“She was molested because of her clothes,” “She didn’t understand her husband? She deserved the beating, then,” “Why is he carrying money in his pocket? He deserves to be robbed.”
What we hear in common, and sometimes misplaced, is “blaming the victim” instead of blaming the perpetrator.
In 2003, a 14-year-old girl named Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom in the US state of "Utah", and the kidnapper carried a knife, and held her for 9 months in a room. From people about why she didn't try to escape.
Blaming the offender is a phenomenon that is not limited to blaming victims of harassment, rape and marital violence, nor to women in general, not even to our region. They may not realize that they are doing this, and it seems that something is lurking in them to accuse the victim of wrongdoing, causing her to suffer the misfortune that befell her.
Some people just can't get the idea of bad things happening to good people (Pixels)
The "fair world" theory
One of the social psychology explanations for the reasons for blaming victims is the “just world” theory, which says that people’s tendency to do this stems from their desire to feel reassured that what the victims have been exposed to will not happen to them either, so they look for a problem, error or defect in The victim makes her worthy of the crime that happened to her.
Sherry Hamby, professor of psychology and editor of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Psychology of Violence also believes that the current promotion of the theory that people control their own destinies, and what happens to them are the consequences and consequences of their actions, is part of the "just world" theory. , or what is known as belief in the doctrine of "Karma" or moral consequence, because some cannot comprehend the idea that bad things happen to good people, so they expect that the bad things that have happened are a natural product of their actions.
American psychologist Melvin Jay Lerner was among those who linked “victim blame” to the “just world” theory as a deep cognitive bias that transcends cultures and differences, and is formed by a person’s subconsciousness to protect him from stress and fear of misfortunes and crimes that may happen to him, which makes him feel safe.
This bias does not occur with natural disasters, since they are beyond human control and seem inevitable, unlike human calamities, which some believe that the victims could have avoided if they had taken some precautions, believes Barbara Gillin, a professor of sociology at the University of Winder for "The Atlantic" magazine.
Moral values
The moral values we believe in may play a large role in determining the likelihood that someone will engage in victim-blaming behaviors, according to a study conducted by Harvard psychology professor Laura Niemi, Boston College psychology professor, and Lianne Young, on 994 participants. .
In this study, the researchers identified two types of “binding” and “individual” values that each person has to different degrees, and it was found that people with stronger “binding” values tended more to stigmatize and blame victims, while people with “individual” values were more fairness to the victims.
In another study, participants were asked about an event that could be changed in a sexual harassment story to avoid its occurrence, and it was found that those with “binding” values were changing the events of the story related to the victim, such as her approaching a stranger, but those with higher “individual” values found that avoiding the occurrence of Harassment is responsible for the man who approached the girl.
In the same study, the researchers changed some of the sentences used in describing the story to focus on the victim's experience - even if in a sympathetic way - and victim-blaming increased, while when the perpetrator was the subject of the story and the judgment, participants' ratings of victim-blaming decreased, and this showed that the same story with the same people and events had The person's judgment in it changes according to the way it is told and who takes more focus in the story.
Hindsight makes some people believe that the victim was able to predict the event (pixels)
The late cognition
Another bias that contributes to our tendency to blame the victim is hindsight. When some people look at an event that occurred in the past, they tend to believe that they should have been able to see the signs and predict the outcome, and this hindsight makes some people believe That the victim was able to predict the event. For example, if a person had cancer, they might say, "He should have stopped smoking. He certainly knew that this was the result of his smoking."
Such instances of blame suggest that people simply had to know or expect such things to happen in light of their behaviour, when in fact with some accidents there is no way to predict the outcome, as the concerned website Very Well Mind explains. Covering health topics.
Do we know the victims?
Also, knowing the victim increases or decreases empathy in general, and not knowing the victims people are reading about in the news creates a kind of cognitive dissonance between a firm belief in a “just world” and clear evidence that life is not fair.
At the core of this point, victim blaming may be a combination of a failure to empathize with the victims, people trying to keep their values firmly as they are untouched so that they do not feel afraid of their values being shaken, in addition to factors related to the way the victim's story is framed, and the extent to which the victim's story is framed. Being aware of some harsh detail in the story that they'd rather not believe because they can't imagine it, as well as not being able to believe that bad things happen to people randomly and for no reason.