On more than one occasion you will have heard that if someone has been taken from the bag or the backpack it was because he was carrying it open or had neglected. This is a way of blaming the victim and not who has actually committed theft.
- The same is true of cases of gender-based violence, harassment of any kind or when it involves rape or sexual abuse. In fact, these are the crimes in which there have been more occasions in which through some judicial opinion, and even by a part of the society, has tried to give some type of justification to certain aggressions.
- Phrases of the type 'if it was that I was dressed like a normal' or 'I'm surprised that they have not raped before' are often used lamentable. It even gets to blame what happened to the environment of the victim with the typical comment of 'it's the fault of their parents to let it go out on the street'.
- Experts are tired of repeating that nothing can justify a criminal act and the fact that there are individuals who can censor the way they dress, behave or relate to people who have been victims of any type of crime is totally reprehensible.
The scientific explanation of justification
Sometimes the response to this behavior is often found in a controversial assumption known as 'Hypothesis of the just world', which indicates that all people end up receiving what they deserve - both good and bad ... something like the theory of karma, in which life returns everything you have done.
This hypothesis, published in 1980 under the title 'The Belief in a Just World. A Fundamental Delusion 'was developed by social psychology professor Melvin J. Lerner and in it he expounded the popular belief that, innately and unconsciously, we are convinced that everything what happens in this life has a why.
He had spent a couple of decades studying the subject and doing extensive experiments with volunteers at the University of Kansas, where he taught at the time, and he was able to see how a large number of his students defended the belief that sintecho lived in the street and in deplorable conditions by the fact that they were vague people who did not like to work. A strange justification given by the students that if the less favored of society had a bad time it was because they deserved it or they had sought it.
From all these conclusions Lerner developed his famous hypothesis, being able to know in part the reason why on some occasions, by making a misinterpretation of this conjecture, the victim is blamed for what has happened to him.
But evidently not only does Melvin J. Lerner's point of view exist in 1980 as a justification for this behavior. In 2016, psychologists Laura Niemi and Liane Young of Harvard University published the study 'When and Why We See Victims as Responsible "in which they pointed to the moral values of each individual with their particular perception of a crime.
Depending on the vision of community or individualism will be assessed in one way or another the responsibility of both the victim and the cause of the crime. People who are related to the socialization of the community are usually in the majority position on the side of the victim - especially in cases of gender violence, sexual assault or harassment - and on the other hand those who perceive an individual way of life, and not collective, tend to justify some crimes committed.
It is also important to take into account the political and / or religious beliefs - and the degree of these - in the persons who are being consulted about a particular crime, perceiving in one way or another the responsibility that the victim might have suffered in the same.
The more conservative the ideals are and the more faith the person professes, the greater will be the degree of justification given to certain acts, especially those in which the person consulted believes that the victim had performed some illegality or something that they considered morally reprehensible .
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