What Is Behind Victimhood Culture?
Humans are complicated. Every time someone dares to predict what people will do in a given situation, they are nearly always proven wrong. We do not know why people do what they do – all we can do is set them in motion, wait for the results and try to interpret the outcome.
City planners in the 1960s built tower blocks for the working class thinking they were designing utopia for the poor. Supporting single mothers to have a better life led to a tidal wave of single mothers raising dysfunctional kids. The banning of legal highs created a demand that criminals developed into a new market with a much wider audience. The best of intentions pave the way to Hell. Making one small change in a complicated system can, and does, lead to results that no one had foreseen – we call this The Butterfly Effect.
The phrase victimhood culture is now part of our everyday lexicon. When I was a child, we had something similar called 'having a chip on your shoulder' – meaning you were looking for an argument. This phrase came from 19th century America where boys looking for a fight would place an actual chip of wood on their shoulder before walking around daring others to knock it off.
Today, there is no real social status in being tough with the ability to fight, but there is if you are a victim. When I say victim, I of course mean a particular type of victim, not any old one. A victim today has to be from one of the anointed groups that are persecuted by invisible powerful forces. Patriarchy. White Supremacy. Misogyny. Racism. Islamophobia. Transphobia. Capitalism.
We see this every day on the news when the right type of victim is involved cities burn to the ground - see France today. But when tens of thousands of girls were gang raped over decades, no one cared because they were the wrong type of victims.
Why do some people see themselves as victims? I am sure some do it for convenience or to play the system, but some do believe it and are convinced they are being unfairly treated. I know people like this. What is the psychology behind such a personality trait?
In 1973, Melvin Snyder, Robert E. Kleck, Angelo Strenta, and Steven J. Mentzer coined a term to describe this behaviour - Attributional Ambiguity. A psychological trait where members of a real, or perceived, stigmatised groups interpret feedback from others as prejudicial.
To put it simply, a person who perceives themselves as stigmatised links negative feedback to prejudice. This means that individuals never know if negative outcomes are due to discrimination against them or their own behaviour. Also, they may even reject positive feedback as a form of sympathy rather than seeing it as the result of their ability and achievement.
In an experiment conducted by Jennifer Crocker, Brenda Major and colleagues, women who were evaluated unfavourably by a blatantly prejudiced evaluator experienced less negative effect than women who were rated unfavourably by an unbiased evaluator. African American participants were more likely to attribute the evaluator's negativity to prejudice than white participants. When the evaluator could see the participants, African Americans were more likely to attribute both negative and positive reviews to prejudice.
The same concept can be applied to appearance - how one views oneself can affect how one perceives feedback. A 1984 study by Major, Carrington & Carnevale found that attractive participants were less likely to believe positive feedback given to them, believing that the observer had an ulterior motive. Unattractive participants were more likely to believe positive feedback than attractive participants. When an ulterior motive is possible, it is easier to discount feedback whether it is positive or negative.
Other scientists found attributional ambiguity in Latino subjects who viewed negative feedback as prejudice. They also found that when given a positive review, Latino subjects were more likely to discredit the positivity of the reviewer and experience a lower sense of well-being than their white counterparts. This research suggests that while attributional ambiguity can be used as a buffer to protect oneself from negative feedback, it can also prevent stigmatised groups from embracing any feedback.
Kleck and Strenta conducted an interesting experience in 1980. A group of people were asked to take part in a study investigating facial disfigurement and discrimination. Makeup was used to create the appearance of a realistic scar on their cheek.
After showing the participant their scar in a mirror, the makeup artist pretended to apply moisturiser to keep the makeup from degrading and peeling off. But they secretly removed the scar without the participant's knowledge.
The participant was asked to have a conversation with someone they did not know to discuss strategies people use to make friends. After the conversation, the participant rated their partner's behaviour on various dimensions, like eye contact, smiling, whether they felt patronised, and how much they thought the other person liked them.
Participants reported hostility and discrimination in their conversation which they attributed to the non-existent facial scar. The fact they thought they had a scar led them to actively look for evidence that reinforced their expectation that they would be treated differently and even unfairly. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
A victim mindset distorts reality and subconsciously pushes you towards the negative outcome you thought you would receive, with no prejudicial involvement. This then validates the initial suspicion of being different and the sense of victimhood grows.
Goh, Rad & Hall (2017) found that women perceive hostile sexism from men when it is not present, and do not see men's benevolent sexism (sexism in their favour) when it is present. Basically, they do not see the good that men do, and invent the bad. Men under-estimated women's hostile sexism towards them, and over-estimate women's benevolent sexism.
It seems that women are more predisposed to attributional ambiguity which may be a result of being more vulnerable and physically weaker. It also explains why we have more female social justice warriors for they perceive injustice to be everywhere.
Life is not fair. It never has been and never will be. All we can do is struggle through by doing our best, working hard, and planning for the future. We will all suffer discrimination in one form or another, I know I have. I once failed to secure a job in a restaurant because I was not Chinese, and at a different job interview, I failed because I was too stupid. We all have setbacks, it is life.
Step forward into adversity and take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Life is easier than it has ever been. Every problem you have is not new, millions of people have the same or worse. All your problems can be solved for we see others do it every single day.
There is no pride in being a victim, only in being a victor.
Stand tall. Head high. Chin up.
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