Modest Victims: Victims Who Decline to Broadcast Their Victimization Are Seen As Morally Virtuous

What do people think of victims who conceal their victimhood? We propose that the decision to not broadcast that one has been victimized serves as a costly act of modesty—in doing so, one is potentially forgoing social support and compensation from one’s community. We posit that individuals who are less demanding and more cooperative are more willing to forego these benefits, such that burying one’s victimhood can serve as a costly signal of virtue. Through a mathematical model, and five empirical studies conducted on Prolific Academic and a university subject pool (total n = 2896), we support the hypothesis that people who decide not to advertise their victim status can be perceived as more cooperative social partners. Moreover, we find that the reputation benefits of burying versus broadcasting can persist even when broadcasting can function to warn other potential victims of an ongoing threat (Study 2), and in contexts where broadcasting would elicit sympathy from observers (Study 3). Interestingly, however, we find that the reputation costs of broadcasting can be mitigated when broadcasting is directed at a smaller audience of close ties (versus a broader audience that includes weak ties) (Study 4). We also find that buriers are seen as less demanding than broadcasters (Study 4), and provide evidence that attributions of reduced demandingness may underlie preferences for buriers: when participants have access to direct information about a victim’s level of demandingness, the reputation benefits of burying relative to broadcasting are attenuated (Study 5). Together, this research suggests that declining to broadcast one’s status as a victim is perceived as a costly signal of virtue.