Blame

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Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, or making negative statements about an individual or group that their actions or inaction 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, it may be said that their 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.

Contents

Philosophy

Philosophers discuss the concept of blame as one of the reactive attitudes, a term coined by P. F. Strawson, which includes attitudes like blame, praise, gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness. [1] In contrast to physical or intellectual concepts, reactive attitudes are formed from the point of view of an active participant regarding objects. This is to be distinguished from the objective standpoint.

Neurology

Blaming appears to relate to include brain activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). [2] The amygdala has been found [3] to contribute when we blame others, but not when we respond to their positive actions. [4]

Sociology and psychology

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

Blaming provides a way of devaluing others, with the result that the blamer feels superior, seeing others as less worthwhile and/or making the blamer "perfect". Off-loading blame means putting the other person down by emphasizing their flaws. [5]

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. [6]

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. [7]

Counseling responses found helpful in reducing self-blame include: [8]

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. [9]

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. The fundamental attribution error concept explains how people tend to blame negative behavior more on the victims traits than the situation at the time of the event. [10]

Individual blame versus system blame

In sociology, individual blame is the tendency of a group or society to hold the individual responsible for their 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. [11]

In complex international organizations, such as enforcers of national and supranational policies and regulations, the blame is usually attributed to the last echelon, the implementing actors. [12]

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, as well as 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.[ citation needed ] Blame is utilized as a social-control technique.[ citation needed ]

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 and/or 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 and/or long-term 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 contradict the best practices adopted by high reliability organizations. [13] [14] Organisational chaos, such as confused roles and responsibilities, is strongly associated with blame culture and workplace bullying. [14] [15] Blame culture promotes a risk aversive approach, which prevent organizations and their agents from adequately assessing risks. [14] [15] [16]

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. [15]

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, [17] as is observed in various domains such as politics [18] and healthcare. [19] 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) [20] are not aligned, there may be organizational pressures to prioritize the management of institutional risks at the expense of societal risks. [21] [22] Furthermore, "blame-avoidance behaviour at the expense of delivering core business is a well-documented organizational rationality". [21] The willingness of maintaining one's reputation may be a key factor explaining the relationship between accountability and blame avoidance. [23] This may produce a "risk colonization", where institutional risks are transferred to societal risks, as a strategy of risk management. [21] [24] [25] Some researchers argue that there is "no risk-free lunch" and "no blame-free risk", an analogy to the "no free lunch" adage. [26]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guilt (emotion)</span> Cognitive or an emotional experience

Guilt is a moral emotion that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that they have compromised their own standards of conduct or have violated universal moral standards and bear significant responsibility for that violation. Guilt is closely related to the concept of remorse, regret, as well as shame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victimology</span> Study of victimization

Victimology is the study of victimization, including the psychological effects on victims, the relationship between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system—that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials—and the connections between victims and other social groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scapegoating</span> Practice of singling out any party for unmerited negative treatment or blame

Scapegoating is the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent negative treatment. Scapegoating may be conducted by individuals against individuals, individuals against groups, groups against individuals, and groups against groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fundamental attribution error</span> Psychological phenomenon

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error (FAE) is a cognitive attribution bias in which observers underemphasize situational and environmental factors for the behavior of an actor while overemphasizing dispositional or personality factors. In other words, observers tend to overattribute the behaviors of others to their personality (e.g., he is late because he's selfish) and underattribute them to the situation or context (e.g., he is late because he got stuck in traffic). Although personality traits and predispositions are considered to be observable facts in psychology, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.

A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors. When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more credit for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting their self-esteem from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem. For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions might be exhibiting a self-serving bias. Studies have shown that similar attributions are made in various situations, such as the workplace, interpersonal relationships, sports, and consumer decisions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-handicapping</span> Cognitive strategy

Self-handicapping is a cognitive strategy by which people avoid effort in the hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem. It was first theorized by Edward E. Jones and Steven Berglas, according to whom self-handicaps are obstacles created, or claimed, by the individual in anticipation of failing performance.

