Blaming the Victim

My two previous posts about the killing of Trayvon Martin focused on social influences on the perpetrator—the tendency of whites to assume that black people are a threat and the tendency to perceive others as threatening when you are carrying a gun. This one focuses on the attitudes of third parties. You have no doubt heard news reports suggesting Mr. Martin was a less-than-perfect person. When faced with inexplicable tragedy, there is a tendency to blame the victim—to hold the victim responsible for his own victimization.

Blaming the victim is supported by many studies. For example, Janoff-Bulman and her colleagues had participants read a detailed narrative about a young woman spending an evening out on the town. At the end of the night, a man escorts her home. In one version, he rapes her. In the other, nothing happens. Her behavior and personality are the same. In fact, the two stories were completely identical with the exception of the final sentence. The woman was blamed more by participants who read the rape outcome than those who read the neutral outcome. Behaviors that took on no particular significance in the neutral condition, such as mild flirting or wearing a short skirt, were seized on in hindsight by participants in the rape condition as evidence that she brought the rape on herself. Studies using this and other similar paradigms have found evidence of both behavioral blame (she engaged in risky actions) and characterological blame (she is a bad person). Needless to say, the most common strategy used by defense attorneys at trial is to attempt to persuade the jury to blame the victim.

In the Martin case, victim blaming is merged with our stereotypes of young black men. Instead of a short skirt, we are encouraged to think it's significant that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie. To associate him with drugs, it is leaked that marijuana residue was found among his possessions. And since young black men are supposed to be hostile, some news organizations were deceived by a photograph of a young man flipping the bird at the camera—which turned out a photo of someone else.

Blaming the victim is one of several examples of our belief in a just world. Fritz Heider, the founder of modern attribution theory, wrote that in order for our attitudes toward other people to be in balance, happiness and goodness ought to go together. In a just world, good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished. Seeing one, we assume the other. It follows that if all we know about a person is that he has suffered some accident, illness or other misfortune, we assume that he is a bad person who deserved the negative outcome he received.

Why do we believe in a just world despite so much obvious evidence to the contrary? It is functional for the individual, since it facilitates the illusion that we can control our own fate. The alternative belief, that there is no relationship between our behavior and our outcomes, is known as learned helplessness, and people who believe that tend to be chronically depressed. At the societal level, the just world hypothesis serves as a mechanism of social control. If children can be taught to believe in a just world, they will presumably be encouraged to work hard, obey the law, treat others well, etc., in the expectation of leading a long and happy life.