Self-victimhood is a personality type, researchers find

2020-12-1120:2812956reason.com

People who suffer from a "tendency for interpersonal victimhood" present themselves as weak, hurt, and vengeful.

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People who suffer from a "tendency for interpersonal victimhood" present themselves as weak, hurt, and vengeful.

Many social commentators have argued that an emerging "victimhood culture" incentivizes people to see themselves as weak, traumatized, and aggrieved. In higher education, this has been associated with increased demands for specific accommodations like trigger warnings (which don't work) and the policing of microaggressions (which is ill-conceived).

But what if this is not merely a trend but an entire personality type? A new paper in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences posits a Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV), an archetype defined by several truly toxic traits: a pathological need for recognition, a difficulty empathizing with others, feelings of moral superiority, and, importantly, a thirst for vengeance.

"The findings…suggest that victimhood is a stable and meaningful personality tendency," write the study's authors, a quartet of scholars associated with Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The researchers solicited several hundred participants for a series of psychological experiments that tested their assumptions. As such, the results should be taken with a grain of salt—social psychology research suffers from notoriously thorny replication issues, since these kinds of experiments are not always great substitutes for the sort of thing being studied. In one of this paper's experiments, for instance, a computer split a pot of money between itself and a human participant; this person was led to believe the computer was also a human participant. Sometimes the pot was split unevenly, and the human participant was given a chance to take vengeance by reducing the computer's pot without enriching his own. Researchers discovered that participants classified as having higher TIV scores were "strongly associated with behavioral revenge" in this scenario.

TIV was also "associated with an increased experience of negative emotions, and entitlement to immoral behavior."

The study distinguishes TIV from narcissism. Narcissistic individuals also experience moral superiority and vengeful desires, but these feelings tend to spring from the belief that their authority, capability, or grandiosity is being undermined. TIV, on the other hand, is associated with low self-esteem. And while narcissists do not want to be victimized, high-TIV individuals lash out when their victimhood is questioned.

"The self-presentation of high-TIV individuals is that of a weak victim, who has been hurt and is therefore in need of protection," write the authors. "Threats to high-TIV individuals are related to anything that can undermine their self-image of moral superiority; or elicit doubts from their environment as to whether the offense occurred, the intensity of the offense, or their exclusivity as victims."

Writing in Scientific American, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman* notes that "the researchers do not equate experiencing trauma and victimization with possessing the victimhood mindset. They point out that a victimhood mindset can develop without experiencing severe trauma or victimization."

Kaufman continues:

If socialization processes can instill in individuals a victimhood mindset, then surely the very same processes can instill in people a personal growth mindset. What if we all learned at a young age that our traumas don't have to define us? That it's possible to have experienced a trauma and for victimhood to not form the core of our identity? That it's even possible to grow from trauma, to become a better person, to use the experiences we've had in our lives toward working to instill hope and possibility to others who were in a similar situation? What if we all learned that it's possible to have healthy pride for an in-group without having out-group hate? That if you expect kindness from others, it pays to be kind yourself? That no one is entitled to anything, but we all are worthy of being treated as human?

Encouraging people not to be defined by their traumas—real or imagined—seems like solid advice. But when the traumatized person resents challenges to his victimhood status and wants to punish those who want to take it away from him, getting that advice across just might be a challenge.

*CORRECTION: The original version of this article misspelled the name of psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman.

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Comments

By skmurphy 2020-12-1120:522 reply

based on https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918... key conclusion from paper

The findings highlight the importance of understanding, conceptualizing, and empirically testing tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV), and suggest that victimhood is a stable and meaningful personality tendency.

Key graf from Reason article:

By hacknat 2020-12-1121:242 reply

I think the most interesting part of the paper is the inventory of attachment styles as they relate to TIV. It looks like anxious-attachment styles are more likely to have it.

The thing to think about when you run into someone like this is that, for whatever reason, their victimhood has been the only reliable tool that has enabled them to receive positive attachment from others. It's no wonder they get highly defensive about their victimhood being called into question.

These issues are probably intransigent (narcissism, for example, is one of the most immune-to-therapy personality disorders), but maybe one way around victimhood with a friend or family member is to notice positive things about them that don't have anything to do with their victimhood (which is a tough task with some people).

By bayindirh 2020-12-1121:341 reply

After reading the article, I have gone through the inventory of people who left a mark in my life.

One or two people fits to this template perfectly. Weak, soft, approachable in the beginning but, becomes silently more dominant and sucking your energy for their survival. If you cannot regenerate fast enough, they throw you to the side to find their new victim. Sad, damaging.

> These issues are probably intransigent...

My guess is TIV is not intransigent if you can attack it from right angle. The profile looks like grounded in good person turned bad for real or so, this looks like a winning strategy. Both foundations can be disassembled. First one needs someone who can cut through to anger to reach to the core of the personality. Second one needs an encounter with a bite-resistant person so, they have to think their strategy.

I'm overly generalizing here, but hope I could communicate the idea behind my rationale.

By lopmotr 2020-12-1121:431 reply

> Weak, soft, approachable in the beginning but, becomes silently more dominant and sucking your energy for their survival. If you cannot regenerate fast enough, they throw you to the side to find their new victim.

That sounds a lot like Borderline Personality Disorder. Another tricky one because the disorder itself causes resistance to diagnosis and treatment.

By bayindirh 2020-12-1121:491 reply

Just took a quick look to BPD. There seems to be a difference. If I understood correctly:

- BPD stems from a real distorted self image and manifests itself to protect one from abandonment or being left behind.

