victimblaming

Victimblaming is the tendency to hold victims of harm partially or wholly responsible for the wrongdoing committed against them. It involves scrutinizing a victim’s behavior, appearance, or choices rather than focusing on the perpetrator’s actions, and it can occur in contexts such as crime, sexual assault, domestic violence, harassment, or disasters. Victim-blaming can be explicit or implicit and is reinforced by cultural myths, stereotypes, and media representations.

Common forms include questions about what the victim was wearing, where they were, or whether they provoked the incident, as well as language that implies people “deserve” harm for their choices. Two influential cognitive drivers are the just-world hypothesis—the belief that people get what they deserve—and attribution biases like the fundamental attribution error. These mechanisms help explain why some audiences excuse or minimize harm by blaming the victim.

The consequences of victim-blaming are serious. It can deter reporting and delay help-seeking, exacerbate trauma, and hinder access to justice and support services. It also shifts focus away from the perpetrator and from structural factors such as power imbalances, discrimination, or institutional failures. Reducing victim-blaming involves trauma-informed practices, survivor-centered language, education to challenge myths, and media guidelines that avoid blaming victims.

Intersectional factors such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and disability shape how victim-blaming manifests and whom it affects most. Historical and contemporary feminist scholarship and social psychology have challenged victim-blaming, arguing that responsibility for harm lies with the perpetrator and that society bears a duty to support victims and address underlying causes.