Do you only have yourself to blame? A meta‐analytic test of the victim precipitation model

• Published date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2413
• Author: Amanda M. Main,Lindsay Y. Dhanani,Andrew Pueschel
• Date: 01 October 2020

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Do you only have yourself to blame? A meta‐analytic test of

the victim precipitation model

Lindsay Y. Dhanani

1

|Amanda M. Main

2

|Andrew Pueschel

3

1

Psychology Department, Ohio University,

Athens, Ohio

2

College of Business and Management, Lynn

University, Boca Raton, Florida

3

College of Business, Ohio University, Athens,

Ohio

Correspondence

Lindsay Y. Dhanani, Psychology Department,

Ohio University, 22 Richland Avenue, Athens,

OH 45701.

Email: dhanani@ohio.edu

Summary

The current meta‐analysis sought to evaluate the empirical evidence for the victim

precipitation model, which has become an increasingly popular yet controversial the-

ory in the organizational sciences. We did so by testing the prediction that some vic-

tim dispositional traits contribute to or provoke experiences of mistreatment. We

additionally provided preliminary examinations of two distinct conceptual explana-

tions underlying the empirical relationships between victim personality and mistreat-

ment. Finally, we examined the support for the situational antecedents of

experienced mistreatment to compare the relative evidence for each of these domi-

nant theoretical explanations. Results for the tests of the victim precipitation model

showed that only victim negative affectivity was consistently related to experienced

mistreatment. Examinations of the explanations for the relationships between victim

personality and victimization showed relatively weak support for the notion that cer-

tain employees are more likely to perceive mistreatment and for the proposition that

certain employees are mistreated because they are also more likely to engage in mis-

treatment. Finally, the situational predictors of mistreatment were all supported, and

a test of relative importance revealed that the situational antecedents accounted for

more variance in mistreatment than the victim dispositional traits. Implications for the

theoretical understanding of the origins of mistreatment are discussed.

KEYWORDS

antecedents, meta‐analysis, mistreatment, personality,victim precipitation model

1|INTRODUCTION

The victim precipitation model, which dates back to the 1940s, has a

long yet controversial history. Originating within the field of criminol-

ogy, this model explains the occurrence of criminal behavior by arguing

that victim traits and behaviors can precipitate a victim's own experi-

ences of crime and maltreatment. Though this model was initially pop-

ular among criminologists, scholars began criticizing the implications of

the victim precipitation ideology as early as the 1970s (Cortina, Rabelo,

& Holland, 2018). According to these critics, victim precipitation think-

ing encourages victim blaming, offers inadequate logical and empirical

evidence, and provides little practical insight into predicting and

combating crime (e.g., Timmer & Norman, 1984). In light of the logical

and ethical concerns surrounding this theory, the victim precipitation

model was abandoned by its field of origin.

However, despite its discontinued use within criminal justice, the

victim precipitation model is currently gaining traction in the organiza-

tion sciences and has become an increasingly common explanation for

the occurrence of workplace mistreatment (Cortina et al., 2018). This

resurgence, however, has been met with resistance from scholars

who have echoed the concerns raised by criminologists decades ago

(e.g., Cortina et al., 2018). Further exacerbating uncertainty surround-

ing the use of the model, current empirical evidence has produced

inconsistent and unclear findings regarding the relationships between

Received: 1 October 2018 Revised: 25 July 2019 Accepted: 30 July 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2413

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2020;41:706–721.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

706

victim characteristics and experiences of mistreatment (Milam,

Spitzmueller, & Penney, 2009; Sliter & Jones, 2016; Sulea, Filipescu,

Horga, Ortan, & Fischmann, 2012), leading to questions of the model's

explanatory utility.

The use of the victim precipitation model within the organizational

sciences thus appears to be at the same critical juncture that was pre-

viously faced in the field of criminology. The goal of the current paper

is to evaluate the support for the continued implementation of this

model in our field, and we do so in three primary ways. First, we use

meta‐analytic techniques to evaluate the empirical evidence for the

predictions of the victim precipitation model as an explanation for

workplace mistreatment. This enables a more comprehensive exami-

nation of the utility of the model by allowing for the simultaneous

consideration of the ethical and logical concerns as well as the empir-

ical support for the model. We accomplish this goal by meta‐analyzing

the relationships between victim dispositional traits and experienced

mistreatment both within a broad database of existing studies as well

as within a subset of studies that used prospective study designs. Sec-

ond, we examine the support for the differing conceptual linkages that

may account for the empirical relationships between victim personal-

ity and victimization to better understand the role victim characteris-

tics play in the mistreatment process. These analyses differ from

prior meta‐analyses on the dispositional antecedents of mistreatment

(e.g., Berry, Ones, & Sackett, 2007; Hershcovis et al., 2007) as previ-

ous reviews have concentrated on the relationships between perpe-

trator personality and enacted mistreatment and thus do not explore

the connection between personality and mistreatment from the vic-

tim's perspective—which is the focus of the victim precipitation model.

