From “Love Your Neighbor: How Psychology Can Enliven Faith and Transform Community” by Katherine M. Douglas and Brittany M. Tausen
If you have ever had someone tell you that it was your fault that your bike (or anything else) was stolen, you may have gotten a small taste of what it is like to be on the receiving end of victim blaming. If you have ever snarkily thought “What goes around comes around,” you have subscribed (at least momentarily) to the belief in a just world where wrongs are eventually “righted” or repaid. Now that we are familiar with the concepts, let’s look at how these phenomena play out in scientific research.
One of the most powerful social psychology experiments to demonstrate victim blaming asks participants to read a simple interaction between a man and a woman and then to rate the woman’s behavior on a number of factors. In particular, things like how flirtatious she was being or how inappropriate she acted. All the participants read the exact same, relatively bland, scenario. Importantly, however, half were given one additional piece of information. They were told that shortly after the interaction the woman was sexually assaulted by the man. Researchers then looked to see if the judgments about the woman’s behavior were different between the groups.
Consistent with the phenomenon of victim blaming, what the researchers found was that those who were told about the eventual sexual assault judged the woman’s behavior to be less appropriate than those who were not given the additional information. Take that in for a moment. The exact same behaviors are judged differently after a negative outcome is known. This study and others like it hold crucial lessons for how quickly and unfairly people blame the victims of sexual assault. This type of victim blaming is devastatingly consequential for the mental health and well-being of those who have been assaulted. It also undermines the process of accountability for the assaulter.