Happy victimizing phenomenon, happy victimization phenomenon or happy victimizer phenomenon is a phenomenon in

child development Child development involves the Human development (biology), biological, developmental psychology, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence. Childhood is divided into 3 stages o ...

, in particular, in their

moral development Moral Development focuses on the emergence, change and understanding of morality from infancy through adulthood. Morality develops across a life span in a variety of ways and is influenced by an individual's experiences and behavior when faced ...

and

cognitive development Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult bra ...

. It amounts to an apparent disparity in moral conceptions of children under the age 6-7: while they understand that the acts of

victimization Victimisation ( or victimization) is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimisation is called victimology. Peer victimisation Peer victimisati ...

are wrong, they attribute exclusively positive or "happy" emotions to victimizers, who achieve their goals while harming others.Mari Hasegawa, "Developing Moral Emotion Attributions in Happy Victimizer Task: Role of Victim Information", Japanese Psychological Research, 2018, Volume 60, No. 1, 38–46, While the idea that "getting what one wants" is good regardless the cost may be attributed to people of any age, the happy victimizer phenomenon appears to contradict a number of mainstream theories according to which the awareness of victim's harm is supposed to give rise to certain negative emotions, such as remorse or fear of punishment.Bryan W. Sokol
"Children’s conceptions of agency and morality : making sense of the happy victimizer phenomenon"
2004, Ph.D. thesis Bryan Sokol points out that the earliest demonstration that young children ascribe the wrongdoers positive emotions was provided in 1980 by Barden, Zelko, Duncan, and Masters. It their test they provided 40 hypothetical situations and asked to predict one of the selected affective reactions ("happy", "scared", "sad", etc.) They singled out an observation that the situation "dishonesty (not caught)" was predicted by the youngest children to produce the "happy" emotion, while in the oldest group the consensus was for "fear". A more detailed and frequently cited as pioneering report was that of Nunner-Winkler and Sodian (1988). In an effort to clarify the nature of young children's morality they conducted a certain experiment and reported that most 4-year-olds attributed positive moral emotions to the wrongdoer focusing on the successful outcome of the wrongdoer's action, while 8-year-olds focused on the moral value of the wrongdoer's action and therefore attributed him negative feelings. Further reading:Gerhard Minnameier, A cognitive approach to the ‘happy victimiser’, Journal of Moral Education, , 41, 4, (491-508), (2012).

References

{{reflist Child development Developmental psychology Moral psychology Abuse Bullying Victimology