Why Me? New Study Reveals How Victim Mentality Drives Political Behavior

This article develops a theory of perceived victimhood and examines two distinct manifestations—an egocentric sense of one’s own victimhood and a system-directed blame—using unique nationally-representative survey data and an experiment testing candidate rhetoric. The authors report that both forms of perceived victimhood appear across partisan, ideological, and sociodemographic groups, are related to candidate support and various racial attitudes, and are distinct from related psychological constructs such as collective narcissism, system justification, and relative deprivation. An experiment shows that some political messaging can increase feelings of victimhood, which in turn affects subsequent attitudes and behavior. The authors qualify their conclusions by noting measurement of two specific victimhood manifestations and by comparing victimhood to other psychological constructs.