Why Do People Victim-Blame?

To victim-blame is to explicitly state or imply that the person who experienced a crime or an act of violence is fully or partially to blame for what happened. Survivors of sexual assault face victim-blaming that is more stigmatizing and silencing than those who are victims of other crimes.¹ The intensity of victim-blaming can also change depending on their response during and after the assault. For example, one study showed that the more a woman exhibited verbal and physical resistance, the less they were victim-blamed, ignoring that freezing and fawning are two very valid threat responses experienced by countless survivors.

If victim-blaming is incredibly harmful to survivors after sexual assault, why do people victim-blame?

Invulnerability Theory

Invulnerability theory is the theory that people blame victims in order to preserve their own sense of invulnerability. People, consciously and subconsciously, tend to view themselves as uniquely invulnerable to negative outcomes. As a result, they perceive others as having made themselves vulnerable, while they themselves are invulnerable. It is difficult to accept that everyone is vulnerable to sexual assault, because this threatens people’s sense of safety in the world. Life feels more manageable when people believe the victim is to blame.

Preserving The Assumptive World

The assumptive world refers to a strongly held set of assumptions about the world and oneself that is built throughout life, which is strongly maintained and used as the foundation for the ways through which people navigate life. It provides a sense of safety, stability, and security. When the assumptive world shatters, people become disoriented and may feel like everything has shifted. When people are able to navigate through life believing that they have the ability to prevent getting sexually assaulted, they are rarely willing to challenge that belief because it provides them so much security.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

The fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly attribute the outcome of a situation to someone’s character flaws and not external or situational factors. It is the belief that dispositional factors play a larger role in interactions than situational factors do. When people victim-blame survivors of sexual violence, they do so to maintain the belief that individuals have more control over their lives than they truly do, and that failing to prevent sexual assault is due to a character flaw. 

Victim-blaming often happens because believing that individuals have more control over what happens to them than they do makes the world feel safer and more predictable. To accept that anything can happen to anyone at any time makes life feel unpredictable and unstable, so people try to find ways to blame the victim to feel as though they can prevent bad things from happening to themselves.

The Hindsight Bias

The hindsight bias refers to the tendency to view things as more predictable than they actually are. After people see the outcome of a situation, they believe that they could have predicted the outcome before it actually happened. When it comes to sexual assault, people believe they could have predicted that the assault would have happened due to a range of situational and individual factors influenced by rape myths.

Just-World Phenomenon

The just-world phenomenon refers to the belief that that world is just and people “get what they deserve.” Victim-blaming can happen when people believe the survivor must have done something to deserve or invite the assault. In reality, no one ever deserves to be sexually assaulted. The just-world is an idealistic myth that makes life easier to cope with than accepting that bad things happen all the time to undeserving people for no reason.

Perpetrator Loyalty

The role the perpetrator has played in their lives is another reason why people may victim-blame survivors. Many people wrongfully assume that the way they are treated by a person is the same way that person treats everyone else they encounter. As a result, they may try to come up with reasons to justify the assault and instead shift blame onto the survivor. 

Only 19.5% of survivors are sexually assaulted by someone they don’t know. If someone knows a survivor, it’s possible that they also know the person who perpetrated the assault. When the perpetrator is a close friend or family member, people may be unwilling to accept that this person is capable of committing sexual assault. Many people denounce individuals who committ sexual assault, but when they view their relationship with the perpetrator as valuable, they may be unwilling to end the relationship and instead shift the blame onto the survivor. 

Disliking The Survivor

On the other hand, people may not support the survivor based on previous experiences with them. They may dislike the survivor for unrelated reasons or not view the survivor as trustworthy because they’ve lied in the past. Whether or not we like someone doesn’t determine if something bad can happen to them. The perfect victim myth tells us that, in order to deserve support, survivors need to be “good” and likable people, who are sympathetic in all aspects of their lives. In reality, bad things can happen to bad people, and just because we perceive them as a “bad” person doesn’t mean they deserved or caused the abuse they experienced. Additionally, someone can lie about one thing and tell the truth about another. We shouldn’t base our support of survivors on our personal feelings about someone, and we can stand behind someone as a survivor without vouching for everything they’ve done in all other aspects of their lives.

Victim-blaming is never justified and it is the most harmful way to respond when someone discloses that they have been sexually assaulted. The way people respond when a survivor discloses can greatly influence the survivor’s ability to heal.

Sources

1. Reich, C. M., Pegel, G. A., & Johnson, A. B. (2022). Are Survivors of Sexual Assault Blamed More Than Victims of Other Crimes?. Journal of interpersonal violence, 37(19-20), NP18394–NP18416. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605211037423
2. de la Torre Laso, J., & Rodríguez-Díaz, J. M. (2022). The relationship between attribution of blame and the perception of resistance in relation to victims of sexual violence. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 868793. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.868793
3. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010-2016 (2017).