3 Reasons to Be Careful About Victim Blaming

Victim blaming is a morally wrong form of harm in which someone who is innocent or not fully responsible for something that they caused, is singled out and made to suffer as a result. It is a common type of victim-shaming, which can take many different forms and often involves people using the principles of blame and responsibility to attack victims.

This type of victim shaming typically takes place in a variety of settings including, but not limited to, social media, forums, and blogs. It is a very dangerous practice and can lead to a range of physical, psychological, emotional, and social consequences for victims. This includes, but is not limited to:

While the exact causes of victim blaming are complex, some researchers have noted that it may be due in part to individuals’ own moral values and the way they think about how the world should work. They also note that the type of information you receive or how you interpret it could influence your tendency to victim blame. For example, if you read about a crime in the news that involves a stranger and it centers around their story, research has shown that you might be more likely to engage in victim blaming than if you read about a similar crime committed against a friend or family member because those stories are more relevant to your own life and can cause cognitive dissonance between your deeply rooted beliefs about how the world should work and clear evidence that the world is not always fair.

Other factors that can affect your propensity to victim blame include your level of empathy and the type of person you are. For example, some researchers have found that females who break gender stereotypes are more likely to be blamed than females who adhere to traditional gender roles. Additionally, people who have more “individual” rather than “binding” values might be more inclined to engage in victim blaming (Young & Niemi, 2016).

Another thing that influences how much you will victim blame is the amount of information you know about the situation and your own experience with it. This can include the degree to which you are able to empathize with a victim and whether or not you’ve personally been in a similar situation yourself.

The last reason to be careful about victim blaming is that it can prevent survivors from seeking help and healing after traumas such as sexual violence. If a survivor believes that society will blame them for the crimes they’ve experienced, they might feel less safe reporting or seeking services like counseling, psychiatry, and transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment.

Increasing your awareness of what victim blaming looks like, why it’s harmful, and how you can help fight it is an important first step toward changing attitudes that can prevent sexual violence and other traumatic experiences from being reported and treated. Educating yourself can empower you to listen to and support your loved ones who’ve been victims of trauma by telling them it was not their fault.