Dr. Kurt Gray

Just as we typecast actors into doing moral roles.

So if you run into Daniel Radcliffe, you don't think Daniel Radcliffe, right?

You think Harry Potter.

So too do we typecast people into moral roles.

We tend to see people as either villains or victims, but not both.

And the reason for this is that within a typical moral act or immoral deed like abuse, there's one person who's the abuser, one person who's the victim, and they're not the same person.

And so we kind of like project this either or villain or victim mindset out onto the world when we make sense of the behavior of other people.

What typecasting means is that we strip others of their complexity and simplify them as either you're 100% a victim, it's not your fault, you did nothing wrong, or 100% a villain and say, you can't suffer and you're only to blame.

And you see these perceptions entrench and incite conflict because your side feels like the victim.

I didn't do anything wrong.

You know, you started it, right?

And they feel the same thing.

It makes it really hard to have conversations.

I mean, any law-standing conflict, there's always legitimate actions, big or small, that involve villainy and there's victimhood.

But what you can do, and this is often called competitive victimhood, you compete to be the ultimate victim

Because if you're the victim, you're not to blame, right?

Because typecasting means victims are not villains.

So no matter what side you're on, both sides have this tendency to really simplify the world and say, well, we're the victims and you're the villains.

So one way to move past this is just to go a little bit off of 100%, 0%.

Like maybe I'm 99% victim and you're 1% victim.