A Pessimistic Outlook on Victims and an ‘Upward Bias’ in Social Comparison Expectations of Victim Support Workers Regarding their Clients

Abstract

Social psychological studies have documented various biases and misperceptions held by helpers that can seriously undermine the therapeutic value of client oriented interventions. In the context of support given to victims of crime and of traffic accidents the present study focused on one bias in particular, namely the support worker' upward bias. This misperception refers to an incorrect expectation on the part of support workers — volunteers working for the Netherlands Victim Support (NVS) in this study — regarding the direction of victims' social comparison processes: they tended to expect victims to engage in upward comparisons (on a comparison-dimension the victim is saying ‘I'm worse off’ than the comparison-target), while these victims actually engaged in downward comparison processes (‘I'm better off’). Downward sensitivity constitutes the opposite of this bias, and thus refers to the correct expectation that victims tend to engage in downward comparisons. Analyses revealed a highly prevalent ‘upward bias’ and a fundamental mislocation-error among victim support workers, with regard to both types of clients. The upward bias emerged consistently across a series of possible comparison-dimensions, related to the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL 90). Moreover our findings suggested a rather specific risk profile. Some workers appeared to be more at risk of engaging in upward biases, workers exhibiting a more pessimistic motivation for participating in victim support, and in workers experiencing burnout. Downward sensitivity moreover appeared to be associated with more beneficial (perceived as strain-free) client-helper-interactions. Some applied implications for victim support organisations, inter alia in terms of the huge need for downward sensitivity training and the necessity of developing worker' selection standards, and of designing internal quality-control policies, are discussed. More generally, victim support organisations should counteract the formation of overly pessimistic outlooks on clients and their psychological problems. An overly pessimistic perspective might facilitate the opposite of what support is supposed to stand for, namely a continuation of ‘victim status’ instead of ‘de-victimization’.