When professionals become victims: the ethical implications of self-perceived victimhood.

Many professions have recently come under attack as the result of a variety of well-published scandals involving unethical or unprofessional behavior. Brokerage firms have been accused of trading stocks using insider information; bond traders of manipulating the U.S. Treasury Bond offerings; doctors of ignoring malpractice within their profession and inflating health care costs with unnecessary surgery and diagnostic tests; bankers of causing the economy's woes because they make too many bad loans or, alternatively, too few loans; and lawyers continue to be blamed for almost everything. Society grants professions considerable autonomy; because professionals have specialized knowledge, they are judged most fit to set appropriate standards of conduct and control their own behavior. This unwritten "social contract" imposes special responsibilities on the profession to keep the public's interest foremost in their priorities. Among other things, professions must thoroughly and fairly investigate all complaints about the behavior of their members. Society expects professions to enforce their own standards. If there are problems within the profession's domain, society expects that the profession will take whatever corrective actions are needed, or recommend corrective actions for situations that are outside the profession's control. Society expects this "problem-solving" mode even when the profession believes that criticism of its actions is unfair. Such a mature response to criticism is a hallmark of professionalism: it requires a "professional assessment" of the situation and development of constructive solutions. To meet ethical standards, professionals must act responsibly in the public interest and proactively address problems within their area of professional expertise.

However, somewhat alarmingly, professionals often do not acknowledge the possibility of professional error but instead see themselves or their profession as victims when confronted by allegations of negligence, incompetence, or unethical behavior. As Joseph Epstein states

Victims have never been in short

supply in the world, but the rush to

identify oneself as a victim is a rather

new feature of modern life. Why

this is so isn't very complicated: to

position oneself as a victim is to position

oneself for sympathy, special

treatment, even victory (New York

Times Magazine, July, 2, 1989).

This paper examines the implications of professionals perceiving themselves or their profession as victims. Whether or not professionals use the term "victim" or "victimized" is not important; we are interested in whether or not they feel that their profession has been unfairly criticized. In this paper we briefly review the social psychology literature to determine the nature of victimhood. We then suggest that professionals who perceive themselves as victims of unfair public criticism may exhibit many of the same behaviors observed in studies of victims of crimes or natural disasters. While these behaviors may be a natural part of the coping and healing processes for real victims, we believe that when such defense mechanisms (to any degree) are adopted by professionals, they interfere with the profession's ability to solve the underlying problems. Our model (shown in Figure 1) suggests that when confronted with a problem, professionals who perceive themselves as victims of public criticisms are likely to propose solutions to protect their profession and "educate the public," while those who see the public criticism as symptomatic of actual problems will be more likely to propose constructive solutions that involve proactive changes within their profession. We test this model empirically using a small sample from one profession, bank auditors.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Victimization

As conceptualized in the victimization literature of social psychology, a victim is an individual (e.g., rape or crime victim) or a group of individuals (e.g., women, ethnic groups, disaster victims) which has been subjected to some uncontrollable, adverse event(s). In addition to suffering a loss of value, status, or resources, victims frequently sense a loss of control (Burgess & Holmstrom, 1979). Perceiving oneself as a victim results in beliefs about the uncontrollability of the future, and victims are often unable to deal rationally with future events that are not even related to the victimizing experience (Perloff, 1983; Peterson & Seligman, 1983). This study relies on the social psychology literature to provide insight into the behaviors that professionals might exhibit if they think their profession--and themselves by extension--to be victims of unfair public criticism. The degree to which one is victimized, of course, is related to the adversity of the experience. The responses of professionals who feel victimized may reflect some of the behaviors suggested below, even if the degree of their victimization seems relatively minor (or even invalid) when viewed objectively by an outsider.

Studies suggest that emotional reactions to undesirable life events are highly variable. Individuals or groups may respond with bitterness, anger, hostility, passivity, or withdrawal. Reactions to being a victim may be partially determined by the perceiver's causal interpretation of the victimizing event (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). One of the conditions that has consistently been used to characterize victimizing episodes is the uncontrollability over the onset and termination of the victimizing event (Peterson & Seligman, 1983). Uncontrollability of the victimizing event has obvious parallels with learned helplessness, the belief that future actions are futile, which may render victims apathetic, passive or withdrawn. Seligman (1975) suggests that people who have been subjected to uncontrollable or victimizing events exhibit defects in motivation and performance. Martinko & Gardner (1982) argue that learned helplessness can explain low quality, passivity and dissatisfaction found in organizations when workers are faced with uncontrollable events.

Individuals who use their status as victim to deny responsibility for their shortcomings in behavior are unlikely to take steps necessary to change this behavior (Wortman, 1983). Self-definition as a victim may lead to a self-sustained state of self-righteousness, self-pity and anger. Therefore, claiming victim status, even if unearned, may provide professional groups with a means of avoiding responsibility and rationalizing their actions, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of the public. As a consequence, problems may not be thoroughly investigated and appropriate solutions to those problems may not be sought by the very experts (the professionals) whom society relies on for leadership in their areas of expertise.

The application of studies of individual victimization to an analysis of members of a profession involves several conceptual linkages. First, we are proposing that an individual's affiliation with a professional group will be strong enough for her/him to become defensive when that affiliate group is criticized. Second, we assert that some members of that affiliate profession, either alone or together, will perceive themselves as victims when they believe they are being criticized unfairly. Note that we are less concerned with the validity of the allegations than with professionals perceiving themselves as victims. Third, we postulate that, as self-perceived victims, these individuals, and perhaps the profession as a whole will display the response patterns (perhaps to a lesser extent) of victims of crimes or natural disasters as reported in the social psychology literature. Our theory is that individuals who perceive their reference group (their profession) to have been unfairly criticized and thus victimized, will not develop constructive solutions to the root problems that led to the public criticism.

Research Method

Our research was exploratory. We wanted to determine whether the above conceptual linkages could be observed in actual practice. Our conceptual structure shown in Figure 1 led to the following formal hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1:

A stronger perception of victimization will be associated with defensive solutions to the problems underlying the public's criticisms.

Hypothesis 2:

A professional assessment of the public's criticisms will be associated with constructive solutions to the problems underlying the public's criticism.