In the wake of the scandal over a series of sexual assault allegations that have been hurled at the media mogul Harvey Weinstein, an online movement has begun. Millions of women are sharing their stories of sexual harassment and abuse using the hashtag #MeToo, which after a tweet by actor .
Scrolling through Twitter or Facebook, it is striking just how many of my colleagues and friends say they have been sexually abused or harassed. If the scale of the problem is this huge, why has no one said anything until now? Indeed, why have I kept quiet myself?
Insights from psychology and evolutionary biology offer clues as to why people might not tell others when bad things happen to them. A cruel quirk of human psychology is that to victims if we can find a way to blame them for their own misfortune, even when it makes no sense to do so. In fact, perceiving that the victim is in some way at fault can provoke rather than sympathy.
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And it doesn鈥檛 take a lot for us to attribute blame. In the case of sexual abuse, the accusations are . She was wearing a short skirt. She went to his room. She was drinking. The more people know about the circumstances, the they are to tell themselves that things could have been different if only the victim had looked or acted differently.
Just world?
Perhaps one reason we do this is to maintain belief in a , where bad things only happen to bad people and we get what we deserve. This circular logic can be a For example, belief in a just world is associated with increased resilience and better mental health among survivors of unpredictable and devastating events, like . Deep-rooted beliefs that the world is generally predictable and orderly help individuals retain a sense of personal control over their lives in the face of occasional unpredictable and indiscriminate disasters.
But it has some dark side-effects when it comes to our assessments of allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. Small wonder, then, that many women who have experienced these are reluctant to open the door to being blamed or judged 鈥� however erroneously 鈥� for the pernicious actions of others.
Yet despite this fear, many women are now speaking out. What is it about the #MeToo movement that makes things different?
Two things could be going on here. The first is that the sheer number of stories may be able to overcome our natural tendency for disbelief. Studies exploring victim blaming have tended to focus on single . It is conceivable that our 鈥渏ust world鈥� psychology finds it relatively easy to cast aspersions on one unlucky individual but struggles to maintain this narrative when confronted with many individuals all saying the same thing.
The second is strength in numbers. 聽Accusing someone of harm is in many ways a punitive act, whether it damages merely their reputation or results in prosecution. may be perceived as more legitimate and punishers are also better protected against the threat of when they join forces compared with when they strike out alone. Humans are sensitive to the costs of punishment and are when the costs of doing so are too high.
It is telling that the stream of accusations continues to flow, and we should expect it to continue 鈥� with every additional claim, the potential costs of adding your voice, while still considerable, are nevertheless diminished. The #MeToo movement is not going to go away.
