Ok, E. et al. (2021)

Ok, E., Qian, Y., Strejcek, B., Aquino, K. (2021). Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(6), 1634–1661. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000329

“Fortune and human imperfection assure that at some point in life everyone will experience suffering, disadvantage, or mistreatment. When this happens, there will be some who face their burdens in silence, treating it as a private matter they must work out for themselves, and there will others who make a public spectacle of their sufferings, label themselves as victims, and demand compensation for their pain. This latter response is what interests us in this series of studies. Much research documents the intrapsychic and social costs of being a victim (Bar-Tal, Chernyak-Hai, Schori, & Gundar, 2009; Taylor, Wood, & Lichtman, 1983; Zur, 2013), yet the increasing presence of individuals and groups publicly claiming victim status has led many observers to conclude that Western societies have developed a culture of victimization that makes victim-claiming advantageous (Campbell & Manning, 2018).” “… victim signaling can yield many positive personal and social outcomes, such as helping people heal and raising awareness about the conditions that lead to victimization. Our article focuses on a different set of questions associated with victim signaling, including an examination of its functionality as a social influence tactic, how its effectiveness can be maximized by combining it with a virtue signal, who is likely to emit this dual signal, and whether the frequency of signaling virtuous victimhood can predict certain behaviors and judgments.” “Our first three studies demonstrate how a perceived victim signal can lead others to transfer resources to a victim, but that the motivation to do so is amplified when the victim signal is paired with a virtue signal. Potential benefactors of putative victims reported greater willingness to transfer both monetary and nonmonetary resources (i.e., time and effort) to a target, whether a stranger (Study 1a & 1b) or a personally known other (Study 1c), if they were also perceived as being virtuous, compared with when they were perceived as being a nonvictim, merely a victim, or a nonvirtuous victim. This finding contributes to an emerging stream of research on competitive victimhood (see Graso et al., 2019; Noor et al., 2012; Sullivan, Landau, Branscombe et al., 2012) by suggesting that individuals or groups can gain an advantage in the “victim space” by emitting signals that convey not only need but also moral worth and deservingness. In a world with many potential victims, this dual signal can differentiate an individual or a victim group from others who might also be clamoring for its resources, making it a highly effective social influence tool.” “Given the strategic value of this tool, another premise of our article is to direct attention to its potential use as a tactic for self-advancement and goal pursuit. We hypothesized that individuals with Dark Triad traits, particularly those with a Machiavellian profile, would be more likely to emit virtuous victim signals than those who do not have these traits. The functional value of this signal in an environment that is sensitive and responsive to the pleas of victims makes it reasonable to surmise that some people will repeatedly emit this signal in an opportunistic manner to initiate nonreciprocal resource transfer.” “In Study 2b, we show that people high in the Dark Triad traits emit the dual signal more frequently. Importantly, the predictive power of the Dark Triad was found even after controlling for a set of demographic and socioeconomic variables that are frequently reported in past studies in intergroup prejudice literature as increasing one’s likelihood of experiencing various forms of disadvantage and mistreatment in Western societies (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, physical disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status). We also observed a positive correlation between the Dark Triad scores and the frequency of emitting the virtuous victim signal in Studies 3, 5, and 6. These results converge with the findings of past research on Dark Triad personalities that shows their willingness to use manipulative strategies to achieve their goals (Jonason & Webster, 2012; Nagler, Reiter, Furtner, & Rauthmann, 2014). Our studies contribute to the victimology literature by showing that certain personality traits reliably predict who is likely to emit victim signals that are coupled with signals of virtue.” “Beyond showing that the Dark Triad traits predict virtuous victim signaling, we also provide evidence of how these signals, as possible indicators of underlying Dark Triad traits, can predict a person’s willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors.” “… Machiavellianism was the strongest predictor for virtuous victim signaling among Dark Triad traits.” “… a dimension referred to as amoral manipulation was the most reliable predictor of virtuous victim signaling.” “… communal narcissism was a significant and positive predictor for the frequency of signaling virtuous victimhood, again while controlling for relevant demographics and moral identity internalization. This result converges with what our previous studies showed when measuring the traditional definition of agentic narcissism that reflects an egoistic appraisal of one’s special talents and abilities.” “… frequent virtuous victim signalers were more likely to make inflated claims to justify receiving restitution for an alleged and ambiguous norm violation in an organizational context.” “Our conclusion is simply that victim signals are effective tools of social influence and maximally effective when deployed with signals of virtue. We also provide evidence supporting our proposition that for some people these signals can be deployed as a duplicitous tactic to acquire personal benefits they would otherwise not receive. Given the ubiquity of victimhood claims circulating through public discourse by word-of-mouth, news reports, social media, legal cases, and the like, an explanation for the multiple motives that drive people to claim this status has both theoretical and practical relevance.”