The Victimhood Culture May Be Ruining Your Health

Source: Image by chayka1270 from Pixabay

It was during his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, that President John F. Kennedy made his famous exhortation, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

Although the president’s speech that day lasted over 14 minutes, this single sentence succinctly captured two enduring views of government: as the servant to the people or as their master. Much has changed in the nearly six decades since President Kennedy’s address, yet politicians remain as divided today over the relative roles of government and private citizens as in any previous decade.

Even as our leaders debate topics such as the optimal size and function of government in Washington, D.C., the beliefs that we adopt about these political topics as individuals are covertly exerting a potentially large effect on our health. Because we usually do not consider political views to be a risk factor for illness, it is natural to ask how abstract beliefs about government, healthcare, or immigration could affect something as concrete as our physical and mental health.

The short answer is through what is known as locus of control. By promoting an “external” locus of control, adopting certain political beliefs may negatively influence what we perceive to be the primary causes of health problems and our attributions over who is responsible for treating them.

Dr. Hans Selye was a Canadian physician often referred to as the “Father” of stress research due to his decades of work demonstrating relationships between emotional stress and physical illness. Beyond Dr. Selye’s mind-boggling scientific contributions (e.g., he published over 1,700 articles and 39 books!) he possessed a remarkable ability to share his knowledge about the causes of illness in relatable examples.

One of Dr. Selye’s practical stories told of two sons raised by the same alcoholic father. As adults, one of these sons grew up practicing total abstinence from drugs and alcohol; the other son, sadly, repeated the cycle of addiction in his own family by becoming an alcoholic himself. Interestingly, when queried about their divergent lifestyle choices both sons gave the same response: “With a father like mine, what can you expect?”

Dr. Selye told this story as an illustration of how our health is often shaped more by our perceptions of events rather than the events themselves. It was because the latter son perceived himself as a victim of his alcoholic father that he felt condemned to alcoholism.

Even if this sort of victim thinking was limited to children of alcoholics, the damage would be substantial. Instead, since Dr. Selye’s death in 1982, expressions of and concerns about victim thinking have broadened considerably.

The concept of a “victimhood culture” was examined most recently by sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning in their 2018 book, The Rise of Victimhood Culture. In the authors’ words, “A culture of victimhood is one characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance on third parties.”

In fairness, one could counter that a "concern with status" and "sensitivity to slight" are universal human qualities, hardly unique to “victimhood.” It is the combination of these otherwise common human traits with the excessive reliance on third parties and appeals to authority for solutions that comprises the “victimhood” mindset.

The risk of the “victimhood culture” is that even as it may be identifying instances of bias, inequality, and injustice, it places the responsibility for correcting these potential problems on others rather than on the individual. In the language of psychology, a member of the “victimhood culture” sees the complex world through the lens of an external locus of control. What does this mean for health?

According to locus of control theory, individuals with an external locus of control are more likely to attribute their personal outcomes to chance, to external others such as parents, doctors, or government, and to factors like genetics that are outside of their control. As a result, the locus of control we consciously or unconsciously adopt has clear implications for our health.

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For example, many Americans do not set goals or make New Year’s resolutions to address their health concerns because they believe that "something always happens to me to ruin it, so why bother?" An external locus of control causes them to see themselves as undeserving victims of Murphy’s Law. Others may blame their genes and the fast-food industry for their weight gain or believe that their age and income are what prevent them from exercising.

This disposition to externalize control over problems and solutions contrasts with individuals with an internal locus of control. The mantra of a person with a high internal locus of control can be summarized as “if it’s to be, it’s up to me!” This group perceives themselves as primarily responsible for their health and other desired outcomes.

In perhaps the most authoritative statistical analysis of the relationship between locus of control and health behaviors—based on more than 7,000 adults from 18 countries—Dr. Andrew Steptoe from the University College London found that the odds of engaging in healthy behaviors were more than 40 percent greater among those with the highest internal locus of control versus those with the lowest internal locus of control, even after adjusting for factors such as biological sex and age (1). Thus, the best research on the subject supports a robust association between our locus of control and health-related decisions we make each day.

Because a victim mindset externalizes control over outcomes, the recent rise of the “victimhood culture” in the U.S. could influence factors beyond the domain of politics such as health by diminishing our perceived importance of individual behavioral choices and fostering an overreliance on doctors, medicines, and healthcare policies.

There is data suggesting that this negative health effect is already occurring. For example, observational data show that during the same recent decades the “victimhood culture” emerged as a recognized issue in the U.S., rates of behaviorally-driven conditions such as obesity and diabetes soared. Perhaps an even stronger case is made by so-called “deaths of despairs” that also increased dramatically since the 1990s. Most of these despair-driven deaths are the result of suicide and drug and alcohol causes and are attributed to feelings of victimization and perceived lack of control that have become pervasive in recent years.

Reasonable minds will disagree over the interpretation of these relationships and about the forms, if any, of remedy required. Our current understanding of the “victimhood culture” may nevertheless already be sufficient to some to raise concerns about the potential effects of this mindset on their physical and mental health.

Thankfully, we need not be a politician or scientist to employ this information for our personal benefit. However, we must first raise our awareness of ways that thinking patterns common in the “victimhood culture” can make us vulnerable. Second, we must consciously practice thinking habits that reinforce our perceived control over our personal health and prosperity in place of thinking habits that place these virtues in the hands of others. The latter, after all, probably have much less concern for our welfare than they do their own.