victimology
/vɪktɪˈmɒlədʒi
/noun (plural victimologies) [mass noun]
1The study of the victims of crime and the psychological effects of their experience: specialists in victimology will gather to consider how best to help the victims of crime recover...
- Ultimately, though, Notre Musique is a study of victimology.
- The author's clinical experience and studies with a concentration in victimology place her squarely on the side of these victims of aggression.
- Much of the seminal work in major areas of forensic psychology, including risk assessment, psychopathy, eyewitness testimony, victimology, credibility assessment, and criminal behaviour, has been done here.
2A mental attitude which tends to indulge and perpetuate the feeling of being a victim: conservatives reject victimology and the idea that state-sanctioned victim groups are entitled to compensatory privileges [in singular]: his prison experience seems to have ingrained in him a deep-seated victimology, a sense of the nobility of helplessness and suffering...
- More and more, African-American iconoclasts reject victimology and embrace American possibility.
- And I discovered its secret resource: a treasure trove of courageous black men who utterly reject victimology and stand up for personal responsibility.
- You might say that the true act of decommissioning required of republicans in return was not of bullets, bats and rackets, but of victimology, the standing down of the sense of grievance that had been their driving force.