Unraveling the complex web of emotions that lead individuals to perceive themselves as victims, we delve into psychological, societal, and personal factors. A journey into understanding the human psyche, its reactions to adversity, and the role of external influences in shaping self-perception.
Getting to the core of today’s social acrimony
In a polarized nation, victimhood is a badge of honor. It gives people strength. It has become among the most important identity positions in American politics.
- What lodges victimhood in human psychology?
- Researchers in Israel have identified a negative personality trait they call TIV or Tendency toward Interpersonal Victimhood. People who score high on a TIV test have an “enduring feeling that the self is a victim in different kinds of interpersonal relationships.”
- The study of TIV is built around four pillars: need for one’s victimhood to be clearly and unequivocally acknowledged by both the offender and the society at large, moral elitism, lack of empathy, inability to see life from another perspective, and rumination
Don’t Give Up on Facts
People of all political stripes can spot misinformation
Is TIV an aberration in the personality?
Most people who experience TIV appear in the middle range.
- People with high TIV have a higher motivation for revenge and have no wish to avoid their offenders
- Why is it so difficult for people with a high degree of TIV to recognize that they can hurt other people?
- TIV is related to an unwillingness to forgive, even to an increased desire for revenge
- Rumination reinforces this tendency
- The higher the TIV, the more you feel victimized in all of your interpersonal relations
Victimhood is also a matter of socialization
There are certain societies, particularly those with long histories of prolonged conflict, where the central narrative of the society is a victim-oriented narrative
- Children in kindergarten learn to adopt beliefs that Israelis suffer more than Palestinians, that they always have to protect themselves and struggle for their existence
- To overcome victimhood, we must change the way we educate our children
