Having just world bias is only one of the many reasons that people victim blame. As I mentioned in Fool Me Once victim-blaming is something I have most certainly been guilty of and I have no illusions that the world is in the least bit fair. The psychology concept known as the “fundamental attribution error” (FAE), alternatively known as the correspondence bias or attribution effect can also influence the tendency to victim-blame. When we asses our own behavior, particularly our bad behavior, we are more likely to use situational attribution. We justify our actions based on circumstantial factors: we didn’t hold the door because we were running late, not because we are inherently rude. Other people’s behavior we view from a dispositional lens. The person who doesn’t hold the door for is inherently rude. We attribute their behavior to their personality, motives or beliefs. This is dispositional attribution. There are all kinds of what I am going to call subcategories to this. Hedonistic relevance occurs when a person attributes another’s behavior as being a result of their disposition, an inherent part of their personality, instead of due to situational factors. Another is personalism, which is assuming things are meant personally and are not merely a situational byproduct.
We all are inclined to see cause and effect relationships, even where there are none. FAE exaggerates individual characteristics and ignores factors of circumstance in judging others’ behavior. Particularly when the behavior is negative. We are even more likely to make this error if the behavior in question seems to be chosen and intentional. We are also influenced by the type of a behavior. Something that seems odd in a negative way, socially undesirable, will get a stronger reaction than the ordinary or the delightfully quirky. For example, a mother gets on the bus in fall. Her little girl is wearing a colorful sundress over sweater and jeans. They are likely to be looked at indulgently. The same couple getting on the bus in summer in the same clothing will probably be looked at with suspicion and the mother judged negatively.
There are different models and theories, like Kelley’s Covariation Model or the Jones & Davis Correspondent Inference Theory, but the flaw is the same. We form a general impression of another person’s character based on pieces of situations, but never see the whole picture. This plays into that natural tendency to see the behavior of Them as being determined internally while excusing our behavior and that of those we consider Us as based on circumstances. We make judgments about others based on assumption without context. We do this, basically, because it’s easier. More efficient. Our brains are lazy and often search for the path of least resistance when attempting to categorize something. Since our only reference point is the here and now that’s what we use. It’s also safe. Investigating further means getting involved. This is both risky and time consuming.
Further, we tend to project the behavior onto every aspect of a person’s life. A cheating businessman is considered a cheat and an honest businessman moral in all dealings. Reality, however, illustrates that the person honest in business can also be an adulterer while a Mafia Don can be a loving parent. Outsiders, Them, are one-dimensional and we cast them as being driven by intrinsic personality traits. This is known as “actor-observer bias” or “actor-observer asymmetry”. This makes the other predictable therefore making us feel safer and more in control. Meanwhile, we give our own people the benefit of the doubt. Our friend snaps at us we ask, “What’s wrong?” The barista snaps at us and we think, “Asshole.”
In a (not very good) movie I saw last year one of the few funny scenes is one which the characters are vilifying another parent for smoking pot with the admonition that as a parent one has to be in control of their faculties at all times. This while they themselves are pounding shots. It’s not just the hypocrisy that makes it funny but how recognizable the hypocrisy is yet how oblivious the parents are to it. We draw conclusions about others centered on conjecture without any framework but when the same is done to us we are not pleased. The fact is that all people are complex and context adds even more layers. We all have many selves that we bring out to bear depending on the situation at hand. Judging other people, including victim blaming, becomes more complicated when we recognize that our actions and reactions change with the situation. As Norwegian social and political theorist Jon Elster says, “Behavior is often no more stable than the situations that shape it.”
Fundamental attribution error, hedonistic relevance, personalism, just world ideology, actor-observer bias, we form a general impression of someone’s character based on pieces of situations, but never see the whole picture. This plays into a natural tendency to see the behavior of Them as being determined internally while excusing our behavior and that of those we consider Us as based on circumstances. This can be powerful if the other person’s behavior appears to be directly intended to benefit or harm us. Core American values of individuality, autonomy, and responsibility can intensify this perception. Especially with American’s muddy and bloody history of forming negative ideas about a people based on race, religion, background, mental health, or appearance.
In addition to the way that deep set values and beliefs sway our opinions of victims, there’s a little something called stigma. Stigma is a toxic brew of blame and shame. In his series on shame in Psychology Today David Bedrick, J.D., Dipl. PW refers to shame as the “master emotion”. It infiltrates us twisting our self-perceptions and turning us into our own judge, juries, and executioners. Stigma is the disgrace we feel that isolates us when we are blamed and shamed us for things not in our control. Even when we are the ones doing the blaming and shaming. It is the A we feel emblazoned on our chests, the failures stamped up our foreheads. It feeds stereotypes and strips us of our full humanity. When people judge us as not having willpower, not looking sick “enough”, comparing our problems to another’s in some kind of contest of pain, they add to our already heavy burdens. Being stigmatized is a blockade we have to break through to access a normal life. Victim blaming stigmatizes the wounded. It is punching down.