- TIV uses victimhood psychology to appear weak (or it already feels weak) but, can use this allure to slowly and surely feed itself. More importantly, TID lacks the wild or fierce side of BPD and narcissism. The process is slower and less painful until it ends. The pain is felt when the process is almost over, and the victim is ejected when it's completely powerless.

Even writing this brings memories back. On the bright side, experiencing these kinds of people once or twice is a very maturing experience (with an expense of course).

By lopmotr 2020-12-1122:191 reply

Sure, TIV has appearing weak and BDP has rages but since you didn't state that explicitly, I wondered if you'd omitted it because it wasn't present in those people you knew.

I kind of wonder though, if the way we end up classifying these things is unreasonably influenced by the existing classifications which maybe just sort of coalesced from observations that psychologists have made of their patients. Since they're often things that people won't get treated or don't even think of as disorders. The data must be very biased and flakey.

By bayindirh 2020-12-1122:52

> I wondered if you'd omitted it because it wasn't present in those people you knew.

Yes, I only mentioned people which were consistent with the TIV template in the article.

> I kind of wonder though, if the way we end up classifying these things is unreasonably influenced by the existing classifications which maybe just sort of coalesced from observations that psychologists have made of their patients. Since they're often things that people won't get treated or don't even think of as disorders.

Unfortunately, It's possible. Moreover, some traits are not considered as illnesses until it starts to affect one's life (hoarding, some forms of OCD, etc.).

Another problem is, as noted by some other comments, TIV looks like a siamese twin of narcissism when looked from a specific angle. It might be just narcissism without self esteem, or as I've seen in one person might be completely different trait because it can be devoid of narcissistic traits or traces while being extremely efficient in draining someone without giving itself away until just before the victim proverbially dies.

Since psychology is not an exact science, it'll always be up to debate I think, however this trait is a good candidate to think well on. It's much more common than it seems.

By walleeee 2020-12-1121:49

Christopher Lasch argues for the existence of something like this (somewhere between TIV and narcissism) not merely as a stable personality type, but a trend affecting a growing number of Americans. Would be interesting to see longitudinal data, although the tests for "traits" like this are often fairly contrived.

By tremon 2020-12-1121:322 reply

That doesn't read to me as something distinguished from narcissism. That sounds like it is exactly the same traits as narcissism, the only difference is how the person ranks himself in regards to his peers. Some maybe the level of self-esteem shouldn't be considered a determining factor for narcissism?

By bayindirh 2020-12-1121:40

In my experience narcissistic traits start with a normalish personality appearance with a bit overconfidence, then it reveals itself.

TIV is a more soft, hurt presentation with silent/passive strategies to damage someone. It's more silent, slower and harder to stop if your self esteem is also low. This makes it a double-whammy since the person looks weak, approachable and gentle. Other party is also weak and attached to this approachable person hence, is somewhat powerless.

When everything is over, the victim is damaged much more deeply. Same person's encounter with a narcissistic person is much more harmless since person with low-esteem will be driven away by the dominant, narcissistic person.

By eyelidlessness 2020-12-1123:50

I agree with your reading. For what it’s worth, my agreement was initially based on personal experience with people who exhibit NPD traits, but I decided to refresh my memory of the DSM criteria. I know the DSM isn’t the only, or even best, resource for diagnosis questions[1]... but of its 9 criteria, 7 are either in whole or in part accommodating to low self esteem and the kinds of things described in this article.

I may be biased by the article’s prose (and by the site itself), but I get the sense that this is a diagnostic motivated to associate general expressions of victimhood (including the more visible expressions of trauma and oppression alluded to in the article) with harmful and manipulative expressions of victimhood that are plenty common in NPD (and certainly BPD).

I’m not qualified to draw that conclusion in a meaningfully scientific way, but I’m certainly skeptical that there’s a distinction in this classification that warrants distinction. And I think the harm it could do if adopted is pretty significant.

[1]: From personal experience, I likely wouldn’t have been diagnosed ADHD without being prepared with some creativity.

By emerged 2020-12-1121:073 reply

Hasn’t narcissism long been thought to have two forms: superiority and inferiority? Lots of behavioral overlap but basically opposite causality.

By balfirevic 2020-12-1121:53

There was an interesting comment the other day from a person who was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25348799

By SMAAART 2020-12-1121:40

Narcissists play the victim when it's convenient to them, they also feel victim in circumstances where they don't get what they want; but make no mistake: they are not victims by any stretch of the imagination.

By seph-reed 2020-12-1121:16

I'd never heard it before, but it seems pretty obvious after reading this article.

By cmdshiftf4 2020-12-1121:512 reply

Is this a genuine personality type or a reaction to incentives?

We're in an era which celebrates weakness and perceived victimhood over strength and perseverance, and rewards quite richly with attention, position, status, financial benefits, etc.

It's therefore not unsurprising there's no shortage of grifters willing to play the act in the pursuit of those incentives, whether actively (narcissists) or subliminally optimizing (TIV?) for the path of least resistance.

We get what we deserve or alternatively we get what we reward.

By bayindirh 2020-12-1121:54

I've first met with people which fit to this template ~20 years ago. One of them transformed to a complete narcissistic personality after fixing his/her self-esteem deficiency, another one became lost in life. The last one made me see a shrink (this was the best match to the template given in the article).

By UnFleshedOne 2020-12-1122:00

So grifting is personality type? :)

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