Blaming the Victim

Definition

A victim is a person who is harmed by the actions of another person or as the result of circumstance. Blaming the victim occurs when people hold the victim [Page 121]responsible for his or her suffering. When people blame the victim, they attribute the cause of the victim's suffering to the behaviors or characteristics of the victim, instead of attributing the cause to a perpetrator or situational factors.

Why People Blame Victims

Ironically, victim blame often stems from a desire to see the world as a just and fair place where people get what they deserve. This belief in a just world lets people confront the world as though it were stable and orderly. If people did not believe in a just world, it would be difficult to commit themselves to pursuing long range goals or even to getting out of bed in the morning! Because believing in a just world is so adaptive, people are very reluctant to give up this belief. The “problem” with victims, then, is that they violate people's belief that the world is just and fair. One way to restore this threat to their belief system is for people to convince themselves that the victims actually deserved their fate. By derogating victims and blaming them for their negative outcomes, people can maintain the belief that the world is a fair place after all.

One psychological benefit of blaming victims lies in the fact that it lets people convince themselves that they could never be subject to the same fate as the victim. When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, leaving many residents of New Orleans trapped for days in miserable conditions inside the Superdome, many people responded by saying that the victims' fate was their own fault for not evacuating. In actuality, many of the people trapped in the Superdome had no access to transportation out of the city and had no money to afford a place to go. Nevertheless, by blaming the hurricane victims for their own suffering, people are able to maintain their belief that the world is fair and just. Ultimately, blaming victims allows people to maintain their own sense of control. It lets them think, “That could never have happened to me, because I would have done things differently.”

Evidence

In one enlightening study of victim blame, participants were given descriptions of a series of events that took place between a young woman and a man during a date. In some versions of the study, participants read that the date ended with the man raping the woman. In other versions, the date ended with the man taking the woman home (and not raping her). When participants rated the behaviors of the woman, they were much more likely to rate her behavior as foolhardy and irresponsible if the date ended in rape than if it did not. That is, the exact same behaviors were seen in a different light depending on the outcome of those behaviors. This shows how when people are faced with injustice, it can motivate people to find fault with the victim's behavior even though they would not find fault with those same behaviors under other circumstances.

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