Acknowledging the systemic nature of an issue means bearing responsibility as we are all a part of this system. By only acknowledging individual choices we can retain cultural power, our capacity to indirectly manipulate conduct in social or moral ways, without culpability. The belief in a just world, in a power making sure that things turn out the right way, holds the uncertainty at bay and make us feel like we have control. Even if we aren’t in charge someone is. It can make us feel as though we have the power to find the pattern, predict things, and ultimately control things. This can make us feel confident and give us the strength to face the unknowable of what tomorrow will bring. To invest in the now in the hope of payoff in a nebulous future. We want the world to be just and ordered. In our desire for understanding and certainty we convince ourselves that people and things are more predictable than they are. This is exacerbated by our tendency towards dichotomy. We don’t like those shades of grey. They are uncomfortable and unstable. We prefer things and people be either good or bad, black or white, wrong or right, always and forever.
Blaming the victim eases our insecurity but it also marginalizes the survivor, minimizes hardship, in the case of criminal activity it can prioritize the perpetrator over the victim, and makes people less likely to come forward to ask for the help they need or to report a crime. Barbara Gilin, a professor of social work at Widener University, notes the distance provided by reading or hearing in the media about the misfortunes of strangers, Them, can worsen victim-blaming. Protecting a belief in a just world, FAE, actor observer bias; one, some, or all of these instincts combine into a lethal cocktail of apathy or outright animosity towards the victims. Fortunately, victim blaming is not inescapable. One way media have tried to avoid victim blaming is humanizing the victims. But Neimi and Young’s findings show that even sympathetic coverage does not protect the victim from being blamed. “If you focus less on victims and more on perpetrators, it actually led to more sympathy for victims,” ssaid Niemi, coauthor of When and Why We See Victims as Responsible: The Impact of Ideology on Attitudes Toward Victims, a paper discussed at length in my previous post Shame On You. Instead of focusing on the survivors we need to concentrate our attention on the perpetrators that commit the crimes, the imbalances that skew the systems, the circumstances that create the catastrophe.
In Fool Me Once I mentioned the Lerner Simmons experiment. Research by David Aderman, Sharon Brehm, and Lawrence Katz repeated Lerner and Simmons experiment with a slight tweak. In Lerner’s original experiments women were asked to observe what appeared to be learning by punishment. The learner, an actor, is punished with painful electric shocks when she gives a wrong answer. The observers think she is being tortured. The observers, all women, are then split into two groups. One group is given power in the situation. They can choose to place the victim into a positive learning program which the vast majority choose to do. The empowered group would go on to describe the victim as innocent and undeserving of punishment. The other group of women is told a variety of different stories about the victim which powerfully influence how the women see the victim. For these groups the greater the suffering the subject underwent the more she was denigrated.
When Aderman, Brehm, and Katz repeated Lerner and Simmons experiment in Empathic observation of an innocent victim: The just world revisited, instead of allowing the observers to simply view the victim being shocked, the observers were directed to put themselves in the place of the victim. This simple act of empathy was enough to eliminate victim blaming tendencies. In Ambivalent Sexism, Belief in a Just World, and Empathy as Predictors of Turkish Students’ Attitudes Toward Rape Victims researchers Nuray Sakallı-Uğurl, Zeynep Sıla Yalçın, and Peter Glick found high levels of empathy predicted more positive attitudes towards victims, in this case of rape.
Here’s the thing. Though when it comes to the plight of strangers concentrating on the perpetrator or the situation rather than the victim may be helpful we far are less likely to victim-blame Us than we are Them. The reason is simple yet so very hard. Aderman, Brehm, and Katz saw it. So did Sakallı-Uğurl, Yalçın, and Glick. Empathy. The dictionary definition of empathy is that it is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. We empathize with the people close to us all of the time. We see them as fully human in a way we don’t strangers. To stop victim-blaming it is important that we grow our empathy. That we work on understanding the emotional makeup of not only the people close to us but of people as far and different from as possible and respond to their emotional reactions. The most direct way to increase empathy is through interacting with others. Having deep and revealing conversations with complete strangers in which we reflectively listen and make ourselves vulnerable.
Now if you are like me you read those last two lines and thought, “Fuck that.” For a dyed in the wool introvert with anxiety complications the idea of approaching strangers for intense, intimate conversations is a little titillating and a lot terrifying. Fortunately, there is another way. Studies have shown that reading literary fiction, fiction that focuses more on the psyche of the characters and the relationships between them, also strengthens our empathy. I would think a well written biography or history, one that delves into the minds of its subjects and their relationships to the world and each other, would do the same. Whether spoken or read words are powerful and stories shape our view of the world. The stories we are told and that we tell ourselves throughout our lives, stories both real and imagined, are immensely powerful. They can reinforce structural inequality or tear apart prejudice. Stories can cage us or set us free.
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