Praise

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Praise as a form of social interaction expresses recognition, reassurance or admiration. Praise is expressed verbally as well as by body language (facial expression and gestures).

Verbal praise consists of a positive evaluations of another's attributes or actions, where the evaluator presumes the validity of the standards on which the evaluation is based.

As a form of social manipulation, praise becomes a form of reward and furthers behavioral reinforcement by conditioning. The influence of praise on an individual can depend on many factors, including the context, the meanings the praise may convey, and the characteristics and interpretations of the recipient. While praise may share some predictive relationships (both positive and negative) with tangible (material) rewards, praise tends to be less salient and expected, conveys more information about competence, and is typically given more immediately after the desired behavior.

Praise is distinct from acknowledgement or feedback (more neutral forms of recognition) and from encouragement (expressedly future-oriented).

Praise is given across social hierarchy, and both within the ingroup and towards an outgroup; it is an important aspect in the regulation of social hierarchy and the maintenance of group cohesion, influencing the potential for political action and social upheaval. When given by a dominant individual it takes the form of recognition and reassurance, reducing the potential of political action aiming for when given by a submissive to a dominant individual it takes the form of deference, admiration or exultation, or deification. Praise of gods may form part of religious rites and practices (see for example prayer of praise and praise and worship).

As behavioral reinforcement

The concept of praise as a means of behavioral reinforcement is rooted in B.F. Skinner's model of operant conditioning. Through this lens, praise has been viewed as a means of positive reinforcement, wherein an observed behavior is made more likely to occur by contingently praising said behavior. Hundreds of studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of praise in promoting positive behaviors, notably in the study of teacher and parent use of praise on child in promoting improved behavior and academic performance, but also in the study of work performance. Praise has also been demonstrated to reinforce positive behaviors in non-praised adjacent individuals (such as a classmate of the praise recipient) through vicarious reinforcement. Praise may be more or less effective in changing behavior depending on its form, content and delivery. In order for praise to effect positive behavior change, it must be contingent on the positive behavior (i.e., only administered after the targeted behavior is enacted), must specify the particulars of the behavior that is to be reinforced, and must be delivered sincerely and credibly.

Acknowledging the effect of praise as a positive reinforcement strategy, numerous behavioral and cognitive behavioral interventions have incorporated the use of praise in their protocols. The strategic use of praise is recognized as an evidence-based practice in both classroom management and parenting training interventions, though praise is often subsumed in intervention research into a larger category of positive reinforcement, which includes strategies such as strategic attention and behavioral rewards.

Effects beyond behavior change

Although the majority of early research on the influences of praise focused on behavior implications, more recent investigations have highlighted important implications in other domains. Praise may have cognitive influences on an individual, by attracting attention to the self, or by conveying information about the values and expectations of the praiser to the recipient. Effective praise (i.e., praise that is welcomed or accepted by the recipient) may also have positive emotional effects by generating a positive affective state (e.g., happiness, joy, pride). Praise is also thought to convey that one has surpassed a noteworthy evaluative standard, and if the recipient of the praise is likely to experience a sense of pleasure stemming from a positive self-perception. Contrastingly, praise may create negative emotional consequences if it appears disingenuous or manipulative.

Alternative views of the effects of praise on motivation exist. In one camp, praise is thought to decrease intrinsic motivation by increasing the presence of external control. However, praise has also been argued to define standards and expectations, which in turn may motivate an individual to exert effort to meet those standards. Lastly, praise may serve to influence interpersonal relations. For example, strong pressures to reciprocate praise have been found. It is thought that the mutual praise may serve to increase attraction and strengthen the interpersonal relationship, and this process may underlie the use of praise in ingratiation.

Dimensions

Person versus process

Over the past several decades, researchers have distinguished between praise for a person's general abilities and qualities (e.g., "You're such a good drawer.") and for the process of performance (e.g., "You are working so hard at that drawing."). This distinction between person versus process praise is sometimes referred to as ability versus effort praise, though ability and effort statements can be seen as subcategories of person and process statements, respectively.

Traditionally, person(trait)-oriented praise was thought to instill a child's belief that they have the capacity to succeed, and thus help motivate them to learn. However, social-cognitive theorists have more recently suggested that person-oriented (as opposed to process-oriented) praise may have detrimental impacts on a child's self-perceptions, motivation and learning. For example, praising children for their personal attributes, rather than specifics about their performance, may teach them to make interferences about their global worth, and may thus undermine their intrinsic motivation. In a study of person- versus process-oriented praise, Kamins and Dweck found that children who received person-oriented praise displayed more "helpless" responses following a failure including self-blame, than those in the process condition. Henderlong and Lepper suggest that person-oriented praise may function like tangible rewards, in that they produce desired outcomes in the short-run, but may undermine intrinsic motivation and subsequent perseverance. However, Skipper & Douglas found that although person- versus process-oriented praise (and an objective feedback control group) predicted more negative responses to the first failure, all three groups demonstrated similarly negative responses to the second failure. Thus, the long-term negative consequences of person-oriented praise are still unclear.

Person and process (or performance) praise may also foster different attributional styles such that person-oriented praise may lead one to attribute success and failure to stable ability, which in turn may foster helplessness reactions in the face of setbacks. Contrastingly, process praise may foster attributions regarding effort or strategy, such that children attribute their success (or failure) to these variables, rather than their stable trait or ability. This attributional style can foster more adaptive reactions to both success and failure. In support of this notion, Muller and Dweck experimentally found praise for child intelligence to be more detrimental to 5th graders' achievement motivation than praise for effort. Following a failure, the person-praised students displayed less task persistence, task enjoyment, and displayed worse task performance than those praised for effort. These findings are in line with personal theories of achievement striving, in which in the face of failure, performance tends to improve when individuals make attributions to a lack of effort, but worsen when they attribute their failure to a lack of ability.

In the studies mentioned above, person-oriented praise was found to be less beneficial than process-oriented praise, but this is not always found to be the case. Particularly, effort-oriented praise may be detrimental when given during tasks that are exceptionally easy. This may be especially apparent for older children as they see effort and ability to be inversely related and thus an overemphasis on effort may suggest a lack of ability.

