Damned if you do and damned if you don’t: Assigning blame to victims regardless of their choice

The just world literature implies that when someone is a victim of suffering, observers will somehow attribute the suffering to the behavior of the victim. In the current study, participants read a scenario about a person who had either converted or not converted to a new religion. This same person later either experienced no tragedy or was a victim of an unrelated brutal robbery which permanently disabled him. When the target person was victimized, participants were reluctant to attribute blame to the person or to his morality; however, they were quick to assign blame to the victim's choice to convert. Interestingly, even when the victim had not converted, participants still assigned blame to the decision to not convert.

► When a victim is suffering observers attribute suffering to victim behavior.
► With low emotional involvement, misfortune is attributed to behavior not the person.
► If victim and behavior attributions impossible, misfortune attributed to non-behavior.