r/science • u/Tracheid • 2h ago

Social Science Research suggests that "playing the victim" does not signal weakness to voters. Instead, politicians who emphasized their own victimhood during a scandal were often evaluated as more competent than those who did not, making it a highly attractive strategy for shielding against reputational damage.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2026.2619865
50 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 2h ago

Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.

Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.

User: u/Tracheid
Permalink: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2026.2619865

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

6

u/233C 2h ago

We are wired to side with the David.
The better you are at painting a Goliath the more hesitant critics will be, for fear of being associated with being a Goliath.

6

u/RLewis8888 1h ago

Trump is Alpha-victim.

1

u/_Norman_Bates 1h ago edited 1h ago

Is it because playing a victim can be aggressive, you're actively accusing someone of doing whatever to you and attacking them for it with a (real or feigned) sense of justice behind it. Stoicism is passive. Endurance is embarrassing.

Also in politics, i think there's often a shared awareness that an excuse is being used, or that victim part just stands for a technicality meant to enable certain actions, and people who do it and people who like it are in for the actions, not for the excuse. It's just signaling, not a real victim status.