Verbal abuse is a type of psychological/mental abuse that involves the use of oral, gestured, and written language directed to a victim. Verbal abuse can include the act of harassing, labeling, insulting, scolding, rebuking, or excessive yelling towards an individual. It can also include the use of derogatory terms, the delivery of statements intended to frighten, humiliate, denigrate, or belittle a person. These kinds of attacks may result in mental and/or emotional distress for the victim.

Rape is a traumatic experience that affects the victim (survivor) in a physical, psychological, and sociological way. Even though the effects and aftermath of rape differ among victims, individuals tend to suffer from similar issues found within these three categories. Long-term reactions may involve the development of coping mechanisms that will either benefit the victim, such as social support, or inhibit their recovery. Seeking support and professional resources may assist the victim in numerous ways.

Attribution is a term used in psychology which deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience, as being either external or internal. Models to explain this process are called Attribution theory. Psychological research into attribution began with the work of Fritz Heider in the early 20th century, and the theory was further advanced by Harold Kelley and Bernard Weiner. Heider first introduced the concept of perceived 'locus of causality' to define the perception of one's environment. For instance, an experience may be perceived as being caused by factors outside the person's control (external) or it may be perceived as the person's own doing (internal). These initial perceptions are called attributions. Psychologists use these attributions to better understand an individual's motivation and competence. The theory is of particular interest to employers who use it to increase worker motivation, goal orientation, and productivity.

Workplace revenge, or workplace retaliation, refers to the general action of purposeful retaliation within the workplace. Retaliation often involves a power imbalance; the retaliator is usually someone with more power in the workplace than the victim, and retaliation may be done to silence the victim so the retaliator can avoid accountability for workplace bullying, workplace harassment, or other misbehaviors in the workplace. Retaliation, legally, refers to actions taken as punishment for legally permitted behaviors: disciplinary actions taken by employers in reaction to behaviors that are counter to applicable laws or to established institutional policies are permitted as part of the employer's ability to control the work environment.

The just-world fallacy, or just-world hypothesis, is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will necessarily have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. For example, the assumptions that noble actions will eventually be rewarded and evil actions will eventually be punished fall under this fallacy. In other words, the just-world fallacy is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of— either a universal force that restores moral balance or a universal connection between the nature of actions and their results. This belief generally implies the existence of cosmic justice, destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, order, or the anglophone colloquial use of "karma". It is often associated with a variety of fundamental fallacies, especially in regard to rationalizing suffering on the grounds that the sufferers "deserve" it. This is called victim blaming.

Victimization refers to a person being made into a victim by someone else and can take on psychological as well as physical forms, both of which are damaging to victims. Forms of victimization include bullying or peer victimization, physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, robbery, and assault. Some of these forms of victimization are commonly associated with certain populations, but they can happen to others as well. For example, bullying or peer victimization is most commonly studied in children and adolescents but also takes place between adults. Although anyone may be victimized, particular groups may be more susceptible to certain types of victimization and as a result to the symptoms and consequences that follow. Individuals respond to victimization in a wide variety of ways, so noticeable symptoms of victimization will vary from person to person. These symptoms may take on several different forms, be associated with specific forms of victimization, and be moderated by individual characteristics of the victim and/or experiences after victimization.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee's behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. This behavior can harm the organization, other people within it, and other people and organizations outside it, including employers, other employees, suppliers, clients, patients and citizens. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.

Social undermining is the expression of negative emotions directed towards a particular person or negative evaluations of the person as a way to prevent the person from achieving their goals.

Blame in organizations may flow between management and staff, or laterally between professionals or partner organizations. In a blame culture, problem-solving is replaced by blame-avoidance. Blame shifting may exist between rival factions. Maintaining one's reputation may be a key factor explaining the relationship between accountability and blame avoidance. The blame culture is a serious issue in certain sectors such as safety-critical domains.

