On This Page:ToggleWhat is Scapegoating?Durkheim’s Scapegoat TheoryTypesApplicationsIntergroup ConflictExamples
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Summary
Scapegoating can lead to prejudice, discrimination, and even violence against innocent people who are unfairly blamed for problems they did not cause.
What is Scapegoating?
Scapegoating is the act of blaming an out-group when the frustration of the in-group experience is blocked from obtaining a goal (Allport, 1954).
Scapegoating is a way to analyze negative experiences in terms of blaming an innocent individual or group for the event. The one doing the scapegoating can then use the mistreatment of the scapegoat as an outlet for their own frustrations and hostilities.
Subsequently, the group can mistreat the scapegoat as an outlet for their frustrations and hostilities.
Celebrants believed that this slaughter would bring atonement to their communities.
Durkheim’s Scapegoat Theory
Durkheim put forth a theory of scapegoating that connects perspectives in sociology, anthropology, psychology, law, and religion.
Durkheim believed that when a piacular event — any misfortune that causes feelings of disquiet and fear — occurs, both the individual and society are threatened with disintegration, and they resort to a specific set of rituals called piacular rites to regain the stability and sense of integration that they had lost. These rites involve the processes of blame, sacrifice, and scapegoating.
Durkheim believed that the most common piacular event in social life is death and that someone or something must be blamed or scapegoated for every death.
For example, years of smoking and poor diet lead to a heart attack or the inattention of a drunk driver.
This happens not because these things or groups of people are objectively responsible but because this responsibility must fall on someone or something (Mestrovic, 2007).
Types of Scapegoating
Sociologists generally recognize four ways in which scapegoating takes place and through which scapegoats are created:
Applications
Scapegoating is somewhat consistent with Sigmund Freud’s notions of displacement or projection as defense mechanisms (Hammer, 2007).
According to Freud, people displaced hostility that they hold toward unacceptable targets — such as their parents or their boss — onto less powerful ones.
Similarly, Freud’s projection refers to one’s tendency to attribute one’s own unacceptable feelings or anxieties to others, thus denying them within oneself.
More recently, sociologists have used the idea of displaced aggression to describe the tendency to scapegoat. For example, a woman who has just had a fight with her boyfriend may kick her dog for minor misbehavior when she comes home.
The dog, in this instance, becomes the scapegoat and pays the price for the fight she had with her boyfriend. The aggression that resulted from the fight is not directed toward its true cause — the boyfriend — but a more acceptable target — the dog — who cannot retaliate or argue back.
Sociologists have also used the theory of relative deprivation to explain people’s tendency to scapegoat. This theory suggests that people experience negative emotions when they feel as though they are treated poorly for illegitimate reasons.
For example, someone may feel deprived after learning that a colleague got a raise after befriending their manager. As a result, the person may resent their colleague for their lower salary (Hammer, 2007).
Intergroup Conflict
Often, the people engaging in scapegoating are said to be experiencing prolonged economic insecurity and come to adopt shared beliefs that can lead to prejudice and violence.
Researchers have specified some conditions in which scapegoating against a particular group is the most likely to occur. Often, the scapegoated group tends to be of lower power standing than the group going the scapegoating because the scapegoats would otherwise be able to stamp out the opposition of those that blame them.
Groups that get scapegoated also tend to be recognized as distinct from the ingroup of the blaming group. This allows members of the group to be easily identifiable and associated with the undesired situation. Finally, scapegoats tend to pose a real threat to the ingroup, either intentionally or unintentionally.
For example, lynchings against black Americans rose dramatically in correspondence to reduced economic prospects for white Americans, such as during the Great Depression.
White Americans perceived their black counterparts as a greater threat to increasingly scarce jobs and opportunities and, as a result, were lethally punished.
In times of less distress, scapegoat groups are seen as posing less of a threat and, therefore, are less likely to be seen as scapegoats (Hammer, 2007).
Examples
Sociologists have interpreted many historical examples of scapegoating through the lens of Durkheim. These range from the Spanish Inquisition, the Puritan-Indian wars of 1636, the burning of women as alleged witches, and the rise of fascism after the Great Depression.
Perhaps the most blatant and tragic example of scapegoating in modern history is the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler notoriously scapegoated Jews for the suffering of the Germans after World War I.
By depicting Jewish people as more commercially successful than the average German citizen, Hitler rallied Germans to extreme levels of nationalism at the expense of Jews and other groups.
Hitler conjured resentment and hatred toward the groups and triggered a genocide of millions of people for the perceived improvement of Germany.
Scapegoating has been used as a justification, and scholars have written, for the mass murder of other groups. In his book Wayward Puritans, Kai T. Erikson (1966) demonstrated that the Puritans in New England began persecuting Native Americans as a response to the plight and social disorganization of the original settlers.
Multi-century persecution would eventually lead to a near-eradication of Native American populations in the United States.
References
Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Human Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Erikson, K. T. (1966). Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance.
Fauconnet, P. (1920). La responsabilité.
Kessler, T., & Mummendey, A. (2001). Is there any scapegoat around? Determinants of intergroup conflicts at different categorization levels. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1090.
Hammer, E. (2007). Scapegoat Theory. In Baumeister, R. F. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of social psychology (Vol. 1). Sage.
Mestrovic, S. (2007). Scapegoating. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 1-2.
Mestrovic, S. (2015). G. 21. Yüzyılda Durkheim, çev. S. Güldal, S. Güldal, Ġstanbul: Matbu Kitap.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Charlotte NickersonResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityUndergraduate at Harvard UniversityCharlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.
Charlotte NickersonResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityUndergraduate at Harvard University
Charlotte Nickerson
Research Assistant at Harvard University
Undergraduate at Harvard University
Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.