Further, our analyses also provide insight beyond the general empirical

relationships between victim personality and experienced mistreat-

ment by disentangling potential conceptual explanations for these

relationships—some of which emphasize the role of the victim,

whereas others emphasize the role of the perpetrator.

Finally, we meta‐analytically synthesize the evidence for a poten-

tial alternative explanation for the occurrence of workplace mistreat-

ment that has been advanced both by mistreatment theory and

critics of the victim precipitation model. This alternative perspective

offers a situational explanation for mistreatment, proposing that work-

place mistreatment is predicted by features of the organizational envi-

ronment. Opponents of the victim precipitation model have long

argued that it is these structural features, rather than victim character-

istics, that should be the focus of theoretical and empirical work and

that victim precipitation logic detracts from our ability to diagnose

and resolve these true structural causes of victimization (Elias, 1986;

Timmer & Norman, 1984). We address the possibility that situational

elements perhaps better account for experienced mistreatment by

testing the relative contribution of the dispositional and situational

antecedents to the prediction of workplace mistreatment. We note

the direct estimates for the situational antecedents have been pro-

vided elsewhere (Bowling & Beehr, 2006; Yang, Caughlin, Gazica,

Truxillo, & Spector, 2014). We extend this work by formally comparing

the relative importance of each of the situational and dispositional

antecedents and update the previous estimates for the situational

antecedents to ensure the accuracy of these comparisons. Our analy-

ses also offer a more robust test of these relationships than has been

provided by prior work by estimating the effect sizes within a subset

of prospective studies. In the following sections, we begin by

reviewing the origin of the victim precipitation model as well as how

the model has been applied to workplace mistreatment.

1.1 |Victim precipitation model

Victim precipitation models were first developed in the field of crimi-

nal justice as a way to explain why crimes might be committed (see

Cortina, 2017, & Cortina et al., 2018, for a detailed review of the his-

tory of the victim precipitation model). In this domain, the victim pre-

cipitation model argued that crimes cannot be understood through a

consideration of perpetrator characteristics alone because victim char-

acteristics and actions also contribute to victim experiences of criminal

behavior (Amir, 1967; Curtis, 1974; Felson & Steadman, 1983). Crim-

inologists and defense attorneys would use this model to argue that

perpetrators of crimes such as murder or rape were not fully culpable

for their actions because the victim also contributed, at least in part, to

provoking the situation (Amir, 1967). This led some criminologists to

even classify victims based on their level of culpability (ranging from

victims who shared no responsibility to victims who were completely

responsible for their maltreatment; Schafer, 1968) and to identify

groups of victims with the highest propensity to contribute to their

own victimization (e.g., women, older adults, immigrants, and

depressed individuals; von Hentig, 1948). Despite its initial accep-

tance, the victim precipitation model later came under heavy criticism

for its role in what has been described as victim blaming. That is, oppo-

nents view this model as absolving perpetrators of blame for their

actions by placing a share of the blame on victims (Timmer & Norman,

1984). This type of thinking, critics argue, also diverts resources away

from identifying and resolving the situational factors that encourage

crime by instead focusing on scrutinizing victim behaviors (Elias,

1986; Timmer & Norman, 1984).

Although it has fallen out of favor among criminologists because of

these criticisms, the victim precipitation model has seen renewed pop-

ularity within the organizational sciences as an explanation for work-

place mistreatment (Cortina et al., 2018). Within this domain, the

model predicts that certain victim characteristics, traits, or behaviors

play a role in the mistreatment process such that, by possessing these

characteristics, victims intentionally or unintentionally contribute to

their own victimization (Aquino & Bradfield, 2000; Milam et al.,

2009; Sliter, Withrow, & Jex, 2015; Tepper, Duffy, Henle, & Lambert,

2006). According to the model, victims are proposed to behave in

ways that put them at risk of victimization because they elicit the hos-

tility or aggression of potential perpetrators. Though the number of

studies using the victim precipitation model as their grounding frame-

work has dramatically increased in the last decade (Cortina et al.,

2018), the victim precipitation model is also beginning to receive crit-

icism in the organizational sciences. Paralleling the field of criminology,

opponents have argued that victim precipitation thinking provides

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