Do Companies That Fund Climate Change Denial Deserve to Be Publicly Shamed?

NYU Professor Jennifer Jacquet says shame can be a tool for social progress.

You might have heard about the ill-fated app, Peeple, which would have allowed users to rate their friends, neighbors, coworkers and exes on a scale of one to five stars — “Yelp for people,” as it was described by Julia Cordray, one of the app’s creators. As it turned out, people didn’t take to Peeple. It was blasted as an attempt to revive high school-style popularity contests with a decidedly digital flare and, understandably, it received severe public backlash. (Cue indignant Twitter response.)

The saga of Peeple illuminates our conflicted relationship with shame: our panic at the prospect of being publicly disgraced (the ignominy of a one-star review!) and, at the same time, our gleeful willingness to humiliate transgressors. (“We will not be shamed,” Cordray told the Washington Post.) What good is our disapproval in the end?

NYU Professor of Environmental Studies Jennifer Jacquet, who wrote a book on how shame can be used as a tool, argues that while a public flogging can threaten the welfare of its target, shame has also guided social progress in myriad ways. Public condemnation has helped move the needle on contentious issues: racism, homophobia, and now, climate change.

According to Jacquet, shame has an essential role to play in pressuring business leaders, political pundits and elected officials to push for climate action.

Read the rest at Think Progress.