What is victimhood? Characteristics, components and consequences

We all know someone who constantly plays the victim. He is that person in our family, group of friends or circle of acquaintances who is reminding us, over and over time, that we did something bad to him in the past, even though there are also many good things that we have done for her.

Victimism is a type of mindset that, at extreme levels, can be considered pathological. Several studies have been conducted to try to address this construct more scientifically, and then let's see a little more in depth what they say and what dimensions have been proposed for victimhood.

• Related article: "The 11 types of violence (and the different types of aggression)"

What do we understand by victimhood?

Social life is full of ambiguity. For example, it may happen that one day we send a message to our friend, he sees it and, instead of answering us, he does not tell us anything. It can also happen that we go down the street, we meet a stranger, he looks at us with a disgusted face and we wonder why. These situations can be interpreted in many ways, depending on what our sociocultural context and our own personality characteristics have taught us.

We may think that our friend has not answered us because he is angry with us, or that we upset him. It may also be the case that the stranger who has glared at us has disgusted him, not being able to avoid showing us a disapproving face. However, it is most likely that our friend left us in sight, forgetting to answer and Mr. stranger has not even found out what face he was making or, if he wants, has noticed our existence.

Most of us tend to overcome socially ambiguous situations with ease., regulating our emotions and knowing that not everything has to mean something bad. However, there are people who tend to see themselves as victims of all kinds of misfortunes, perceiving the world as an environment terribly hostile and negative, and seeing malice in all the actions made by those people who at some point have done something to them offense.

Interpersonal victimhood has been defined by Rahav Gabay as the feeling of seeing oneself as a victim, generalizing in many types of relationships. As a result, victimization becomes a fundamental element of their individual identity. People who have this mentality tend to manifest a very externalized locus of control, that is, they attribute their "misfortunes" to phenomena they cannot control, such as fate, (bad) luck or the free will of others people.

The investigations that have scientifically deepened on this construct, mostly developed in the State of Israel, have raised the existence of four dimensions within victimhood:

• Constant search for the recognition of one's own victimhood
• Sense of moral elitism
• Lack of empathy for the harm and suffering of others
• Constant rumination about victimization in the past

They have also tried to see how being a victim (victimization) affects the degree of victimization. An important finding has been that, although two phenomena are related, a person who has been the victim of a serious offense, both at the physical, such as aggression, and mentally, such as psychological abuse, you do not have to develop a mentality victimizer. A person with a tendency toward victimhood need not have been the victim of a major offense in the past..

Dimensions of victimhood

As we have commented, according to the research carried out by the research groups of Rahav Gabay, Emily Zitek and others, there would be four dimensions within the construct of the victimhood.

1. Constant search for the recognition of one's own victimhood

People who score high in this dimension show a constant need for people to know their sufferingWhether this is really serious or just an exaggeration of a minor damage.

Generally, when a person suffers some type of offense, he seeks support and emotional support in his closest circle. This is done because, after the aggression or humiliation, the vision of the world as a just and morally correct place is shattered. To recover it, it is necessary to go to someone who reaffirms to the victim that her harm has been unjust, and that morally correct people see it as a serious offense.

Furthermore, it is totally normal for a person who has been the victim of an offense to want the perpetrator of she herself paid for her mistakes, acknowledging her guilt, repenting and receiving the punishment that corresponds. The validation of the damage received and recognition by the offender has been studied in patients, seeing that, when the person who has done it recognizes her mistake and the victim's environment empathizes with her, her recovery process in therapy is accelerated.

2. Sense of moral elitism

High scores in the sense of moral elitism imply a greater degree of self-perception as a person of upright and immaculate morality, viewing others as immoral beings. It is common for victimizers to accuse others of being wrong, unfair, selfish and immoral, seeing themselves as superior to them and trying to control them through complaints and reproaches to their conduct.

It has been suggested that moral elitism develops as a defense mechanism against certain feelings deeply painful, as well as serving as a way to obtain and enhance a positive self-image skewed. Although they can tend to be aggressive people with destructive impulses, people who score high on moral elitism project these traits onto others, and they always see themselves as persecuted people, vulnerable and morally superior.

• You may be interested in: "Lawrence Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development"

3. Lack of empathy for the harm and suffering of others

People who score high in this dimension are preoccupied with their own victimhood, forgetting that others can also be victims. It has been seen that the most victimized people who have really been victims tend to legitimize their aggressive and selfish behavior with others, ignoring the suffering of others or belittling it.

