Tendency Toward Interpersonal Victimhood: What It Is, And Characteristics
The tendency toward interpersonal victimhood is a concept referring to a frequent pattern of behavior in certain people. It’s easy for all of us to quickly think of someone in particular.
With these paragraphs we will better understand what this attitude consists of, how we can identify it, what the repercussions it normally has for the person in question and what is the way to deal with someone characterized by these behaviors.
What is the tendency toward interpersonal victimhood?
When we talk about a tendency toward interpersonal victimhood, we are referring to those people who have some difficulty self-regulating when faced with a situation of social ambiguity and are therefore overwhelmed by their emotions. They see themselves as victims affected by the events that have occurred regardless of whether objectively it has not happened in such a way, since the weight falls on the perception that they have.
This type of behavior can occur sporadically in any person, depending on the specific circumstances of the moment, but when it is a clear tendency and therefore a recurring behavior, we would be talking about a tendency toward interpersonal victimhood, which is the type of attitude that concerns us. Therefore, isolated victimizing behaviors would not fall into this category.
One of the characteristics of this type of people is that they constantly resort to an external locus of control. What does this translate into? In which most of the time They will claim that control of the situation depends on factors beyond their control and therefore nothing they do will affect the final result since they are passive subjects and victims of events.
On the contrary, people with internal locus of control assume their ability to influence their own destiny through their actions and decisions. This profile of individuals are aware of the value of their behaviors and know when an event has been a consequence of them, whether with a positive or negative result, both for them and for other people. This way of acting and thinking would be the opposite of the tendency toward interpersonal victimhood.
Researchers like Rahav Gabay have found four characteristics in the personality of this type of individuals.
The first of them has to do with the interest in making clear to others the fact that they are or have been victims of some situation The second refers to the moral superiority that they usually possess, therefore giving more importance to the ethical evaluations that they make compared to those that others may provide.
The next characteristic is surprising, since it refers to the lack of empathy that they usually show in situations of suffering in other individuals, that is, the complete opposite of what they ask for themselves, which is the constant recognition of their pain and the recognition of the fact that they are victims, as the first point dictated. The last characteristic would refer to constant ruminations about moments in which they consider they have been victims in the past.
Another important point that these authors highlight in their studies is that the tendency toward interpersonal victimhood is not necessarily caused by events in which subjects actually become victims of a certain event and, likewise, people who suffer these events do not have to develop a tendency towards interpersonal victimhood, so both phenomena do not have a causal relationship in one sense or the other.
So how do you create this type of mindset? Among all the variables that the authors studied in their research, there is one that stands out especially and it is the type of attachment the person developed during childhood In this sense, if the person shows a type of anxious attachment, there will be a greater probability that he or she will have a tendency toward interpersonal victimhood, since both variables show a statistical correlation.
Individuals with this attachment profile are characterized by constantly seeking validation from other people, sometimes due to a poor self-concept. These people assume that they will be rejected by others before this happens and at the same time they need to be approved, since their self-esteem depends on it. This is where the tendency toward interpersonal victimhood would seem to come into play, as a mechanism to achieve such approval.
Thanks to this type of mentality, these individuals find a way to establish interactions with other people in which they receive the attention they need and capture the compassion of others towards their victim stories. In any case, this motivational explanation is valid for individual cases, but it is also interesting to observe the conclusions that were established regarding the groups.
Then, Gabay and the rest of the researchers mention the phenomenon of collective victimization According to them, all beliefs are susceptible to being learned and those related to the tendency towards interpersonal victimhood would be no exception. In that sense, these people could have learned the potential benefits of this type of mentality and therefore this would have favored their development.
Psychological effects of the tendency towards interpersonal victimhood
We have already reviewed the characteristics and possible origins of the tendency toward interpersonal victimhood. Now we must delve into the possible consequences that this behavior can have on the person who carries it out. We assume that in any disagreement between two people, each of them will experience a unique experience that can imply a great difference between the visions that both have of the same situation.
This also implies that the person will tend to remember the events experienced through the filters that they already have in their personality. This is where we can find a series of biases that are related to the tendency toward interpersonal victimhood Let’s look at them in more detail.
1. Interpretation bias
The first would be the so-called interpretation bias. What causes this phenomenon is that the person tends to interpret any social situation in a certain way, in this case as an offense This bias also works preventively, before the event in question occurs.
In this way, the person would interpret that the situation is going to develop in a certain way in which they will end up being a victim, and could also fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The second bias that we find in people with a tendency toward interpersonal victimhood is the one that attributes to others a propensity to maintain harmful behavior towards others which would justify that the former saw the possibility of being morally wounded during social interactions easier.
With that predisposition, if they finally have a conflict, they will experience it with much more intensity than those people who do not show that predisposition. Besides, This bias can also occur at a collective level and it can be attributed to individuals from groups outside our own, so that the victimizing individuals think that these people, because they are from another group, are going to be hurtful to them in some way.
3. Negative memory bias
Continuing with the different biases, the researchers also found negative memory bias. What this bias causes is that the individual who experiences it tends to more easily remember all the negative elements that have had to do with the situation experienced, to the detriment of those of a positive nature. This encourages people with a tendency toward interpersonal victimhood to delve deeper into thinking that the event has been especially negative.
This bias appears to be connected to rumination, these being the facilitators that individuals tend to remember especially the negative components of the situation they are remembering. The effect of negative memory bias can also be amplified by the group, since individuals can see their thesis supported by others, when both consider that they have been victims of someone outside their group.
4. Forgiveness
Although not a bias per se, the authors of this study also found another effect in people who suffer from a tendency toward interpersonal victimhood. It has to do with forgiveness, since these guys seem to show a lower tendency to want to forgive others if they considered that they had hurt them On the contrary, they would have impulses to take revenge for said affront, the complete opposite of forgiveness.