Controlling versus informational

Proponents of cognitive evaluation theory (Deci & Ryan) have focused on two aspects of praise thought to influence a child's self-determination: information and control. Taking this perspective, the informational aspect of praise is thought to promote a perceived internal locus of control (and thus greater self-determination) while the controlling aspects promote a perceived external locus of control and thus extrinsic compliance or defiance. Thus, Deci & Ryan  suggest that the effect of praise is moderated by the salience of informational versus controlling aspects of praise.

The theory that informational praise enhances self-determination over controlling praise has been supported by several empirical studies. In a metanalysis including five studies distinguishing informational from controlling praise, Deci, Koestner & Ryan found that informational-based praise related to greater intrinsic motivation (as measured by free-choice behavior and self-reported interest) while controlling praise was associated with less intrinsic motivation. For example, Pittman and colleagues found that adults demonstrated more free-choice engagement with a task after receiving informational ("e.g., "Compared to most of my subjects, you're doing really well."), rather than controlling (e.g., "I haven't been able to use most of the data I've gotten so far, but you're doing really well, and if you keep it up I'll be able to use yours.") praise.

Several complexities of informational versus controlling praise have been acknowledged. First, though the differences between information and controlling praise have been well-established, it is difficult to determine whether the net effects of these forms of praise will be positive, negative or neutral compared to a control condition. In addition, it is often difficult to determine the extent to which informational, controlling, or both, which may muddy interpretations of results.

Social-comparison versus mastery

Social comparison is a psychological process that is widely prevalent, particularly so in educational settings. In Festinger's social comparison theory, he noted that people engage in social comparison as a means to reduce ambiguity and accurately evaluate their own qualities and abilities. However, controversy exists over whether providing children with social-comparison praise has beneficial impact on their motivation and performance. Some studies have demonstrated that students who received social-comparison praise (e.g., "you're doing better than most students" or "you're performance is amongst the best we've had") demonstrated greater motivation compared to no-praise or other control groups. Sarafino, Russo, Barker, Consentino and Titus found that students who received social-comparison voluntarily engaged in the task more so than those who received feedback that they performed similar to others. Though these studies demonstrate the possible positive influence of social-comparison praise, they have been criticized for inadequate control groups. For example, a control group given feedback that they are average may be seen as negative, rather than neutral. In addition, most social-comparison studies do not examine motivation or behavior following a subsequent unsuccessful task.

Beyond methodology, the primary criticism to social-comparison praise is that it teaches children to evaluate themselves on the basis of the performance of others, and may therefore lead to maladaptive coping in situations in which one is outperformed by others individuals. Social-comparison praise has been hypothesized to decrease intrinsic motivation for the praised children because they may then view their behaviors as externally controlled. Contrastingly, it is suggested that praise that focused on a child's competence (mastery) rather than social comparison may be important for fostering motivation. This area is relatively understudied, though some interesting findings have emerged. In a study of adults, Koestner, Zuckerman, and Olsson found that gender moderated the influence of social-comparison and mastery praise, where women were more intrinsically motivated following mastery praise, while men were more motivated following social-comparison praise. In a study of children, Henderlong Corpus, Ogle & Love-Geiger found that social-comparison praise lead to decreased motivation following ambiguous feedback for all children, and also decreased motivation following positive feedback for girls only. Thus, mastery praise may be more conducive than social-comparison to fostering intrinsic motivation, particularly for females, though more research is needed to tease apart these relationships.

Beauty

Beauty is worth praise, "if the praise is directed at the beauty itself without giving credit for having it to the person whose beauty it happens to be.".

Sir Kenneth Dover provides us with clarity over the question of beauty and praise, with his voice on our two main senses giving us the feeling to praise:

The word [kalon], when applied to a person, means ‘beautiful’, ‘pretty’, ‘handsome’, ‘attractive’, and its antonym is aischros, ‘ugly’. The words are also applied to objects, sights and sounds and whatever can be heard about and thought about, such as an institution, an achievement or failure, or a virtuous or vicious action; kalos expresses a favourable reaction (‘admirable’, ‘creditable’, ‘honourable’) and aischros an unfavour-able reaction (‘disgraceful’, ‘repulsive’, ‘contemptible’).

Dover states there is a distinction of aesthetic and the moral senses of the term; "It must be emphasized that the Greeks did not call a person ‘beautiful’ by virtue of that person's morals, intelligence, ability or temperament, but solely by virtue of shape, colour, texture and movement".

Factors that affect influence

Age

The function of praise on child performance and motivation may likely vary as a function of age. Few studies have directly examined developmental differences in praise, though some evidence has been found. Henderlong Corpus & Lepper found person praise (as opposed to process praise) to negatively influence motivation for older girls (4th/5th grade), while for preschool-age children, there were no differences in the effects of process, person and product praise, though all three forms of praise were associated with increased motivation as compared to neutral feedback. In a different study, Henderlong found that for older children, process praise enhanced post-failure motivation more so than person praise, and person praise decreased motivation as compared to neutral feedback. Contrastingly, for preschool-age children process praise enhanced post-failure motivation more than person praise, but both were better than neutral feedback. Some posit that younger children do not experience the negative effects of certain types of praise because they do not yet make causal attributions in complex ways, and they are more literal in their interpretations of adult speech.

Gender

The function of praise on child behavior and motivation has also found to vary as a function of child gender. Some researchers have shown that females are more susceptible to the negative effects of certain types of praise (person-oriented praise, praise that limits autonomy). For example, Koestner, Zuckerman & Koestner found that girls were more negatively influenced by praise that diminished perceived autonomy. Henderlong Corpus and Lepper found that process praise was more beneficial to motivation than person praise, but only for girls. This difference was found for older children, but not preschool-aged children.

Others have found young girls to be more negatively influenced by the evaluations of adults more generally. Some have posited that this gender difference is due to girls more often attributing failure to lack of ability rather than a lack of motivation or effort. Gender differences may be attributable to normative socialization practices, in which people generally emphasize dependence and interpersonal relationships for girls, but achievement and independence for boys.

Culture

Culture has been referred to as a "blind spot" in the praise literature. Yet, there is reason to believe that cultural differences in the effects of praise exist. Much of the discussion on culture and praise has focused on differences between independent and interdependent cultures. Stated briefly, independent cultures, common in Western cultures, generally value and seek to promote individualism and autonomy, while interdependent cultures promote fundamental connectedness and harmony in interpersonal relationships.

