The victim of unfair treatment believes that they have experienced over-and-above what they consider to be an acceptable amount of mistreatment any person ought to experience, either in their life or situationally, and are thus absolved of any further obligation to act in pro-social ways or in ways that further the interests of others.

You might suppose that if someone has been a victim of unfair treatment, particularly on a repeated basis, that they would be moved by this experience to be more compassionate, fairer in the future towards other people, in other relationships, out of empathy for others and a desire not to cause others the same pain they had to endure. But human nature shows us that the opposite is true, generally. I say generally because it is not 100% true. I have met many people who managed to transform their negative experiences in life into socially constructive ways of being, such as being kind in the face of unfairness or being altruistic to others.

When we believe “I have been wronged and it was unfair” we easily step into the next belief which is that “I have a right to be unkind, not just to the person who wronged me, but to anyone in my life, because I have suffered enough, more than I should have.” We believe that we have a right to lash out, to take more than is fair, or to exploit the vulnerabilities of others.

There are myriad ways we might feel wronged, including receiving less than we perceive others receiving who are similar to us, being treated with disrespect, being neglected, receiving a consequence or punishment far outside what is proportional to the “crime”, being abused, or having an unhappy childhood. The authors of the study cited above state, “Wronged individuals feel that they have already done their fair share of suffering—as if there were a maximum amount of victimhood that a person can reasonably be expected to endure—and consequently, they feel entitled to spare themselves some of life’s inconveniences, such as being attentive to the needs of others. We predict that this should lead individuals to behave selfishly by, for example, refusing to help, endorsing self-serving intentions, or claiming a bigger piece of the pie when sharing resources with others.” (p. 1). That hypothesis is exactly what the study confirmed.

I see this pattern play out all the time in marital arguments where one or perhaps both parties feel that the other has wronged them, been egregiously unfair, taken advantage of them. The response to this feeling is to dig in and dish out behavior that is equally egregious, never seeing that their reaction to the injustice—and it’s not always perceived injustice, sometimes its real injustice—causes more injustice and leads to both parties entrenching in the firm belief “I have suffered enough. I shouldn’t have to change. I shouldn’t have to be kind.” This leads to conflict that never gets resolved and that damages the relationship. Both parties suffer from a type of myopia where they are unable to see their own reactions to the perceived injustice as anything other than a reasonable reaction they are entitled to. They are unwilling to see how it only leads to the pool of injustice between them growing bigger. It is “one-person thinking”, which is all about self-protection, me, my defense, my needs. Could it be that the other person, sensing this one-person thinking, believes they must mount an even stronger defense, believing “no one has my back”? This is typically happening to both partners simultaneously, and each partner’s self-protection is feeding off the other person’s victim entitlement mindset.