Victim mentality is an acquired personality trait in which a person tends to recognize themselves as a victim of the negative actions of others, and to behave as if this were the case in the of clear evidence of such circumstances. Victim mentality depends on clear thought processes and attribution. In most cases, those with a victim mentality have in fact been the victim of wrongdoing by others or have otherwise suffered misfortune through no fault of their own; however, such misfortune does not necessarily imply that one will respond by developing a pervasive and universal victim mentality where one frequently or constantly realizes oneself to be a victim.
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The term is also used in reference to the tendency for recognizing one's misfortunes on somebody else's misdeeds, which is also referred to as victimism.
Victim mentality is primarily developed, for example, from family members and situations during childhood. Similarly, criminals often engage in victim thinking, believing themselves to be moral and engaging in crime only as a reaction to an immoral world and furthermore feeling that police are unfairly singling them out for persecution.
Foundations
In the most general sense, a victim is anyone who experiences injury, loss, or misfortune as a result of some event or series of events. This negative experience, however, is insufficient for the emergence of a sense of victimhood. It has been suggested that individuals define themselves as a victim if they believe that:
The desire of empathy is crucial in that the mere experience of a harmful event is not enough for the emergence of the sense of being a victim. In order to have this sense there is the need to perceive the harm as undeserved, unjust and immoral, an act that could not be prevented by the victim. The need to obtain empathy and understanding can then emerge.
Features
A victim mentality may manifest itself in a range of different behaviors or ways of thinking and talking:
People with victim mentality may develop convincing and sophisticated explanations in support of such ideas, which they then use to explain to themselves and others of their situation.
People with victim mentality may also be generally:
A victim mentality may be reflected by linguistic markers or habits, such as pretending
Victims of abuse and manipulation
Victims of abuse and manipulation often get trapped into a self-image of victimisation. The psychological profile of victimisation includes a pervasive sense of helplessness, passivity, loss of control, pessimism, negative thinking, strong feelings of guilt, shame, self-blame and depression. This way of thinking can lead to hopelessness and despair.
Breaking out
Since victim mentality is primarily a reaction to one's experiences and not inborn, it is possible to change it which may be provoked by an extraordinary situation or crisis. Since recognizing naive and condescending suggestions is a general characteristic feature of victim mentality, a person with victim mentality will generally not respond positively to attempts by another person to wrongly identify the problem and its solution. For this reason, the condition may become chronic.
Politics
One may consider collective victimhood in political setting. If the leaders of a country, and the citizens who support them, collectively feel like victims of neighboring countries (e.g. following past border disputes), those leaders may be more likely to advocate violent conflict resolution or suppression of freedom of speech.
Political psychologists Bar-Tal and Chernyak-Hai write that collective victim mentality develops from a progression of self-realization, social recognition, and eventual attempts to maintain victimhood status.