In my psych class I was taught a theory called "Belief in a just world"- The belief that individuals get what they deserve in life, an viewpoint that leads people to belittle or mock victims.
~~ found the passage in my book.
Quote:
We need to believe in a world where hard work and clean living pays off, and where sloth and sin is punished. If we're to believe otherwise, we'd have to accept that we, too, are vulnurable to the cruel twists and turns of fate. So how do people defend themselves from this realization? If people cannot help or compensate the victims of misfortune, they turn on them. Thus, it is often assumed that poor people are lazy, that crime victims are careless, rape victims "ask for it", battered women provoke their violent and abusive husbands.
They conducted a study (Hafer, 2000. PM if interested) where participants watched a TV news story about a boy who was robbbed and beaten. Some were told that the boy's assailants were captured, tried, and sent to prison. Others were told that the assailants fled the country, never to be brought to trial- a story that strains on one's belief in a just world. Afterwards, participants were asked to name as quickly as they could the colours in which various words in a list were typed (for example, the word chair may have been written in blue, floor in yellow, and wide in red). Then the words themselves were neutral, all participants- regardless of which story they had seen- were equally fast at naming colours. But when the words pertained to justice (words such as fair and unequal) those who had seen the justice-threatened version of the story were more distracted by the words, and hence, slower to name the colours. In fact, the more distracted they were, the more they derogated the victim. With their cherished belief in a just world threatened, these participants became highly sensitive to the concept of "justice" and quick to disparage the innocent victim.
|
I guess what i'm trying to say by quoting this stuff is that many of us are not in a position to help or protect these people without cost to ourselves, so we need to believe that they are doing bad things or are bad people in order to dismiss the problem, and feel better.