Is there any research on "victim mentality" or is this a made-up expression with no scientific equivalent?

Question

I am interested in learning more about what it means to be a victim vs. what it means to have a "victim mentality." My understanding is that not all people who are traumatized think of themselves as victim. Another way of saying that is not all people who have been victimized before have a victim mentality of seeing themselves as constant victims of situations and people.

So, in order to examine the causes of difference between these groups of traumatized people, I tried to do some online search in psychology journal but I was not even able to find a definition of victim mentality. No luck finding a definition for a more common expression, "victim role," either which may or may not be the same as victim mentality.

Therefore, I decided to make a post here and hopefully someone more knowledgeable can shed light on this for me. Thank you.

Answer 1

Below are some papers along with direct quotes in which they use they use the term "victim mentality".

Kets de Vries, Manfred. (2012). Are you a victim of the victim syndrome? Organizational Dynamics. 43. 10.2139/ssrn.2116238.

"Most of us, when faced with life's obstacles, do something about them and get on with it. But people with a victim mentality are incapable of doing so. Their negative outlook on life transforms every setback into a major drama."

". . . people with a victim mentality are very difficult to handle. They have an extremely fatalistic outlook on life. Because they believe they have no control over the way events unfold, they have a poor sense of responsibility. Every negative outcome in their life is attributed to people or circumstances beyond their control. Every effort made to help them, or to present a solution to their predicament, is met by a huge arsenal of reasons why it will not work, some of them quite ingenious. Their problems are apparently unique and therefore insoluble. They appear always to be trying to prove the helper wrong. Anyone prepared to help them is left with a sense of utter frustration."

Andronnikova, O. O., & Kudinov, S. I. (2021). Cognitive Attitudes and Biases of Victim Mentality. Changing Societies & Personalities. 2021. Vol. 5. Iss. 4, 5(4), 654-668.

". . . the studies of victim mentality as a manifestation of specific cognitive processes indicate such obvious distortions connected to the perception of oneself and the world as catastrophizing, exaggerating consequences or difficulties and helplessness."

"We assumed that a person with victim mentality has the corresponding cognitive victimogenic characteristics that reduce their adaptability and make them more vulnerable in dangerous situations."

Answer 2

This mentality is related to one’s locus of control

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mindset-of-victimhood/

There is a self perpetuated belief that things happen to them rather than within their control.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=victim.mentality+peer+reviewed&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&t=1700519789690&u=%23p%3DwlBjU3Kz8WAJ

On the other hand there are those who consider enduring trauma as surviving and adapt a survivor’s mindset.

https://nataliarachel.medium.com/survivor-versus-victim-mentality-as-a-response-to-complex-trauma-ec5927c377d7