Emotional Disclosure and Victim Blaming

Victim blaming occurs when people are unfairly held responsible for their misfortunes. According to just world theory, witnessing another's victimization threatens just world beliefs, which arouses distress. Victim blaming redeems just world beliefs, thereby reducing distress. However, negative emotions can also be resolved through emotional disclosure, suggesting that disclosure can prevent victim blaming. Two experiments confirmed this prediction. In Study 1 participants viewed a woman being victimized or a woman in a nonvictimizing conflict. Participants then disclosed or suppressed the emotions aroused by these scenes and 1 week later evaluated the woman they had viewed. Disclosure reduced blaming of the victim but did not affect blaming of the nonvictim. Further, the more distress participants disclosed, the less they blamed the victim. Study 2 replicated the primary results of Study 1 and also showed that (a) disclosure exclusively reduces blaming of victims; it does not moderate judgments of victimizers, and (b) the effects of disclosure on blaming applies across genders. These 2 studies confirm that victim blaming is a form of emotion management (per just world theory), and that emotional disclosure prevents blaming by supplying an alternative mode of emotion management. This research also suggests that emotional disclosure moderates social perception, in general.