Link – Why we’re psychologically hardwired to blame the victim

I’ve been saying this for a while now, too.

“We want to think that if we do the right thing, it’s all going to be OK,” says Hamby. “It’s threatening to see other people not be OK, so we want to come up with an explanation of why that experience won’t happen to us.”

It’s not so much that we blame the victim as it is trying to find a way to reassure ourselves that we won’t be the next one, which is terrifying to consider. But there is no guarantee. There is only the knowledge that we can still overcome those bad things, which would probably be a whole lot easier if we all stopped doing this in the first place. Then we could get on with healing without the stigma attached.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/27/victim-blaming-science-behind-psychology-research