Victims can internalize beliefs that actively worsen their own disadvantage.

Evidence

A recently identified problem for prejudice victims stems from false consciousness – the idea that one may hold a complex set of beliefs that are both false and contrary to one’s social interest. In general, these beliefs justify a system of inequality in which victims find themselves (see Jackman and Jost & Hamilton, chs. 6 and 13 this volume). The net result is that actions based on such beliefs further one’s disadvantaged position in society. System justification is characterized by psychological tendencies that include failure to perceive injustice and disadvantage, justification of social roles, false attribution of blame, identification with the oppressor, and resistance to change. System justification helps to explain negative self-stereotyping by disadvantaged group members and implicates an unwitting complicity of victims in their victimization. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1071

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘system justification’ and its component psychological tendencies, naming the mechanisms of false consciousness.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that victims are ‘unwittingly complicit’ in their own victimization through ideological beliefs cuts against both naive victim-blaming and naive pure-structuralism — a genuinely dense, hard-to-summarize position about the interplay of false beliefs and material disadvantage.
• FICTION: A character who genuinely believes the system justifies their subordinate role, so their own actions (resistance to change, identification with the oppressor) are what keep them down — rich material for a protagonist whose tragedy is ideological self-containment.
• XREF: connects to: Difficult conditions activate underlying weakness beneath nations’ superiority beliefs, motivating self-defense. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 98