Victim mentality is a psychological concept referring to a mindset in which a person, or group of people, tends to recognize or consider themselves a victim of the negative actions of others. In some cases, those with a victim mentality have in fact been the victim of wrongdoing by others or have otherwise suffered misfortune through no fault of their own. The term is also used in reference to the tendency for blaming one's misfortunes on somebody else's misdeeds, which is also referred to as victimism.

Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.

Measures of guilt and shame are used by mental health professionals to determine an individual's propensity towards the self-conscious feelings of guilt or shame.

Self-blame is a cognitive process in which an individual attributes the occurrence of a stressful event to oneself. The direction of blame often has implications for individuals’ emotions and behaviors during and following stressful situations. Self-blame is a common reaction to stressful events and has certain effects on how individuals adapt. Types of self-blame are hypothesized to contribute to depression, and self-blame is a component of self-directed emotions like guilt and self-disgust. Because of self-blame's commonality in response to stress and its role in emotion, self-blame should be examined using psychology's perspectives on stress and coping. This article will attempt to give an overview of the contemporary study on self-blame in psychology.

Attributions for poverty is a theory concerned with what people believe about the causes of poverty. These beliefs are defined in terms of attribution theory, which is a social psychological perspective on how people make causal explanations about events in the world. In forming attributions, people rely on the information that is available to them in the moment, and their heuristics, or mental shortcuts. When considering the causes of poverty, people form attributions using the same tools: the information they have and mental shortcuts that are based on their experiences. Consistent with the literature on heuristics, people often rely on shortcuts to make sense of the causes of their own behavior and that of others, which often results in biased attributions. This information leads to perceptions about the causes of poverty, and in turn, ideas about how to eradicate poverty.

