What Is Victim Blaming?

Victim blaming is a common form of social judgment that involves assigning responsibility for behavior to the victim or to external factors. This can include determining how a crime happened, whether the victim was at fault for the outcome of an event, or even the cause of natural disasters. It is important to understand that victim blaming is often unconscious and it can impact both individuals and society as a whole. This article will discuss what victim blaming is, how it influences the behavior of victims, and how people can avoid blaming victims in the future.

It’s often difficult to accept when someone has been victimized. When it comes to crimes such as sexual assault, domestic abuse, or even a simple pickpocketing, many people default to questioning what the victim could have done differently to prevent the crime from occurring. This victim blaming can happen to anyone who is a survivor of a crime, regardless of age or gender. While this type of judgment might seem like it is justified, there is no evidence that it actually helps the victim in any way. In fact, it can make a victim feel marginalized and demoralized which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and health issues. Victim blaming can also discourage a victim from reporting the crime to the police or seeking help, as they may fear that they will be blamed again.

One of the reasons that people engage in victim blaming is because it can be seen as a way to control or exert power over others. Rather than accepting that the actions of a perpetrator are uncontrollable, some people choose to blame victims in order to maintain a sense of power and control over their lives. It is important to note that while victim blaming is more prevalent in cases of serious crimes, it can also happen in situations such as car accidents, natural disasters, and even workplace injuries.

According to attribution theory, which was developed by Fritz Heider, people have an innate need to explain the actions of others in order to gain control over their own life. In a 1955 Zero Mostel sketch, Heider describes how the father of a victim of World War II asks the mother, “What did you do to cause this?” The answer, as he explains, is that she failed to take a safety precaution. In other words, he blamed the victim for her failure to act as a soldier would have.

A study by Laura Niemi and Liane Young published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that a number of different factors influence victim blaming. These included gender, with males being more likely to blame victims; similarity to the victim, with women being less likely to do so than men; empathy for the victim, which is influenced by things such as knowing the victim or hearing her side of the story; and acceptance of rape myths.

It was also discovered that the degree to which a person identified with the victim – in other words, how much they felt like the victim — moderated these effects. This finding suggests that identifying with the victim, especially in an extreme manner, can mitigate some of these influencing factors. It is hoped that this will be useful for those working in prevention, such as therapists and staff in the legal or medical professions who might recommend that women be more careful to prevent an assault from happening to them.