According to a study that was written in the journal Violence Against Women, up to 70% of sexual assault survivors say they have victim blaming from friends, relatives, and even attorneys. A common problem that quietly permeates our culture, victim blaming influences our impressions of and reactions to victims of crime, abuse, and other injustices. Fundamentally, victim blaming transfers the guilt from the offender to the victim, therefore leaving the latter struggling with self-doubt and shame.
Still, why do we as a culture act in such ways? Victim-blaming psychology provides an understanding of the cognitive distortions and cultural forces sustaining this negative attitude. Understanding these fundamental causes will help us to start questioning and altering the stories that place victims rather than offenders responsible. Examining its foundations in psychology and social effects, this blog explores the complexity of victim blaming.
Blaming the victim is the inclination to attribute the results of unfavorable events to individuals who experience them. Although victim blaming can arise in many other contexts, it is prevalent in instances of sexual assault. It could appear as questions like “Why were they there at that time?” or “What were they wearing?” Such remarks suggest that the victim might have stopped the incident, therefore relieving the offender of complete guilt. Although victim blaming can arise in many contexts, it is widespread in cases of sexual assault.
What is victim blaming
How did victim blaming start?
Victim blaming is not an original idea. Historically, it has been employed to preserve power systems and protect society’s values. The just-world assumption holds that rejecting the unpleasant notion that terrible events happen to people randomly and undeservedly results in a false conviction that victims must have done anything to merit what happened to them. This also implies that moral behavior helps one avoid victimhood. Though a long-standing idea, it developed into the emphasis of modern social psychology beginning with Melvin J. Lerner in the 1960s
The Psychology Behind Victim Blaming
Commonly held opinions about what a normal rape scenario looks like have also been found to affect the process of decision-making and guilt assessment of plain people as well as jurors. Usually, these stories decide how much a victim is blamed and if the offender gets cleared for the rape. Dealing with and preventing victim blaming depends on an awareness of its psychological underpinning.
Institutional and societal level elements are more general cultural influences including gender norms, media, and language on sexual assault that help to create an environment overall encouraging victim blame. Let’s discuss these factors in detail
The Just World Hypothesis is among the most well-known psychological theory explaining victim blaming. People who have this inclination believe that the world is fair and that people get what they are due. Therefore, others could believe that the victim of something negative must have done to merit it. This perspective helps people keep control and lessens their fear about the arbitrary nature of injury. Studies on cognitive biases have revealed a hindsight effect whereby the acquisition of outcome knowledge raises the apparent probability of the reported event. One study revealed that those who were predisposed to analytical thinking judged less blame than those who were less attracted.
Victim blaming is also very much sustained by society and culture. Many societies have an underlying concept of personal responsibility, in which case people are considered as totally in charge of their fate. Furthermore, societal standards about gender prejudices might result in more victim blaming for rape and female victims; ethnicity, class, and other factors can aggravate victim blaming as underprivileged groups are sometimes blamed more severely
Simonson and Subich (1999) discovered that their conclusion that males blamed the victim more than women was removed when they controlled for gender role endorsement; this suggests that gender role attitudes may be more reliable indicators of blame than participant gender. “Just world” ideology could imply that women are more likely to be at fault.
Because sexual assault is a more serious threat to women, victim blaming could make it easier for women to deny the possibility that they could become victims themselves. There is no evidence from studies that show women to be more victim-blaming than men. As a result, the just world prediction is not supported at this time.
Kelly and Heider distinguish between two types of attribution: internal and external. When someone realizes that their behaviors or circumstances are the result of their traits, they make an internal attribution. On the other hand, external attributions ask people to attribute a person’s behavior to their circumstances and surroundings.
10 When people judge others, they make the mistake of attributing their faults to environmental factors rather than personal traits, which leads to victim blaming. Individuals who commit this blunder overlook situational factors and hold the victim partially accountable for what occurred to them. When judging the subject, so-called “internal failings” are given precedence above situational causes.
Moreover, the hypersexualization and sexual objectification of women throughout society help to increase the acceptability of assault against women and victim culpability. Adopting more politically conservative viewpoints also increases the likelihood of placing blame on victims of sexual assault.
The Impact of Victim Blaming
Victim blaming has a significant impact on people and society at large.
On Victim
- It can be extremely painful for victims to be held responsible for their mistreatment. Severe mental health problems like anxiety, sadness, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may result from it. Internalizing guilt can lead to victims doubting their value, which can leave them with difficult-to-heal psychological wounds over time. Victims may choose to keep quiet rather than ask for assistance or justice because they feel guilty or ashamed of what occurred to them. This may exacerbate their distress by isolating them even more from social networks.
- In general, victim blaming upholds negative cultural standards that shield injustice and impede advancement. Other victims may be deterred from coming forward for fear of being held accountable as well. Because of the culture of secrecy and lawlessness this fosters, offenders can carry on with their destructive behavior without fear of repercussions, even if a victim comes forward. Victim blaming can give victims the impression that they are receiving double punishment from society and the offender. This “double victimization” may cause their psychological injuries to worsen.
- Victim blaming may have an impact on court cases. When victims are placed at fault, it may influence the verdict in court, as juries and judges may be influenced by prejudicial opinions about the victim. Justice may be mishandled as a result, with offenders not being made to answer for their crimes.
On society
- When victim blaming spreads, it draws emphasis away from the offender and permits destructive behavior to go unchecked. As a result, offenders might not suffer as much punishment, which could erode justice.
- Victim blaming serves to uphold damaging social norms like class hierarchies and patriarchy that place a premium on power relations. It encourages a society in which victims such as minorities and women are disproportionately held accountable for their mistreatment.
- Fewer people will disclose offenses like sexual assault, domestic abuse, and harassment if society tends to place the blame on the victims. This makes it possible for offenders to avoid punishment and carry out their crimes again.
Victim blaming is a harmful phenomenon that impedes the healing process for individuals who have experienced damage and upholds injustice. We may start to demolish victim blaming by comprehending the psychology underlying it, identifying its effects, and trying to alter social standards. Developing an environment of humanity and justice requires us all to stand with victims and hold offenders accountable. for all the victims of such atrocities to have a healing atmosphere that we, as a society, can provide.