Looking through this cultural lens, clear differences in the use and impact of praise can be found. In comparison to the United States, praise is rarely in China and Japan (e.g.), as praise may be thought to be harmful to a child's character. In interdependent cultures, individuals are generally motivated by self-improvement. This cultural difference has also been found experimentally. Heine, Lehman, Markus & Katayama found that Canadian students persisted longer after positive than negative performance feedback, while the opposite was true for Japanese students. Some posit that individuals from independent and interdependent cultures largely express different models of praise (independence-supportive and interdependence-supportive praise.

Blame

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blame

Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong, their action is blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, we may say that his or her action is praiseworthy. There are other senses of praise and blame that are not ethically relevant. One may praise someone's good dress sense, and blame their own sense of style for their own dress sense.

Neurology

Blaming appears to relate to include brain activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). The amygdala has been found to contribute when we blame others, but not when we respond to their positive actions.

Sociology and psychology

Humans - consciously and unconsciously - constantly make judgments about other people. The psychological criteria for judging others may be partly ingrained, negative and rigid indicating some degree of grandiosity.

Blaming provides a way of devaluing others, with the end result that the blamer feels superior, seeing others as less worthwhile making the blamer "perfect". Off-loading blame means putting the other person down by emphasizing his or her flaws.

Victims of manipulation and abuse frequently feel responsible for causing negative feelings in the manipulator/abuser towards them and the resultant anxiety in themselves. This self-blame often becomes a major feature of victim status.

The victim gets trapped into a self-image of victimization. The psychological profile of victimization includes a pervasive sense of helplessness, passivity, loss of control, pessimism, negative thinking, strong feelings of guilt, shame, remorse, self-blame and depression. This way of thinking can lead to hopelessness and despair.

Self-blame

Two main types of self-blame exist:

1. behavioral self-blame – undeserved blame based on actions. Victims who experience behavioral self-blame feel that they should have done something differently, and therefore feel at fault.
2. characterological self-blame – undeserved blame based on character. Victims who experience characterological self-blame feel there is something inherently wrong with them which has caused them to deserve to be victimized.

Behavioral self-blame is associated with feelings of guilt within the victim. While the belief that one had control during the abuse (past control) is associated with greater psychological distress, the belief that one has more control during the recovery process (present control) is associated with less distress, less withdrawal, and more cognitive reprocessing.

Counseling responses found helpful in reducing self-blame include:

• supportive responses
• psychoeducational responses (learning about rape trauma syndrome for example)
• responses addressing the issue of blame.

A helpful type of therapy for self-blame is cognitive restructuring or cognitive–behavioral therapy. Cognitive reprocessing is the process of taking the facts and forming a logical conclusion from them that is less influenced by shame or guilt.

Victim blaming

Victim blaming is holding the victims of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment to be entirely or partially responsible for the incident that has occurred.

Individual blame versus system blame

In sociology individual blame is the tendency of a group or society to hold the individual responsible for his or her situation, whereas system blame is the tendency to focus on social factors that contribute to one's fate.

Blame shifting

Blaming others can lead to a "kick the dog" effect where individuals in a hierarchy blame their immediate subordinate, and this propagates down a hierarchy until the lowest rung (the "dog"). A 2009 experimental study has shown that blaming can be contagious even for uninvolved onlookers.

In complex international organizations, such as national and supranational policies regulations, the blame is usually attributed to the last echelon, the implementing actors.

As a propaganda technique

Labeling theory accounts for blame by postulating that when intentional actors act out to continuously blame an individual for nonexistent psychological traits and for nonexistent variables, those actors aim to induce irrational guilt at an unconscious level. Blame in this case becomes a propaganda tactic, using repetitive blaming behaviors, innuendos, and hyperbole in order to assign negative status to normative humans. When innocent people are blamed fraudulently for nonexistent psychological states and nonexistent behaviors, and there is no qualifying deviance for the blaming behaviors, the intention is to create a negative valuation of innocent humans to induce fear, by using fear mongering. For centuries, governments have used blaming in the form of demonization to influence public perceptions of various other governments, to induce feelings of nationalism in the public. Blame can objectify people, groups, and nations, typically negatively influencing the intended subjects of propaganda, compromising their objectivity. Blame is utilized as a social-control technique.

In organizations

The flow of blame in an organization may be a primary indicator of that organization's robustness and integrity. Blame flowing downwards, from management to staff, or laterally between professionals or partner organizations, indicates organizational failure. In a blame culture, problem-solving is replaced by blame-avoidance. Blame coming from the top generates "fear, malaise, errors, accidents, and passive-aggressive responses from the bottom", with those at the bottom feeling powerless and lacking emotional safety. Employees have expressed that organizational blame culture made them fear prosecution for errors, accidents and thus unemployment, which may make them more reluctant to report accidents, since trust is crucial to encourage accident reporting. This makes it less likely that weak indicators of safety threats get picked up, thus preventing the organization from taking adequate measures to prevent minor problems from escalating into uncontrollable situations. Several issues identified in organizations with a blame culture contradicts high reliability organizations best practices. Organisational chaos, such as confused roles and responsibilities, is strongly associated with blame culture and workplace bullying. Blame culture promotes a risk aversive approach, which prevent from adequately assessing risks.

According to Mary Douglas, blame is systematically used in the micro politics of institutions, with three latent functions: explaining disasters; justifying allegiances, and stabilizing existing institutional regimes. Within a politically stable regime, blame tends to be asserted on the weak or unlucky one, but in a less stable regime, blame shifting may involve a battle between rival factions. Douglas was interested in how blame stabilizes existing power structures within institutions or social groups. She devised a two-dimensional typology of institutions, the first attribute being named "group", which is the strength of boundaries and social cohesion, the second "grid", the degree and strength of the hierarchy. According to Douglas, blame will fall on different entities depending on the institutional type. For markets, blame is used in power struggles between potential leaders. In bureaucracies, blame tends to flow downwards and is attributed to a failure to follow rules. In a clan, blame is asserted on outsiders or involves allegations of treachery, to suppress dissidence and strengthen the group's ties. In the 4th type, isolation, the individuals are facing the competitive pressures of the marketplace alone, in other words there is a condition of fragmentation with a loss of social cohesion, potentially leading to feelings of powerlessness and fatalism, and this type was renamed by various other authors into "donkey jobs". It is suggested that the progressive changes in managerial practices in healthcare is leading to an increase in donkey jobs.

