Research Framing, Victim Blaming: Toward an Empirical Examination of Victim Precipitation and Perpetrator Predation Paradigms

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Cortina, Rabelo, and Holland (2018) make a compelling case for shifting away from a victim precipitation perspective in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. In addition to noting that victim precipitation potentially violates ethical principles, the authors suggest that such paradigms shape attributions of blame and implications for practice within organizations. This commentary builds upon the ideas discussed in the focal article by encouraging I-O psychologists to collect data on the extent to which victim precipitation appears in the field and experimentally examine how and why the paradigms we use to explain workplace mistreatment might affect attitudes and behavior.