According to research conducted by Emily Zitek's group, people with this type of victimhood believe they have suffered so much that they no longer have the need to respect or empathize with others. They are even capable of refusing to help others because they consider that they do not deserve it, that it is not so bad either. This has been called "victimhood egoism."

4. Constant rumination about victimization in the past.

It is common for victimizers to constantly ruminate on the offenses received, no matter how few and minor they may have been. They go into an endless loop where they remember what they said to them, the harm they did to them, or any unpleasant actions, instead of thinking or discussing possible solutions to the problem or trying to avoid it.

Also, they get into the worst, thinking that this could happen again and they act out how they will respond when it happens. It has been observed that the people who ruminate the most about the offenses received are less likely to forgive those who hurt them, and more likely to take revenge.

Consequences of this mentality

In an interpersonal conflict, all the parties involved try to maintain a positive moral self-image.. That is, whether you are the victim or the aggressor, it is normal for everyone to see themselves as those who are right. Thus two subjective realities are created.

On the one hand, bullies tend to minimize the damage they have done, while the victims tend to maximize it, seeing in the actions of their offenders something arbitrary, senseless, immoral and more serious than they are.

Gabay's group detected three types of biases that occur as a consequence of having a victim mentality: interpretation bias, attribution of harmful behaviors, and memory bias.

1. Interpretation bias

Interpretation bias has to do with the degree to which the seriousness of the offense is perceived in a social situation. It has been seen that the most interpersonal victimizers see all offenses as authentic personal attacks, no matter how minor. That is, they interpret them in a more exaggerated way.

2. Attribution of harmful behaviors

It is a very common bias among people with high interpersonal victimhood attributing harmful intentions to the actions of others, combined with some paranoia. That is, they think the world is going to end up hurting them.

3. Memory bias

It has been seen that people with high victimhood tend to remember more negative events. This has been experimentally studied by seeing what kind of vocabulary comes to mind. that score high in this construct when presented with different stimuli, both social and neutral.

It was observed that they tended to remember more words representing related behaviors and feelings with interpersonal damage, such as "betrayal", "anger", "disappointment", and recall negative emotions more easily.

Causes of victimhood

The factors behind a person being more of a victimizer are several. As we have commented, having been the victim of an offense does not always mean ending up having a victim mentality, or the other way around. What has been seen is that these two phenomena could be related and, if they occur together, would increase victimizing behaviors even more.

It has been seen that a factor that could be behind developing a victim mentality is the possess an anxious personality. These types of people tend to be very insecure and seek approval and validation from others. By continually seeking reassurance, they are filled with doubts about their own social worth, thereby at the least act unpleasant that others do to them, they perceive it as a personal attack and their emotional stability, which is already low, falls apart.

Bibliographic references:

• Gabay, Rahav & Hameiri, Boaz & Rubel-Lifschitz, Tammy & Nadler, Arie. (2020). The Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood: The Personality Construct and its Consequences. Personality and Individual Differences. 165. 10.1016 / j.paid.2020.110134.
• Baumeister, Roy & Stillwell, Arlene & Heatherton, Todd. (1994). Guilt: An Interpersonal Approach. Psychological bulletin. 115. 243-67. 10.1037/0033-2909.115.2.243.
• Maercker, Andreas & Müller, Julia. (2004). Social acknowledgment as a victim or survivor: A scale to measure a recovery factor of PTSD. Journal of traumatic stress. 17. 345-51. 10.1023 / B: JOTS.0000038484.15488.3d.
• Urlić, I. (2014). On the Culture of Forgiveness: On ‘Victimhood, Vengefulness, and the Culture of Forgiveness’ by Urlić, Berger and Berman. Group Analysis, 47 (3), 257-267. https://doi.org/10.1177/0533316414545707
• Berman, A. (2014). Post-Traumatic Victimhood and Group Analytic Therapy: Intersubjectivity, Empathic Witnessing and Otherness. Group Analysis, 47 (3), 242–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0533316414545843
• Zitek, Emily & Jordan, Alexander & Monin, Benoît & Leach, Frederick. (2010). Victim Entitlement to Behave Selfishly. Journal of personality and social psychology. 98. 245-55. 10.1037 / a0017168.
• Wohl, M. J., & Branscombe, N. R. (2008). Remembering historical victimization: collective guilt for current ingroup transgressions. Journal of personality and social psychology, 94 (6), 988–1006. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.6.988