The requirement of accountability and transparency, assumed to be key for good governance, worsen the behaviors of blame avoidance, both at the individual and institutional levels, as is observed in various domains such as politics and healthcare. Indeed, institutions tend to be risk-averse and blame-averse, and where the management of societal risks (the threats to society) and institutional risks (threats to the organizations managing the societal risks) are not aligned, there may be organizational pressures to prioritize the management of institutional risks at the expense of societal risks. Furthermore, "blame-avoidance behaviour at the expense of delivering core business is a well-documented organizational rationality". The willingness of maintaining one's reputation may be a key factor explaining the relationship between accountability and blame avoidance. This may produce a "risk colonization", where institutional risks are transferred to societal risks, as a strategy of risk management. Some researchers argue that there is "no risk-free lunch" and "no blame-free risk", an analogy to the "no free lunch" adage.

Just-world hypothesis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis 

The just-world fallacy or just-world hypothesis is the cognitive bias that a person's actions are inherently inclined to bring morally fair and fitting consequences to that person; thus, it is the assumption that all noble actions are eventually rewarded and all evil actions eventually punished. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of—a universal force that restores moral balance. This belief generally implies the existence of cosmic justice, destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, and/or order, and is often associated with a variety of fundamental fallacies, especially in regard to rationalizing people's suffering on the grounds that they "deserve" it.

The hypothesis popularly appears in the English language in various figures of speech that imply guaranteed negative reprisal, such as: "you got what was coming to you", "what goes around comes around", "chickens come home to roost", "everything happens for a reason", and "you reap what you sow". This hypothesis has been widely studied by social psychologists since Melvin J. Lerner conducted seminal work on the belief in a just world in the early 1960s. Research has continued since then, examining the predictive capacity of the hypothesis in various situations and across cultures, and clarifying and expanding the theoretical understandings of just-world beliefs.

Emergence

Many philosophers and social theorists have observed and considered the phenomenon of belief in a just world, going back to at least as early as the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, writing circa 180 CE, who argued against this belief. Lerner's work made the just-world hypothesis a focus of research in the field of social psychology.

Melvin Lerner

Lerner was prompted to study justice beliefs and the just-world hypothesis in the context of social psychological inquiry into negative social and societal interactions. Lerner saw his work as extending Stanley Milgram's work on obedience. He sought to answer the questions of how regimes that cause cruelty and suffering maintain popular support, and how people come to accept social norms and laws that produce misery and suffering.

Lerner's inquiry was influenced by repeatedly witnessing the tendency of observers to blame victims for their suffering. During his clinical training as a psychologist, he observed treatment of mentally ill persons by the health care practitioners with whom he worked. Although Lerner knew them to be kindhearted, educated people, they often blamed patients for the patients' own suffering. Lerner also describes his surprise at hearing his students derogate (disparage, belittle) the poor, seemingly oblivious to the structural forces that contribute to poverty. In a study on rewards, he observed that when one of two men was chosen at random to receive a reward for a task, that caused him to be more favorably evaluated by observers, even when the observers had been informed that the recipient of the reward was chosen at random. Existing social psychological theories, including cognitive dissonance, could not fully explain these phenomena. The desire to understand the processes that caused these phenomena led Lerner to conduct his first experiments on what is now called the just-world hypothesis.

Early evidence

In 1966, Lerner and his colleagues began a series of experiments that used shock paradigms to investigate observer responses to victimization. In the first of these experiments conducted at the University of Kansas, 72 female participants watched what appeared to be a confederate receiving electrical shocks under a variety of conditions. Initially, these observing participants were upset by the victim's apparent suffering. But as the suffering continued and observers remained unable to intervene, the observers began to reject and devalue the victim. Rejection and devaluation of the victim was greater when the observed suffering was greater. But when participants were told the victim would receive compensation for her suffering, the participants did not derogate the victim. Lerner and colleagues replicated these findings in subsequent studies, as did other researchers.

Theory

To explain these studies' findings, Lerner theorized that there was a prevalent belief in a just world. A just world is one in which actions and conditions have predictable, appropriate consequences. These actions and conditions are typically individuals' behaviors or attributes. The specific conditions that correspond to certain consequences are socially determined by a society's norms and ideologies. Lerner presents the belief in a just world as functional: it maintains the idea that one can influence the world in a predictable way. Belief in a just world functions as a sort of "contract" with the world regarding the consequences of behavior. This allows people to plan for the future and engage in effective, goal-driven behavior. Lerner summarized his findings and his theoretical work in his 1980 monograph The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion.

Lerner hypothesized that the belief in a just world is crucially important for people to maintain for their own well-being. But people are confronted daily with evidence that the world is not just: people suffer without apparent cause. Lerner explained that people use strategies to eliminate threats to their belief in a just world. These strategies can be rational or irrational. Rational strategies include accepting the reality of injustice, trying to prevent injustice or provide restitution, and accepting one's own limitations. Non-rational strategies include denial, withdrawal, and reinterpretation of the event.

There are a few modes of reinterpretation that could make an event fit the belief in a just world. One can reinterpret the outcome, the cause, and/or the character of the victim. In the case of observing the injustice of the suffering of innocent people, one major way to rearrange the cognition of an event is to interpret the victim of suffering as deserving. Specifically, observers can blame victims for their suffering on the basis of their behaviors and/or their characteristics. Much psychological research on the belief in a just world has focused on these negative social phenomena of victim blaming and victim derogation in different contexts.

An additional effect of this thinking is that individuals experience less personal vulnerability because they do not believe they have done anything to deserve or cause negative outcomes. This is related to the self-serving bias observed by social psychologists.

Many researchers have interpreted just-world beliefs as an example of causal attribution. In victim blaming, the causes of victimization are attributed to an individual rather than to a situation. Thus, the consequences of belief in a just world may be related to or explained in terms of particular patterns of causal attribution.

