Researchers have defined a new personality construct to describe individuals who consistently see themselves as victims.
The research, published in Personality and Individual Differences, defined Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, or TIV, as “an enduring feeling that the self is a victim across different kinds of interpersonal relationships.”
Rahav Gabay of Israel’s School of Psychological Sciences and her team of researchers conducted a series of eight studies of Israeli adults to explore the validity of the personality trait. The initial studies showed that TIV possesses four dimensions: moral elitism, a lack of empathy, the need for recognition, and rumination.
Two other studies found that the desire for revenge factored into TIV as well as intense negative emotions and entitlement to commit immoral behavior.
“The higher participants’ TIV, the more they experienced negative emotions and felt entitled to behave immorally. However, only the experience of negative emotions predicted behavioral revenge,” the authors summarized.
Earlier this year, Gabay and fellow researchers described TIV as causing “victimization” to become “a central part of the individual’s identity.”
“The findings highlight the importance of understanding, conceptualizing, and empirically testing TIV, and suggest that victimhood is a stable and meaningful personality tendency,” the study’s abstract reads.
