ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 17 January 2018 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02221 Edited by: Massimo Marraffa, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy Reviewed by: Marko Tkalcic, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Giovanna Maria Leone, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy *Correspondence: Francesca D’Errico francesca.derrico@uniroma3.it Specialty section: This article was submitted to Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 01 September 2017 Accepted: 07 December 2017 Published: 17 January 2018 Citation: Poggi I and D’Errico F (2018) Feeling Offended: A Blow to Our Image and Our Social Relationships. Front. Psychol. 8:2221. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02221 Feeling Offended: A Blow to Our Image and Our Social Relationships Isabella Poggi and Francesca D’Errico* Dipartimento di Filosofia Comunicazione e Spettacolo, Universitá degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy The paper presents a survey study that investigates the self-conscious emotion of feeling offended and provides an account of it in terms of a socio-cognitive model of emotions. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the participants’ answers, the study provides a definition of offense and of the feeling of offense in terms of its “mental ingredients,” the beliefs and goals represented in a person who feels this emotion, and finds out what are its necessary and aggravating conditions, what are the explicit and implicit causes of offense (the other’s actions, omissions, inferred mental states), what negative evaluations are offensive and why. It also shows that the feeling of offense is not only triggered about honor or public image, but it is mainly felt in personal affective relationships. The paper finally highlights that high self-esteem may protect a person against the feeling of offense and the constellation of negative emotions triggered by it. Keywords: feeling offended, socio-cognitive model of emotions, social emotions, gender differences, self-esteem INTRODUCTION In social psychology research, the feeling of offense has been viewed so far as typically triggered by a blow to a person’s honor, hence to his/her public “face”; yet this painful emotion, beside nicking the reputation and self-concept of the offended person, is often felt also in interpersonal relationships, that it finally may seriously disrupt. Feeling offended belongs to the so-called “self-conscious emotions” (Lewis, 2008), like shame, guilt, and pride, and like shame and humiliation it is caused by a blow to the person’s image and self-image. The self-conscious emotions, traditionally opposed to “basic” ones (Darwin, 1872; Ekman, 1982), are far less studied; but are they really less “basic” than them? This paper argues that research on self-conscious emotions should be enhanced; and tries to contribute to this endeavor by presenting a study on the feeling of offense. Our aim is to provide a theoretical definition of this emotion and its necessary conditions, and an empirical analysis of its triggering events, the contexts and situations in which it is felt, and other feelings connected to its occurrence. In doing so, we stress that the feeling of offense does not only dwell in the field of honor and public image, as implied by previous research, but it mainly affects our close relationships, any time an action or omission of others challenges our sense of personal value and disrupts our reciprocal relations. Our primary goals are to obtain a real-life account of the feeling of offense, and to understand its connection with the person’s sense of self and her social and affective relationships. The Section “Related Studies and Research Questions” overviews current research on offense and the sense of honor. The Section “Feeling Offended: Research Goals” lists some still open- research questions, while the Section “A Socio-cognitive Model of Image, Self-Image, and Their Monitoring Emotions” presents a socio-cognitive model of mind and social interaction adopted to frame the research, introducing the notions of emotion, evaluation, image and self-image, shame, Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 January 2018 | Volume 8 | Article 2221