What is victimhood? Its characteristics, components and consequences

A summary about the constituent parts of victimhood and its consequences in relationships.

We all know someone who constantly plays the victim. It is that person in our family, group of friends or circle of acquaintances who is reminding us, over and over again, that we did something bad to them in the past, despite the fact that we have also done many good things for them.

Victimhood is a type of mentality that, at extreme levels, can be considered pathological. Several studies have been conducted to try to address this construct in a more scientific way, and in the following let's take a closer look at what they say and what dimensions have been proposed for victimhood..

What do we mean 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 doesn't say anything. It can also happen that we are walking down the street, we meet a stranger, he looks at us with a disgusted look on his 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 annoyed him. It may also be the case that the stranger who has given us a dirty look has been repulsed by us, and cannot help but grimace disapprovingly at us. However, it is more likely that our friend left us hanging by forgetting to answer and the stranger didn't even know what kind of face he was making or even noticed our existence.

Most people tend to overcome socially ambiguous situations with ease by regulating their emotions and knowing how to deal with them.Most people tend to overcome socially ambiguous situations with ease, regulating their 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 a terribly hostile and negative environment, and seeing malice in all the actions of those who have offended them at some point.

Interpersonal victimhood has been defined by Rahav Gabay as the feeling of seeing oneself as a victim, which is widespread in many types of relationships.. As a result, victimization becomes a fundamental element of their individual identity. People with this mentality tend to manifest a highly externalized locus of control, i.e., they attribute their "misfortunes" to phenomena they cannot control, such as fate, (bad) luck or other people's free will.

Research that has scientifically explored this construct, mostly developed in the State of Israel, has proposed the existence of four dimensions within the victimization of the victim, namely the existence of four dimensions within victimhood:

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

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 level, such as an assault, and at the mental level, such as psychological abuse, does not necessarily develop a victim mentality. It is not necessary for a person with a tendency towards victimhood to have been the victim of a great offense in the past..

Dimensions of victimhood

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

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

People who score high on this dimension show a constant need for people to know about their suffering, whether it is really serious or just a simple matter of being a victim of their own suffering.whether it is really serious or simply an exaggeration of a minor harm.

Generally, when a person suffers some kind of offense, he or she seeks support and emotional support from his or her 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 becomes necessary to go to someone who reaffirms to the victim that his or her harm has been unjust, and that morally correct people see it as a serious offense.

Moreover, it is completely normal for a person who has been the victim of an offense to want the perpetrator of the offense to pay for his mistakes, recognizing his guilt, repenting and receiving the corresponding punishment. The validation of the harm received and recognition by the offender has been studied in patients.It has been shown that when the perpetrator acknowledges his mistake and the victim's environment empathizes with him, his recovery process in therapy is accelerated.

2. Sense of moral elitism

High scores in the sense of moral elitism imply a higher degree of self-perception as a person of upright and immaculate morality. a greater degree of self-perception as a person of upright and immaculate morality, seeing others as immoral.seeing others as immoral beings. It is common for victimizers to accuse others of being wrong, unjust, selfish and immoral people, seeing themselves as superior to them and trying to control them by complaining and reproaching their behavior.

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

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

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

According to research carried out by Emily Zitek's group, people with this type of victimhood believe that 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 believe that they do not deserve it, that it is no big deal. This has been called "victimhood egoism".

4. Constant rumination on past victimization.

It is common for victimizers to ruminate constantly about the offenses they have received, no matter how few and minor they may have been. They enter an endless loop in which they remember what was said to them, the harm done to them or any unpleasant action, instead of thinking or discussing possible solutions to the problem or trying to avoid it.instead of thinking or discussing possible solutions to the problem or trying to avoid it.

In addition, they put themselves in the worst, thinking that it can happen again and dramatize how they are going to respond when it happens. It has been observed that people who ruminate the most about offenses received are less likely to forgive the person who hurt them, and more likely to take revenge.

Consequences of this mentality

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

On the one hand, aggressors tend to minimize the harm they have done, while victims tend to maximize it, seeing their offenders' actions as arbitrary, senseless, immoral and more serious than they are.On the other hand, 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 possessing a victim mentality: interpretation bias, attribution of harmful behaviors, and memory bias.

1. Interpretation bias

Interpretation bias concerns the degree to which the seriousness of the offense is perceived in a social situation.. It has been found that the most interpersonal victimizers see all offenses as genuine personal attacks, however mild they may be. That is, they interpret them in a more exaggerated way.

2. Attribution of harmful behaviors

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

3. Memory bias

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

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

Causes of victimhood

The factors behind a person being more victimized are several. As we have already mentioned, having been the victim of an offense does not always imply having a victim mentality, nor the other way around. What has been seen is that these two phenomena could be related and, if they occur together, would increase victimization behaviors even more, would increase victimization behaviors even more..

It has been shown that one factor that could be behind the development of a victim mentality is the possession of an anxious personality. possessing an anxious personality. This type of person tends to be very insecure and seeks approval and validation from others. By continually seeking reaffirmation, they are full of doubts about their own social value, whereby the slightest unpleasant act done to them by others is perceived as a personal attack and their emotional stability, which is already low, crumbles.

Bibliographical 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