Alternatives

Veridical judgment

Others have suggested alternative explanations for the derogation of victims. One suggestion is that derogation effects are based on accurate judgments of a victim's character. In particular, in relation to Lerner's first studies, some have hypothesized that it would be logical for observers to derogate an individual who would allow himself to be shocked without reason. A subsequent study by Lerner challenged this alternative hypothesis by showing that individuals are only derogated when they actually suffer; individuals who agreed to undergo suffering but did not were viewed positively.

Guilt reduction

Another alternative explanation offered for the derogation of victims early in the development of the just-world hypothesis was that observers derogate victims to reduce their own feelings of guilt. Observers may feel responsible, or guilty, for a victim's suffering if they themselves are involved in the situation or experiment. In order to reduce the guilt, they may devalue the victim. Lerner and colleagues claim that there has not been adequate evidence to support this interpretation. They conducted one study that found derogation of victims occurred even by observers who were not implicated in the process of the experiment and thus had no reason to feel guilty.

Discomfort reduction

Alternatively, victim derogation and other strategies may only be ways to alleviate discomfort after viewing suffering. This would mean that the primary motivation is not to restore a belief in a just world, but to reduce discomfort caused by empathizing. Studies have shown that victim derogation does not suppress subsequent helping activity and that empathizing with the victim plays a large role when assigning blame. According to Ervin Staub, devaluing the victim should lead to lesser compensation if restoring belief in a just world was the primary motive; instead, there is virtually no difference in compensation amounts whether the compensation precedes or follows devaluation. Psychopathy has been linked to the lack of just-world maintaining strategies, possibly due to dampened emotional reactions and lack of empathy.

Additional evidence

After Lerner's first studies, other researchers replicated these findings in other settings in which individuals are victimized. This work, which began in the 1970s and continues today, has investigated how observers react to victims of random calamities like traffic accidents, as well as rape and domestic violence, illnesses, and poverty. Generally, researchers have found that observers of the suffering of innocent victims tend to both derogate and blame victims for their suffering. Observers thus maintain their belief in a just world by changing their cognitions about the victims' character.

In the early 1970s, social psychologists Zick Rubin and Letitia Anne Peplau developed a measure of belief in a just world. This measure and its revised form published in 1975 allowed for the study of individual differences in just-world beliefs. Much of the subsequent research on the just-world hypothesis used these measurement scales.

These studies on victims of violence, illness, and poverty and others like them have provided consistent support for the link between observers' just-world beliefs and their tendency to blame victims for their suffering. As a result, the existence of the just-world hypothesis as a psychological phenomenon has become widely accepted.

Violence

Researchers have looked at how observers react to victims of rape and other violence. In a formative experiment on rape and belief in a just world by Linda Carli and colleagues, researchers gave two groups of subjects a narrative about interactions between a man and a woman. The description of the interaction was the same until the end; one group received a narrative that had a neutral ending and the other group received a narrative that ended with the man raping the woman. Subjects judged the rape ending as inevitable and blamed the woman in the narrative for the rape on the basis of her behavior, but not her characteristics. These findings have been replicated repeatedly, including using a rape ending and a 'happy ending' (a marriage proposal).

Other researchers have found a similar phenomenon for judgments of battered partners. One study found that observers' labels of blame of female victims of relationship violence increase with the intimacy of the relationship. Observers blamed the perpetrator only in the most significant case of violence, in which a male struck an acquaintance.

Bullying

Researchers have employed the just-world hypothesis to understand bullying. Given other research on beliefs in a just world, it would be expected that observers would derogate and blame bullying victims, but the opposite has been found: individuals high in just-world belief have stronger anti-bullying attitudes. Other researchers have found that strong belief in a just world is associated with lower levels of bullying behavior. This finding is in keeping with Lerner's understanding of belief in a just world as functioning as a "contract" that governs behavior. There is additional evidence that belief in a just world is protective of the well-being of children and adolescents in the school environment, as has been shown for the general population.

Illness

Other researchers have found that observers judge sick people as responsible for their illnesses. One experiment showed that persons suffering from a variety of illnesses were derogated on a measure of attractiveness more than healthy individuals were. In comparison to healthy people, victim derogation was found for persons presenting with indigestion, pneumonia, and stomach cancer. Moreover, derogation was found to be higher for those suffering from more severe illnesses, except for those presenting with cancer. Stronger belief in a just world has also been found to correlate with greater derogation of AIDS victims.

Poverty

More recently, researchers have explored how people react to poverty through the lens of the just-world hypothesis. Strong belief in a just world is associated with blaming the poor, with weak belief in a just world associated with identifying external causes of poverty including world economic systems, war, and exploitation.

The self as victim

Some research on belief in a just world has examined how people react when they themselves are victimized. An early paper by Dr. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman found that rape victims often blame their own behavior, but not their own characteristics, for their victimization. It was hypothesized that this may be because blaming one's own behavior makes an event more controllable.

Theoretical refinement

Subsequent work on measuring belief in a just world has focused on identifying multiple dimensions of the belief. This work has resulted in the development of new measures of just-world belief and additional research. Hypothesized dimensions of just-world beliefs include belief in an unjust world, beliefs in immanent justice and ultimate justice, hope for justice, and belief in one's ability to reduce injustice. Other work has focused on looking at the different domains in which the belief may function; individuals may have different just-world beliefs for the personal domain, the sociopolitical domain, the social domain, etc. An especially fruitful distinction is between the belief in a just world for the self (personal) and the belief in a just world for others (general). These distinct beliefs are differentially associated with positive mental health.

Correlates

Researchers have used measures of belief in a just world to look at correlates of high and low levels of belief in a just world.

Limited studies have examined ideological correlates of the belief in a just world. These studies have found sociopolitical correlates of just-world beliefs, including right-wing authoritarianism and the Protestant work ethic. Studies have also found belief in a just world to be correlated with aspects of religiousness.

Studies of demographic differences, including gender and racial differences, have not shown systemic differences, but do suggest racial differences, with blacks and African Americans having the lowest levels of belief in a just world.

The development of measures of just-world beliefs has also allowed researchers to assess cross-cultural differences in just-world beliefs. Much research conducted shows that beliefs in a just world are evident cross-culturally. One study tested beliefs in a just world of students in 12 countries. This study found that in countries where the majority of inhabitants are powerless, belief in a just world tends to be weaker than in other countries. This supports the theory of the just-world hypothesis because the powerless have had more personal and societal experiences that provided evidence that the world is not just and predictable.

