We’ve all known what it feels like to be dismissed — and, at times, done the dismissing ourselves. Here’s how we learned to be cautious about “victim signaling.”

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Why do we admire resilience yet recoil when victims talk about their hardships? According to recent research published in Personality and Individual Differences, led by Professors Karl Aquino and Stefan Thau, when we frame our experiences primarily in terms of harm or injustice, we might unintentionally activate a bias so old and pervasive that we hardly even notice it. In turn, others may inadvertently begin questioning our motives.

Across four studies, Aquino, Thau and their research team examined how others perceive what they call “victim signaling”: the act of intentionally informing others of one’s suffering or mistreatment in a way that invites attribution. A clear pattern emerged among their 1,430 participants: those who emphasized their victimization were consistently judged more harshly, seen as less ethical and rated lower in competence and leadership potential.

It wasn’t necessarily that observers doubted the hardship itself. Rather, they inferred something about the person behind the story, which brings to light a much deeper cultural reflex to scrutinize vulnerability. Here are two reasons why this happens, according to the study.

1. Victim Signaling Can Bring Your Character Into Question

In Aquino and Thau’s first experiment, participants were asked to imagine themselves as managers informing an employee named Michael about a decision to relocate him to a different office. He reacts with frustration as he explains that the move will be disruptive, expressing that the relocation allowance isn’t enough to offset the inconvenience.

However, the researcher team introduced a manipulation to these events. In one version of the scenario, that’s where the exchange ends — as a relatively ordinary and valid complaint. But in another, Michael adds that he suspects the decision to relocate him is motivated by gender bias. He then threatens to sue the company for discrimination, unless he’s offered a larger raise.

The second version involved a much stronger “victim signal,” which was enough to significantly dim the participants’ view of him.

Specifically, participants consistently rated the signaling Michael as higher on “dark triad” traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. They also viewed him as less likable and less ethical, despite the fact that both versions of Michael were reacting to the same situation. The only difference was that one explicitly framed his disadvantage as injustice.

Why would invoking unfairness — which the participants had no reason to believe was a lie — spark such a negative inference about Michael’s character as a whole?

Thau offered an explanation to me in a recent interview, which cuts to the very heart of human social reasoning: “Audiences don’t just hear a plea; they infer traits from the act of signaling.” In other words, when someone calls their own suffering to attention, observers may unconsciously assume they’re trying to extract sympathy, advantage or moral credit in some way, even if there’s no reason to suggest this.

2. Victim Signaling Can Overshadow Your Competence

Although the prior experiment’s finding that strong accusations can hurt your reputation isn’t all too surprising, a later study revealed that even the most understated allusions to injustice can have similarly unforgiving consequences. This was especially the case in high-stakes, professional contexts.

In this experiment, participants were asked to imagine they were part of a hiring panel at a fictional tech company choosing a senior manager. They reviewed three candidates: two Black men and one White man, each of whom had similar qualifications and balanced descriptions of strengths and weaknesses.

The manipulation came in the form of the candidates’ short “motivation statements.” For one of the Black candidates, half of the participants read a version of his statement that began with, “As someone who has experienced injustice…” In the other condition, that same candidate’s statement was identical, except that it made no mention of injustice at all. The other two candidates always used neutral phrasing.

Specifically, Thau and Aquino found that the single, brief reference to unfairness — with no accusation, no demand and no elaboration — was also more than enough to shift the observers’ perceptions.

On average, the Black candidate who referenced injustice was rated statistically significantly less favorably for leadership potential and overall desirability in comparison to the non-signaling counterpart. Every other detail was identical; the only difference was whether one of them had subtly made reference to their identity through the lens of harm.

This is an unnerving finding. We have ample reason to believe that modern-day society celebrates authenticity and honesty when individuals discuss their lived experiences, yet even a modest acknowledgment of struggle can come across as self-serving.

Aquino and Thau interpret this as part of a broader reputational dilemma. When someone highlights that they’ve faced barriers, observers may unconsciously translate it into a question of character: Is this person prone to dwelling on difficulties? Will they bring these grievances into the workplace?

The irony, of course, is that the experiment didn’t test for actual leadership abilities, competence or behavior; they only tested others’ perceptions. Yet perception is still what tends to shape real-world hiring, promotion and leadership selection outcomes. And for marginalized groups — women, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, people with disabilities, those experiencing poverty or housing insecurity — this bias has become a systemic barrier.

Why Victim Signaling Is Penalized

As cruel as it may sound, our instinct to question people who signal victimhood isn’t simply a product of modern cynicism. It may actually be written into our biology.

From an evolutionary standpoint, humans have always had to decide whose pain deserves attention, as well as determine when our compassion might be exploited. Within early cooperative groups, resources like food, protection and status were finite. Extending care to those who didn’t genuinely need those resources could put the entire group at risk.

So, just as prior research explains, humans came to develop what evolutionary psychologists refer to as a “cheater detection module.” This is understood as a built-in sensitivity to cues that someone might be seeking an advantage through false or overstated claims of harm, and Aquino and Thau’s research lends ample support for its existence.

This isn’t to say that we’re instantly inclined to disbelieve someone who shares their story of mistreatment or hardship. We do, however, have a reflex that urges us to assess why they’re telling us.

As Aquino explains, “At a societal level, there’s a tension between norms that encourage help for the harmed and norms that punish perceived free-riding.” Continuing, he clarifies, “Signaling can activate both, and in ambiguous cases (e.g., unverifiable, ‘invisible’ harms), observers may default to skepticism or cost-avoidance.”

This internal audit happens very quickly; if we don’t pause and acknowledge why we’re doing it, we forget how important it is to meet others’ vulnerability with empathy. Although this module once served a very important and protective social function, it now risks distorting our responses in some of our most ordinary contexts: work, online or even among friends.

We’ve been taught not to “cry wolf,” but somewhere along the way, that lesson became garbled enough for some to treat any discussion of victimization with skepticism. What’s so tragic about this is that, as Aquino and Thau’s research shows, for the vast majority of people who aren’t exaggerating or scheming, this instinctive suspicion only penalizes them further.

Have your valid complaints been perceived as victim signaling at work? Take this science-backed test to find out if you could be being gaslit: Gaslighting at Work Questionnaire