The Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood: Conceptualization, Cognitive and Behavioral Consequences, and Antecedents

The urgency of taking psychological needs seriously becomes dramatically evident when victimhood is assumed as identity. Rahav Gabay, Boaz Hameiri, Tammy Rubel-Lifschitz, and Arie Nadler?s paper on The Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood: Conceptualization, Cognitive and Behavioral Consequences, and Antecedents addresses the issue of the subjective experience of victimhood in interpersonal relations as an enduring personality disposition. According to the authors, the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV) is an individual-level characteristic in the general population affecting how individuals feel, think, and behave in hurtful situations. Through a phenomenology of victimhood in interpersonal relations, the paper proposes a conceptualization of TIV as made up of four dimensions: the need for recognition of the suffering, the tendency for moral elitism, the lack of empathy for others? sufferings, and a tendency for rumination about past or future interpersonal offenses. Showing how cognitive processes of interpretation, attribution, and memory reinforce feelings of victimhood and retaliation, the findings demonstrate that people high on TIV experience daily interpersonal victimization more often, more intensely, and for more extended periods.