Belief in unjust world has been linked to increased self-handicapping, criminality, defensive coping, anger and perceived future risk. It may also serve as ego-protective belief for certain individuals by justifying maladaptive behavior.

Current research

Positive mental health effects

Although much of the initial work on belief in a just world focused on its negative social effects, other research suggests that belief in a just world is good, and even necessary, for mental health. Belief in a just world is associated with greater life satisfaction and well-being and less depressive affect. Researchers are actively exploring the reasons why the belief in a just world might have this relationship to mental health; it has been suggested that such beliefs could be a personal resource or coping strategy that buffers stress associated with daily life and with traumatic events. This hypothesis suggests that belief in a just world can be understood as a positive illusion. In line with this perspective, recent research also suggests that belief in a just world may explain the known statistical association between religiosity/spirituality and psychological well-being 

Some studies also show that beliefs in a just world are correlated with internal locus of control. Strong belief in a just world is associated with greater acceptance of and less dissatisfaction with negative events in one's life. This may be one way in which belief in a just world affects mental health. Others have suggested that this relationship holds only for beliefs in a just world for oneself. Beliefs in a just world for others are related instead to the negative social phenomena of victim blaming and victim derogation observed in other studies.

International research

More than 40 years after Lerner's seminal work on belief in a just world, researchers continue to study the phenomenon. Work continues primarily in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Researchers in Germany have contributed disproportionately to recent research. Their work resulted in a volume edited by Lerner and German researcher Leo Montada titled Responses to Victimizations and Belief in a Just World (1998).

Victim blaming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming 

Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. The study of victimology seeks to mitigate the prejudice against victims, and the perception that victims are in any way responsible for the actions of offenders.^[2] There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as the greater tendency to blame victims of rape than victims of robbery if victims and perpetrators knew each other prior to the commission of the crime.

Coining of the phrase

Psychologist William Ryan coined the phrase "blaming the victim" in his 1971 book of that title. In the book, Ryan described victim blaming as an ideology used to justify racism and social injustice against black people in the United States. Ryan wrote the book to refute Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 work The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (usually simply referred to as the Moynihan Report).

Moynihan had concluded that three centuries of oppression of black people, and in particular with what he calls the uniquely cruel structure of American slavery as opposed to its Latin American counterparts, had created a long series of chaotic disruptions within the black family structure which, at the time of the report, manifested itself in high rates of unwed births, absent fathers, and single mother households in black families. Moynihan then correlated these familial outcomes, which he considered undesirable, to the relatively poorer rates of employment, educational achievement, and financial success found among the black population. The black family structure is also being affected by media through the children. The Black family is usually portrayed as gang affiliated, a single-parent or very violent. Aggression and violent behavior in children has been linked to television programming. Moynihan advocated the implementation of government programs designed to strengthen the black nuclear family.

Ryan objected that Moynihan then located the proximate cause of the plight of black Americans in the prevalence of a family structure in which the father was often sporadically, if at all, present, and the mother was often dependent on government aid to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for her children. Ryan's critique cast the Moynihan theories as attempts to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.

History

Although Ryan popularized the phrase, other scholars had identified the phenomenon of victim blaming. In 1947 Theodor W. Adorno defined what would be later called "blaming the victim," as "one of the most sinister features of the Fascist character". Shortly thereafter Adorno and three other professors at the University of California, Berkeley formulated their influential and highly debated F-scale (F for fascist), published in The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which included among the fascist traits of the scale the "contempt for everything discriminated against or weak." A typical expression of victim blaming is the "asking for it" idiom, e.g. "she was asking for it" said of a victim of violence or sexual assault.

Secondary victimization of sexual and other assault victims

Hundreds gathered at the Alberta Legislature grounds in Edmonton to protest against victim blaming

Secondary victimization is the re-traumatization of the sexual assault, abuse, surgical battery, medical malpractice, or rape victim through the responses of individuals and institutions. Types of secondary victimization include victim blaming, disbelieving the victim's story, minimizing the severity of the attack, and inappropriate post-assault treatment by medical personnel or other organizations. Secondary victimization is especially common in cases of drug-facilitated, acquaintance, military sexual trauma and statutory rape.

Sexual assault victims experience stigmatization based on rape myths. A female rape victim is especially stigmatized in patrilineal cultures with strong customs and taboos regarding sex and sexuality. For example, a society may view a female rape victim (especially one who was previously a virgin) as "damaged". Victims in these cultures may suffer isolation, physical and psychological abuse, slut-shaming, public humiliation rituals, be disowned by friends and family, be prohibited from marrying, be divorced if already married, or even be killed. However, even in many developed countries, including some sectors of United States society, misogyny remains culturally ingrained.

One example of a sexist allegation against female victims of sexual assault is that wearing provocative clothing stimulates sexual aggression in men who believe that women wearing body-revealing clothes are actively trying to seduce a sexual partner. Such accusations against victims stem from the assumption that sexually revealing clothing conveys consent for sexual actions, irrespective of willful verbal consent. Research has yet to prove that attire is a significant causal factor in determining who is assaulted.

Victim blaming is also exemplified when a victim of sexual assault is found at fault for performing actions which reduce their ability to resist or refuse consent, such as consuming alcohol. Victim advocacy groups and medical professionals are educating young adults on the definition of consent, and the importance of refraining from victim blaming. Most institutions have adopted the concept of affirmative consent and that refraining from sexual activity while under the influence is the safest choice.

In efforts to discredit alleged sexual assault victims in court, a defense attorney may delve into an accuser's personal history, a common practice that also has the purposeful effect of making the victim so uncomfortable they choose not to proceed. This attack on character, especially one pointing out promiscuity, makes the argument that women who lead "high risk" lifestyles (promiscuity, drug use) are not real victims of rape.

Findings on Rape Myth Acceptance have supported feminist claims that sexism is at the root of female rape victim blaming.

A 2009 study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence of male victims of sexual assault concludes that male rape victim blaming is usually done so because of social constructs of masculinity. Some effects of these kind of rape cases include a loss of masculinity, confusion about their sexual orientation, and a sense of failure in behaving as men should.

