Victims of misfortune may not “deserve” help: A possible factor in victim-devaluation

Why do people blame, devalue or derogate the victims of misfortune? The literature suggests general factors like a belief in a just world or a desire to distance oneself from misfortune, but the empirical results are often unclear. Here we suggest another potential factor in victim-devaluation in particular. Attitudes to victims should be seen in the context of human cooperation, as victims can be a source of costs for others and, therefore, may constitute poor potential cooperation partners. If that is the case, devaluation should be associated with a reluctance to offer help to victims. As predicted, across six pre-registered studies, we found that participants' reluctance to donate their own money (their bonus for participation), or allocate other people's money to a victim predicted the devaluation of the victim's character. Both devaluation and willingness to help were influenced by manipulating the victim's apparent competence, and the victim's concern for other people's possible costs, two crucial dimensions of cooperative potential. These results are consistent with the overall hypothesis that people's intuitions about a victim's cooperation potential are relevant to victim-devaluation.