This now familiar arc fascinated the social psychologist Ivuoma Onyeador, assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, who wondered why discussions of prejudice so often morph into discussions of free speech or religious freedom. “We are no longer talking about the original dimension of criticism,” Onyeador observes. “Now we’re talking about something else, where the dominant members of the group could seemingly have the moral high ground.”
He wanted to get to the bottom of the phenomenon: “What is the psychology behind it? Why is it useful, as opposed to other responses people might make to the review?’
In a new paper, Onyeador—along with the authors Felix Dunbold of the University College London School of Management and Miguel M. Unzueta of the UCLA Anderson School of Management—explore this common rhetorical tactic, which they call “progressive victimization.”
With claims of diminishing behavior, dominant group members counter accusations of discrimination by shifting the topic of discussion. Researchers contrast this approach with claims of “competitive victimization,” in which members of the dominant group respond to criticism by arguing that they actually
they are the real, oppressed victims — for example, saying they have suffered “reverse racism” under affirmative action policies.
Onyeador and her colleagues found that members of dominant groups support victimization claims more strongly than rival victimization claims because they believe that victimization is more effective in dealing with criticism. It is worth noting that members of the dominant group support the declining claims of victims, even when they are ambivalent about the underlying principles, such as free speech, that they claim to defend.
“Using this deviant victimhood argument to appeal to some broader value doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually hold the value in high regard,” Onyeador explains. In other words, someone who counters accusations of racism by appealing to free speech cannot oppose the banning of books he finds distasteful.
Who is the real victim?
To understand victims’ aggressive claims, Onyeador and her colleagues recruited 1,170 white participants in the US to complete an online study of responses to claims of racial discrimination.
Participants were presented with transcribed excerpts of an unfamiliar mock podcast episode about nine white college students who received suspensions for wearing racist costumes at an off-campus party. The podcast clip contained either a competitive victim claim (“the real victims are the nine white students”) or an aggressive victim claim (“the real victim … [is] the First Amendment”).
Participants then rated from one to seven how much they approved of the argument they had read, as well as how effective they thought it would be in countering the opposition. They then answered a series of questions designed to measure levels of racial resentment and support for free speech and completed a demographic questionnaire.
The researchers’ analysis revealed that participants endorsed the claim of declining victimhood more strongly than the claim of competitive victimhood, rating their support an average of 4.15 compared to 3.46. They also rated descending victim assertion higher in efficacy (3.78) than descending victim assertion (3.23). This pattern held even when political ideology was controlled for, suggesting that white Americans across the political spectrum view declining victim claims as a preferable and more useful type of argument.
Onyeador and her colleagues looked more closely at two subsets of participants: those who expressed very high levels of support for free speech, and those who showed high levels of racial resentment. They were interested in how likely these groups were to engage in a declining argument. Statistical analysis showed that participants low in racial resentment but very high in support of free speech sometimes endorsed the declining behavior claim. But you could also find a lot of support for the declining status argument “among people who are less supportive of free speech but have high racial resentment,” Onyeador says.
This suggests that utility, rather than sincere belief, may drive much of the support for declining victim claims.
The researchers conducted another, similar study among participants who identified as Christian, focused on religious freedom claims in response to LGBTQ+ rights activism, and found the same pattern: a consistent preference for the declining status claim, even among participants who did not were particularly concerned. for religious freedom in general.
How non-dominant group members perceive diminishing status claims
In their final study, Onyeador and her colleagues wanted to understand why people respond more favorably to claims of deviant victims and see them as more effective in countering calls for discrimination.
To help answer this question, they recruited 1,475 online participants, about half of whom were non-white. The researchers presented them with either a competitive or a declining victim claim, using the same podcast script as the first study. As before, participants reported how much they supported the argument and how effective they found it. By including non-white participants, the researchers wanted to see if “claims of declining victim behavior apply more to everyone,” Onyeador explains — not just to majority groups.
This time, the researchers also added several questions about the perceived universal benefit of the claim they were presented with, such as, “The argument presented is primarily about protecting everyone’s rights, regardless of group membership.” Participants agreed with the statements using a scale of one to seven. This would allow researchers to further explore how much people support such claims for utilitarian reasons, versus “because they have more of a universal benefit,” Onyeador says.
As in the first study, White participants found the diminishing victim claim to be more effective than the competing victim claim. Nonwhite participants did as well, but only slightly and below the threshold of statistical significance. Both White and non-White participants found the declining victimhood claim to have more universal benefit than the competing victimhood claim, but once again, the effect was stronger for White participants.
When the researchers analyzed why white and non-white participants support claims of declining victims, they found that both groups support such claims based on their universality. However, only White participants support claims of declining victim behavior because they find such arguments more effective in dealing with criticism. In other words, people prefer diminishing over competing claims because they appeal to more universally applicable values—but the utility of diminishing victimhood claims is only influential for dominant group members.
Dispute in good faith
For Onyeador, there is value in having language to describe declining victim claims. Naming, describing and studying this rhetorical tactic “can help people recognize when they see it being used and respond accordingly,” he says.
In her view, it is especially important to understand that people who make aggressive victim claims may not actually be very committed to the principles they claim to support. Often, claims of declining behavior are taken credibly as bona fide arguments — but they may not be, research shows. “It’s important for people to recognize when others are using these arguments to prevent future criticism,” Onyeador says.
Ultimately, more productive discussions and arguments can emerge if we stay narrowly focused: “I would argue that it is important, as we talk about these issues, to go back to the original evil and focus on the original criticism.”