Victims of an unwanted sexual encounter usually develop psychological problems such as depression or sexual violence specific PTSD known as rape trauma syndrome.

Ideal victim

An ideal victim is one who is afforded the status of victimhood due to unavoidable circumstances that put the individual at a disadvantage. One can apply this theory to any crime including and especially sexual assault. Nils Christie, a Norwegian criminology professor, has been theorizing about the concept of the ideal victim since the 1980s. In his research he gives two examples, one of an old woman who is attacked on her way home from visiting her family and the other of a man who is attacked at a bar by someone he knew. He describes the old woman as an ideal victim because she could not avoid being in the location that she was, she did not know her attacker, and she could not fight off her attacker. The man, however, could have avoided being at a bar, knew his attacker, and should have been able to fight off his attacker, being younger and a man.

When applying the ideal victim theory to sexual assault victims, often judicial proceedings define an ideal victim as one who resists their attacker and exercises caution in risky situations, despite law reforms to extinguish these fallacious requirements. When victims are not ideal they are at risk for being blamed for their attack because they are not considered real victims of rape. Because they do not fit the criteria being laid out in the rape law, they cannot be considered real victims and thereby their attacker will not be prosecuted.

A victim who is not considered an ideal, or real victim, is one who leads a "high risk" lifestyle, partaking in drugs or alcohol, or is perceived as promiscuous. A victim who intimately knows their attacker is also not considered an ideal victim. An example of a sexual assault victim who is not ideal is a prostitute because they lead a high risk lifestyle. The perception is that these behaviors discount the credibility of a sexual assault victim's claim or that the behaviors and associations create the mistaken assumption of consent. Some of or all of the blame of the assault is then placed on these victims, and so they are not worthy of having their case presented in court. These perceptions persist in court rulings despite a shift in laws favoring affirmative consent- meaning that the participants in a sexual activity give a verbal affirmation rather than one participant who neither answers negatively nor positively. In other words, affirmative consent is yes means yes, no means no and no verbal answer also means no.

A study focusing on the help-seeking process of underage victims of sexual violence established that the ideal victim stereotype played a pivotal part in others’ attitudes towards the victim. Victims conforming with the stereotype were approached with compassion, support, and adequate guidance, in contrast to the victims who diverged from the stereotype and were blamed, shamed, and seldom guided to further action. The only victims who received the help they needed (e.g., were able to tell someone or report the crime) were the ones conforming with the ideal victim stereotype; however, the majority of victims do not fit the stereotype.

In addition to an ideal victim, there must be an ideal perpetrator for a crime to be considered ideal. The ideal attacker does not know their victim and is a completely non-sympathetic figure- one who is considered sub-human, an individual lacking morals. An attacker that knows their victim is not considered an ideal attacker, nor is someone who seems morally ordinary. Cases of intimate partner violence are not considered ideal because the victim knows their attacker. Husbands and wives are not ideal victims or perpetrators because they are intimately familiar with each other.

Global situation

Many different cultures across the globe have formulated different degrees of victim blaming for different scenarios such as rape, hate crimes, and domestic abuse. Victim blaming is common around the world, especially in cultures where it is socially acceptable and advised to treat certain groups of people as lesser. For example, in Somalia victims of sexual abuse consistently endure social ostracization and harassment. One specific example is the kidnapping and rape of 14-year old Fatima: when the police arrived, both Fatima and her rapist were arrested. While they did not detain the offender for long, the officers held Fatima captive for a month and a prison guard continually raped her during that time.

In February 2016, the organisations International Alert and UNICEF published a study revealing that girls and women released from captivity by Nigeria's insurgency group Boko Haram often face rejection by their communities and families. Their children born of sexual violence faced even more discrimination.

Acid attacks on South Asian women, when people throw acid on women in an attempt to punish them for their perceived wrongdoings, are another example of victim-blaming. For instance, in New Delhi in 2005, a group of men threw acid on a 16-year-old girl because they believed she provoked the advances of a man. In Chinese culture, victim blaming is often associated with the crime of rape, as women are expected to resist rape using physical force. Thus, if rape occurs, it is considered to be at least partly the woman’s fault and her virtue is inevitably called into question.

In Western culture victim blaming has been largely recognized as a problematic way to view a situation, however this does not exempt Westerners from being guilty of the action. A recent example of Western victim blaming would be a civil trial held in 2013 where the Los Angeles School District blamed a 14-year-old girl for the sexual abuse she endured from her middle school teacher. The District's lawyer argued that the minor was responsible for the prevention of the abuse, putting the entire fault on the victim and exempting the perpetrator of any responsibility. Despite his efforts to convince the court that the victim must be blamed, the ruling stated that no minor student that has been sexually assaulted by his or her teacher is responsible for the prevention of that sexual assault.

Opposing views

Roy Baumeister, a social and personality psychologist, argued that blaming the victim is not necessarily always fallacious. He argued that showing the victim's possible role in an altercation may be contrary to typical explanations of violence and cruelty, which incorporate the trope of the innocent victim. According to Baumeister, in the classic telling of "the myth of pure evil," the innocent, well-meaning victims are going about their business when they are suddenly assaulted by wicked, malicious evildoers. Baumeister describes the situation as a possible distortion by both the perpetrator and the victim; the perpetrator may minimize the offense while the victim maximizes it, and so accounts of the incident shouldn't be immediately taken as objective truths.

In context, Baumeister refers to the common behavior of the aggressor seeing themselves as more of the "victim" than the abused, justifying a horrific act by way of their "moral complexity". This usually stems from an "excessive sensitivity" to insults, which he finds as a consistent pattern in abusive husbands. Essentially, the abuse the perpetrator administers is generally excessive, in comparison to the act/acts that they claim as to have provoked them.

