Research published in Personality and Individual Differences has defined a new personality construct of a person who persistently sees themselves as victims of interpersonal conflicts.
In an article in PsyPost, the study authors Rahav Gabay and team said that the world is full of interpersonal conflicts that are often unpleasant, like being interrupted while speaking. Other people may easily brush it off, but some tend to take it personally and end up painting themselves as a victim.
The authors said that this view as a victim is a new personal construct that influences how they view the world around them and affect their behaviors.
Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood: The New Personality Construct that Sees Oneself As the Victim
Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV)
The new personality construct where people see themselves as victims is called the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (ITV). Gabay and his team described it as "an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships."
The team tested the validity of ITV by exploring its behavioral, cognitive, and emotional consequences. The initial results reveal that ITV is a consistent and stable trait with four dimensions: moral elitism, the need for recognition, rumination, and lack of empathy.
After a subsequent study, they found that ITV is linked to anxious attachment, characterized by an insecure feeling in one's relationship. That means that this personality construct is rooted in one's relationship with their caregivers.
Two more studies were conducted in which one found out that those who scored high in TIV were more likely to desire revenge against the person who wronged them. Overall, those high in TIV reported experiencing more intense negative feelings with a higher sense of entitlement in immoral behavior.
"The higher participants' TIV, the more they experienced negative emotions and felt entitled to behave immorally. However, only the experience of negative emotions predicted behavioral revenge," according to the authors.
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The victimhood mindset
According to Scientific American, TIV persons display four victimhood mindset. One, having a more elitism wherein they perceive themselves as immaculate morality while viewing everyone else as immoral. This often develops as a defense mechanism to maintain a positive self-image.
The second one is the need for recognition of one's victimhood. It is a normal response after a traumatic event to help reestablish the person's confidence in their perception of the world as fair and a just place to live, which has shattered after the traumatic event. The validation of their suffering or trauma is an important aspect of therapy.
The third one is the rumination of past victimization. People high in TIV would ruminate and talk about past interpersonal conflicts instead of discussing solutions. Research suggests that rumination decreases a person's motivation to forgive and increases the drive to seek revenge.
Lastly, the lack of empathy also describes a person high in TIV because they are so preoccupied with their victimhood that they fail to see and acknowledge other people's pain sufferings. They feel that their immoral behaviors are justified after they suffer or be reminded of the traumatic event they went through, and so they become oblivious of others' pain.
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