous recording devices. A person may not feel guilt for sexually harassing a subordinate, berating an immigrant, not wearing pants to Walmart, or neglecting to pick up after a pet, but a public pillorying on social media may deter them from doing so in the future.

Shame can be misused. What happens when people shame someone who hasn’t done anything wrong? That’s likely to provoke resentment and defiance. A person who publicly disparages an athlete for gaining baby weight will be Twitterchastened for body shaming. Shaming the guiltless backfires.

Can it also blunt the power of shame and promote shamelessness? It’s something to consider midway through the season of shame, those few months before Election Day when nearly every campaign commercial ends with the words: “Shame on Candidate X; call his office and tell him he’s too extreme for Colorado.”

It’s only September and yet we’ve already seen some shameless attacks. Opponents of Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton have attempted to shame him for the actions of his greatgrandfather, a man he’s never met. In addition to seeming a bit desperate and stupid, the shame by association to a long lost relative tactic could backfire. The odds of being related to Genghis Khan are higher than you think.

Usually, shame by association is confined to the living like a shared party affiliation with an unpopular president or minority leader. If opponents lack a photo connecting the two or a statement of support, they’ll resort to a disingenuous vote count to make that connection. To do this, they count up votes including party line procedural votes and then make the charge that Candidate X votes with President Trump or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi 95 percent of the time! Never mind that the president doesn’t vote.

The association is deceptive. A conservative Freedom Caucus congressman who openly embraces the president and bucks the party leadership will likely have a lower percentage of votes in common with the party majority (and thus the president) than a moderate like Republican Congressman Mike Coffman who is not a MAGA man.

I’m no sociologist, but I suspect that shaming candidates for nonexistent associations or not actual wrongdoings could reduce the efficacy of shame over time. Attempts to shame presidential candidate Mitt Romney for traveling with the family’s dog in a crate on the car roof 40 years earlier and other specious allegations incensed GOP voters. They remembered four years later. The misuse of shame in one election helped pave the way in the next for a candidate who doesn’t respond to shame or guilt.