Horseshoe theory and nonpolarized views

Some scholars make the argument that some of the attitudes that are described as victim blaming and the victimologies that are said to counteract them are both extreme and similar to each other, an example of the horseshoe theory. For instance, they argue that the claim that "women wearing provocative clothing cause rape" is as demeaning to men as it is to women as depicting men as incapable of controlling their sexual desire is misandrist and denies men full agency, while also arguing that the generalization that women do not lie about rape (or any generalization about women not doing some things because of their gender) is misogynist by its implicit assumption that women act by simple default action modes which is incompatible with full agency. These scholars argue that it is important to impartially assess the evidence in each criminal trial individually and that any generalization based on statistics would change the situation from one where the control of evidence makes false reporting difficult to one where lack of individual control of the alleged crime makes it easier to file false reports and that statistics collected in the former situation would not be possible to apply to the latter situation. While the scholars make a distinction between actual victim blaming and rule by law that they consider to be falsely lumped with victim blaming in radical feminist rhetorics, they also advocate more protection from ad hominem questions to alleged victims about past life history and that the questions should focus on what is relevant for the specific alleged crime. They also cite examples that they consider to be cases of the horseshoe theory applied to the question of victim blaming. This includes cases in which psychologists who have testified on behalf of the prosecution in trials in which breast size have been used as a measure of female age when classifying pornographic cartoons as child pornography and been praised by feminists for it, and later the same psychologists have used the same psychological arguments when testifying on behalf of the defense in statutory rape cases and getting the defendant acquitted by claiming that the victim's breasts looked like those of an adult woman (considered by these scholars to be victim blaming based on appearance) and been praised by men's rights groups for it. It also includes the possibility that biopsychiatric models that consider sexual criminality hereditary and that are advocated by some feminists may blame victims of incest abuse for being genetically related to their abusers and thereby dissuading them from reporting abuse.

Other analysts of victim blaming discourse who neither support most of the phenomena that are described as victim blaming nor most of the measures that are marketed as countermeasures against such point at the existence of other ways of discovering and punishing crimes with victims besides the victim reporting the crime. Not only are there police patrols and possible eyewitnesses, but these analysts also argue that neighbors can overhear and report crimes that take place within the house such as domestic violence. For that reason along with the possibility of many witnesses turning up over time if the crime is ongoing long term as domestic abuse is generally said to be which would make some of the witnesses likely to be considered believable, analysts of this camp of thought argue that the main problem that prevent crimes from being successfully prosecuted is offender profiling that disbelieve the capacity and/or probability of many criminals to commit the crime, rather than disbelief or blaming of victim reports. These analysts cite international comparisons that show that the percentage of male on female cases in the statistics of successfully prosecuted domestic violence is not higher in countries that apply gender feminist theories about patriarchal structures than in countries that apply supposedly antifeminist evolutionary psychology profiling of sex differences in aggressiveness, impulse control and empathy, arguing that the criminal justice system prioritizing cases in which they believe the suspect most likely to be guilty makes evolutionary psychology at least as responsible as gender feminism for leaving domestic violence cases with female offenders undiscovered no matter if the victim is male or female. The analysts argue that many problems that are often attributed to victim blaming are instead due to offender profiling, and suggest randomized investigations instead of psychological profiling of suspected offenders.

Examples

A myth holds that Jews went passively "like sheep to the slaughter" during the Holocaust, which is considered by many writers, including Emil Fackenheim, to be a form of victim blaming. Secondary antisemitism is a type of antisemitism caused by non-Jewish Europeans' attempts to shift blame for the Holocaust onto the Jews, often summed up by the claim that "The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz."

In recent years, the issue of victim blaming has gained notoriety and become widely recognized in the media, particularly in the context of feminism, as women have often been blamed for behaving in ways that encourage harassment.

United States

In a case that became infamous in 2011, an 11-year-old female rape victim who suffered repeated gang rapes in Cleveland, Texas, was accused by a defense attorney of being a seductress who lured men to their doom. "Like the spider and the fly. Wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor', said the spider to the fly?", he asked a witness. The New York Times ran an article uncritically reporting on the way many in the community blamed the victim, for which the newspaper later apologized.

Germany

In 2016, in the wake of New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, the mayor of Cologne Henriette Reker came under heavy criticism, as her response appeared to blame the victims. She called for women to follow a "code of conduct," including staying at an "arm's length" from strangers. By the evening of 5 January, #einearmlänge ("an arm's length") became one of Germany's top-trending hashtags on Twitter. Reker called a crisis meeting with the police in response to the incidents. Reker called it "completely improper" to link the perpetrators to refugees.

Italy

Coverage of the 2016 Murder of Ashley Ann Olsen, an American murdered in Italy during a sexual encounter with a Senegalese immigrant, focused on the victim blaming in cross-cultural encounters.

India

In a case that attracted worldwide coverage, when a woman was raped and killed in Delhi in December 2012, some Indian government officials and political leaders blamed the victim for various things, mostly based on conjecture. Many of the people involved later apologized.

In August 2017, the hashtag #AintNoCinderella trended on social media India, in response to a high-profile instance of victim-blaming. After Varnika Kundu was stalked and harassed by two men on her way home late at night, Bharatiya Janata Party Vice President Ramveer Bhatti addressed the incident with a claim that Kundu was somehow at fault for being out late by herself. Social media users took to Twitter and Instagram to challenge the claim that women should not be out late at night, and if they are, they are somehow "asking for it". Hundreds of women shared photos of themselves staying out past midnight, dressing boldly, and behaving in (harmless) ways that tend to be condemned in old-fashioned, anti-feminist ideology.

Australia

Leigh Leigh, born Leigh Rennea Mears, was a 14-year-old girl from Fern Bay, Australia, who was murdered on 3 November 1989. While attending a 16-year-old boy's birthday party at Stockton Beach, Leigh was assaulted by a group of boys after she returned distressed from a sexual encounter on the beach that a reviewing judge later called non-consensual. After being kicked and spat on by the group, Leigh left the party. Her naked body was found in the sand dunes nearby the following morning, with severe genital damage and a crushed skull. Leigh's murder received considerable attention in the media. Initially focusing on her sexual assault and murder, media attention later concentrated more on the lack of parental supervision and the drugs and alcohol at the party, and on Leigh's sexuality. The media coverage of the murder has been cited as an example of victim blaming.

Former Australian Senator Fraser Anning was sharply criticised for his comments about the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, in which 51 Muslim worshippers were killed. He claimed that immigration of "Muslim fanatics" led to the attacks, and that "while Muslims may have been victims today, usually they are the perpetrators". Anning also stated that the massacre "highlights...the growing fear within our community...of the increasing Muslim presence". The comments received international attention and were overwhelmingly criticised as being insensitive and racist, and sympathetic to the views of the perpetrator.