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When people want to believe that the world is just, and that bad things won’t happen to them, empathy can suffer.
Victim-blaming comes in many forms, and is oftentimes subtle and unconscious. It can apply to cases of rape and sexual assault, but also to more mundane crimes. Any time someone defaults to questioning what a victim could have done differently to prevent a crime, he or she is participating, to some degree, in the culture of victim-blaming.
While victim-blaming isn’t entirely universal, in some ways, it is a natural psychological reaction to crime. Not everyone who engages in victim-blaming explicitly accuses someone of failing to prevent what happened to them. In fact, in its more understated forms, people may not always realize they’re doing it. Something as simple as hearing about a crime and thinking you would have been more careful had you been in the victim’s shoes is a mild form of victim-blaming.
Holding victims responsible for their misfortune is partially a way to avoid admitting that something just as unthinkable could happen to you—even if you do everything “right.”
– Kayleigh Roberts
Read more: The Psychology of Victim-Blaming
Victim blaming is something society, unbeknownst to itself, has propagated through repetition and exposure. It’s something we have become used to doing, simply because it’s the new social norm.
If I had to answer why people victim-blame, I guess I’d say it’s because they themselves were not there during the incident. Imagine someone watching a boxing match. They make comments like “He should have gotten that left hook!”, “she keeps running around”. They do this, because they are not there. They are mere onlookers who will never get affected by whatever is going on in the scene. It’s easy to talk about what should have been done, what should have been avoided, and what was right or wrong if nothing from that event has anything to do with you. You aren’t directly affected by it, so the level of empathy for the victim is minimal. The connection is barely present. The incident is nothing but a program flashing through our television screens– it is not real, at least to us.