Suffering saviors: Relationships between perceptions of interpersonal victimhood, the vigilante identity, and the monitoring and punishment of norm violators

Vigilantes are people who monitor their environment for signs of wrongdoing and administer unauthorized punishment on perceived norm violators. We propose that one reason people become vigilantes is because they perceive themselves to have been victimized in their interpersonal relationships. These experiences can lead them to construct a vigilante identity organized around the imperative to punish perceived wrongdoers. We test this theoretical model in four studies. Study 1 shows that individual differences in the adoption of a vigilante identity predicts punishment tendencies in an ecologically relevant context. Studies 2 and 3 show the associations between the tendency for interpersonal victimhood (TIV) and the tendency to monitor online communities for signs of wrongdoing (Study 2) and delivery of costly punishment (Study 3), as mediated by the self-identification of being a vigilante. Study 4 tests the generalizability of our findings in a field setting and examines whether our model applies to the phenomenon of “shadow vigilantism”. We found consistent support for our hypotheses across all studies. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.