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Blaming the victim and blaming the culprit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2009

Richard Double
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Abstract

Psychologists and common sense recognize blaming the victim as a cognitive error (fallacy) that many of us use to support the just-world hypothesis — the view that life is basically fair. In this article Richard Double compares a related phenomenon, blaming the culprit. When we commit the fallacy of blaming the culprit we mistakenly conclude that judging a culprit to deserve blame for an action exonerates everyone else from blame for that action. Double provides several examples of the fallacy.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Think , Volume 4 , Issue 10 , Summer 2005 , pp. 21 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2005

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