Imagine the Hansel and Gretel story with a twist. When Gretel realises the witch plans to cook them, she starts figuring out how to push her into the oven. But Hansel lies down on the floor of the cage and says, ‘No. I will wait. The world is wrong and at fault here so I’ll wait for it to correct itself. Patience is a virtue.’
At that point the story would probably end very quickly and not well for either of them. In addition, it probably wouldn’t teach us much as a fairy tale.
And yet, something very similar happens in life all the time. When faced with painful situations, many people choose endurance over agency. They remain where they are, waiting for the situation – or someone else – to change it.
It’s obviously irrational. Suffering is unpleasant. So can be action. Yet unlike suffering, even imperfect action has the potential to make things better. So why on earth would anyone choose to suffer…
Odd as it may sound, though, staying in the victim position can sometimes be rewarding – or at least not threatening, which often is enough. Let’s skip the obvious – internal locus of control and learned helplessness here – and let’s take a look at those from the perspective of psychological and social stabilisers.
Moral safety
Research on moral typecasting by Kurt Gray shows that people naturally divide moral situations into agents (those who act and do – either good or bad) and patients (those who suffer). It’s a classic dyad we use in everyday life where morality involves an agent helping or harming a patient.
What this explains well is why, when something happens to us, we externalise the blame. We look for someone else at fault. When there is no one, we try institutions, systems, processes, fate, or… group narrative (yes, this one is interesting as a form of structuring suffering). The interpretation emphasises external causation rather than internal agency or traits. And thanks to the dyadic setup, we can happily stay in the victim role, which automatically attracts sympathy and protection. Once someone is firmly in that role, questioning their position becomes socially difficult – it’s giving the reward away for no obvious benefit.
Also, when someone occupies the victim role, the moral structure of the situation becomes extremely simple: ‘someone harmed me; therefore, I am right’. The role itself carries legitimacy. You can’t do bad (and therefore be perceived as a bad person) by NOT taking action, i.e., staying as the moral patient. Even if the situation remains painful, the interpretive framework stays stable.
In contrast, moving from a victim stance to an agent stance requires experimentation: trying actions that might fail, taking responsibility, and risking new disappointment. Acting risks being seen as an agent doing harm (and acting in uncertain moral contexts can make the risk twice as high). As an agent, you can do something that is later perceived by other people as morally ambiguous. Thomas Nagel and later experimental work show that people avoid acting in morally complex situations because outcomes may be judged unfairly, even if the effort was honest.
And staying in the uncertainty until the action brings praise (or hatred) is unpleasant on its own.
Cognitive safety
This is very much related to the above and to the fact that action is simply risky…
You may act and nothing changes, or you may make things worse. Human cognition dislikes high-ambiguity scenarios. This is uncertainty intolerance. Inaction is predictable and, therefore, safe. Action and agency are not.
It’s not just the cognitive load of trying to predict the outcome. It’s also the affective stake in the potential outcome that has not yet happened. What happens here is that we overestimate the negative consequences of taking action, especially under uncertainty. Research by Timothy Wilson shows that people mispredict how bad uncertainty feels. This explains why in ambiguous situations where we do not know the outcome, we avoid acting.
We can be helped, though – we can learn how to tolerate uncertainty. Staying in the uncertainty for a long time, until the action proves itself or brings benefits, is a skill – not a virtue and not magic. A skill.
Identity safety
Although it does not touch it directly, the work by Nina Mazar, On Amir, and Dan Ariely in a way shows that people often avoid action that threatens a stable self-narrative as moral beings, even though it could improve outcomes. The ‘victim stance’ preserves identity clarity and reduces cognitive dissonance. So the very same idea that Kurt Gray shows is also described here, only it rises to the identity level. And everything that threatens identity is… scary.
Also, victim narratives simplify complex situations, while real conflicts usually involve mixed causes, ambiguity and uncomfortable trade-offs. Framing events as persecution or injustice compresses that complexity into a clear story with identifiable perpetrators. That clarity is not only cognitively appealing but it is also very gentle on the identity.
Yet, the individual level is not the only level where identity exists. The victim position often preserves group cohesion and the same psychological stabilisers operate both in personal conflicts and national mythologies.
Suffering, especially collective suffering, can become an identity anchor. Shared harm binds groups together and gives them a coherent narrative about who they are. Work on collective victimhood by Daniel Bar-Tal shows that many societies construct historical narratives around persecution or injustice. They put it on top of what is an already unpleasant experience, making it even more painful. Why? Because these narratives reinforce solidarity. When people feel part of a community defined by a shared experience of being wronged, bonds strengthen. So on the individual level, this reinforces unhappiness and pain – and on the group-identity level, it reinforces belonging.
If a community defines itself partly through historical injustice, abandoning that narrative may feel like abandoning the group’s shared meaning. Narratives of suffering therefore persist because they maintain continuity with the past. And ditching one’s past, just like threatening identity, is scary.
Social safety
I wrote about this one before. So let’s just add a small bit here. Sociologists such as Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning describe contexts where moral status is gained by demonstrating victimisation. In such settings, emphasising harm can produce attention, support or legitimacy. This does not always mean the harm is fabricated. It means the social system can reinforce narratives that highlight it. And agency takes this benefit immediately away.
So, the victim mentality persists because it offers four kinds of safety: moral, cognitive, identity, and social. When acting, you may lose moral clarity, face ambiguity, revise your identity, and lose social approval – all in one go. That is the real cost of agency.
But agency is not beneficial because it is comfortable. It is beneficial because it keeps the possibility of change alive. The victim position preserves moral clarity and identity, but it freezes the situation in place.
So the question becomes whether we prefer stable narratives or movable realities. And this one, my friend, is up to you.