References

  1. ↑ Strawson, P. F. (1962). "Freedom and Resentment" Proceedings of the British Academy 48:187-211.
  2. ↑ Hoffman, Morris B. (2014). The Punisher's Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury. Cambridge Studies in Economics, Choice, and Society. Cambridge University Press. p. 68. ISBN   9781107038066 . Retrieved 2014-05-22. Our adult brains [...] have dedicated circuits devoted to the assessment of intentionality and harm, and to the calculation of blame based on those two assessments, using intent as the main driver and harm only as a tiebreaker. Part of those blaming circuits lie in a region called the temporoparietal junction, or TPJ. It is an area of the cortex roughly even with the top of the ears.
  3. ↑ amygdala has been found
  4. ↑ Ngo, Lawrence; Kelly, Meagan; Coutlee, Christopher G; Carter, R McKell; Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter; Huettel, Scott A (2015). "Two Distinct Moral Mechanisms for Ascribing and Denying Intentionality". Scientific Reports. 5: 17390. Bibcode:2015NatSR...517390N. doi:10.1038/srep17390. PMC   4669441 . PMID   26634909. Based on converging behavioral and neural evidence, we demonstrate that there is no single underlying mechanism. Instead, two distinct mechanisms together generate the asymmetry. Emotion drives ascriptions of intentionality for negative consequences, while the consideration of statistical norms leads to the denial of intentionality for positive consequences.
  5. ↑ Brown, N.W., Coping With Infuriating, Mean, Critical People – The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern (2006)
  6. ↑ Braiker, H.B., Who's Pulling Your Strings? How to Break The Cycle of Manipulation (2006)
  7. ↑ Frazier, P.A.; Mortensen, H.; Steward, J. (2005). "Coping Strategies as Mediators of the Relations Among Perceived Control and Distress in Sexual Assault Survivors". Journal of Counseling Psychology. 52 (3): 267–78. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.52.3.267.
  8. ↑ Matsushita-Arao, Y. (1997). Self-blame and depression among forcible rape survivors. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering. 57(9-B). p. 5925.
  9. ↑ Branscombe, N.R.; Wohl, M.J.A.; Owen, S.; Allison, J.A.; N'gbala, A. (2003). Counterfactual Thinking, Blame Assignment, and Well-Being in Rape Victims. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 25(4), p. 265, 9p.
  10. ↑ Feigenson, Neal (2000). Legal blame: How jurors think and talk about accidents. Washington: American Psychological Association. doi:10.1037/10358-000. ISBN   978-1-55798-677-1.
  11. ↑ Jeanna Bryner: Workplace Blame Is Contagious and Detrimental, LiveScience, 2010-01-19, citing the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology .
  12. ↑ Rittberger, Berthold; Schwarzenbeck, Helena; Zangl, Bernhard (July 2017). "Where Does the Buck Stop? Explaining Public Responsibility Attributions in Complex International Institutions". JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies. 55 (4): 909–924. doi:10.1111/jcms.12524. hdl: 10.1111/jcms.12524 . S2CID   157749185.
  13. ↑ McLendon, J.; Weinberg, G.M. (July 1996). "Beyond blaming: congruence in large systems development projects". IEEE Software. 13 (4): 33–42. doi:10.1109/52.526830.
  14. 1 2 3 Milch, Vibeke; Laumann, Karin (February 2016). "Interorganizational complexity and organizational accident risk: A literature review". Safety Science (Review). 82: 9–17. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2015.08.010. hdl: 11250/2452901 .
  15. 1 2 3 Rudge, Trudy (2016). (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings: A Critical Approach. Routledge. ISBN   9781317189190.
  16. ↑ Hollnagel, Erik; Braithwaite, Jeffrey (2019). Resilient Health Care. CRC Press. ISBN   9781317065166.
  17. ↑ Hinterleitner, Markus; Sager, Fritz (26 May 2016). "Anticipatory and reactive forms of blame avoidance: of foxes and lions". European Political Science Review. 9 (4): 587–606. doi: 10.1017/S1755773916000126 .
  18. ↑ Hood, Christopher (June 2007). "What happens when transparency meets blame-avoidance?". Public Management Review. 9 (2): 191–210. doi:10.1080/14719030701340275. S2CID   154987310.
  19. ↑ McGivern, Gerry; Fischer, Michael (2010). "Medical regulation, spectacular transparency and the blame business". Journal of Health Organization and Management. 24 (6): 597–610. doi:10.1108/14777261011088683. PMID   21155435.
  20. ↑ Rothstein, Henry (September 2006). "The institutional origins of risk: A new agenda for risk research". Health, Risk & Society (Editorial). 8 (3): 215–221. doi:10.1080/13698570600871646. S2CID   146426570. Used only for clarifying what are societal risks and institutional risks{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  21. 1 2 3 Rothstein, Henry; Huber, Michael; Gaskell, George (February 2006). "A theory of risk colonization: The spiralling regulatory logics of societal and institutional risk" (PDF). Economy and Society. 35 (1): 91–112. doi:10.1080/03085140500465865. S2CID   143932088.
  22. ↑ Hood, Christopher; Rothstein, Henry (26 July 2016). "Risk Regulation Under Pressure" (PDF). Administration & Society. 33 (1): 21–53. doi:10.1177/00953990122019677. S2CID   154316481.
  23. ↑ Busuioc, E. Madalina; Lodge, Martin (April 2016). "The Reputational Basis of Public Accountability" (PDF). Governance. 29 (2): 247–263. doi:10.1111/gove.12161. S2CID   143427109.
  24. ↑ Manning, Louise; Luning, Pieternel A; Wallace, Carol A (19 September 2019). "The Evolution and Cultural Framing of Food Safety Management Systems—Where From and Where Next?". Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety (Review). 18 (6): 1770–1792. doi: 10.1111/1541-4337.12484 . PMID   33336962.
  25. ↑ Davis, Courtney; Abraham, John (August 2011). "A comparative analysis of risk management strategies in European Union and United States pharmaceutical regulation". Health, Risk & Society (Review). 13 (5): 413–431. doi:10.1080/13698575.2011.596191. S2CID   71466498.
  26. ↑ Hood, Christopher (28 March 2014). "The Risk Game and the Blame Game". Government and Opposition. 37 (1): 15–37. doi:10.1111/1477-7053.00085. S2CID   143397032.

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