• Home
  • About the book
  • About the author

MADE IN AMERICA

Notes on American life from American history.

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« “Libertarianism is Strange” Revisited
Ferguson and Social Media »

Blame Who or What

August 20, 2014 by Claude Fischer

(source)

The sense of empowerment that is part of American individualism benefits Americans. People who feel empowered, able to shape the world, and responsible for themselves tend, social psychological research shows, to act more forcefully and succeed more often than people who feel themselves to be at the mercy of others or of larger forces. Confidence is often a positive self-fulfilling prophecy. But there is another side to such an empowered world view: self-blame.

To be sure, a healthy level of egoism – also part of the individualistic world-view – protects Americans from blaming themselves too much. Americans tend to take credit for their successes while sidestepping fault when things go wrong more often than other peoples do; Americans tend to be especially “self-enhancing” (see, e.g., here, here, and here). Nonetheless, the sense of personal responsibility can lead many Americans who face repeated difficulties to beat up on themselves.

Voices

Two recent articles in the Spring issue of Contexts magazine stimulated this post. Jennifer Silva reported on her interviews with 100 young working-class Americans who described their floundering struggles to get a foothold in the job market and start families. Susan Sered reported on her interviews with several dozen Massachusetts women who had been incarcerated and for the most part kept living on the margin. Both researchers were struck by the extent to which their interviewees faulted themselves and people like themselves for not having succeeded, the degree to which the desperate asserted that they have to get themselves together by themselves.

Silva and Sered believe – though most Americans would disagree – that the people they talked to grew up in circumstances that made success not unheard of but highly unlikely. In an economy with 9 jobs for every 10 workers, with dysfunctional neighborhood schools, coming from broken and stressed families, and with other disadvantages, their respondents faced daunting odds. Yet, those respondents strikingly insisted on blaming themselves. A generation ago, political scientists Kay Scholzman and Sidney Verba were similarly struck by the results of a national survey they conducted comparing unemployed to employed Americans, struck that the unemployed tended to blame themselves, not the economy or the system, for their condition.

Comparison

It is well-known that Americans more than other westerners blame the poor for being poor and otherwise insist on interpreting what happens to people as caused by the person rather than by the situation. A new, close-grained study by Ofer Sharone compares the experiences and accounts of unemployed white-collar workers in the United States and in Israel. (I quote from the dissertation which was turned into a 2013 book.) Sharone shows that American-Israeli differences were not a matter of simple ideology, but emerged from subtly different employment systems that embody the cultural differences.

U.S. employers and counselors expect unemployed workers to demonstrate personal qualities that entitle them to a job, while the Israeli system stresses credentials and their fit to the jobs. Although the American unemployed started their job searches with great energy, when they encountered difficulty they got discouraged and substantially slowed down. The Israelis who encountered problems got angry and kept persevering. How each attributed blame mattered. To quote Sharone:

The dominant intermediary institution in the American labor market is the self-help industry, which works symbiotically with corporate human resources departments…. Illustrating the sharp difference between the Israeli discourse focusing on skills and market demand for skills and the American self-help approach, the author of the best-selling American book What Color is Your Parachute … claims: “The key [to finding work] is still doing extensive homework on yourself, not the job market”…. American job seekers describe feeling personally rejected, and blame their continued joblessness on a flawed self. Israeli job seekers increasingly blame their continued joblessness on a flawed “system.” ….

[Americans] begin to exhibit a distinct subjectivity of self-blame, typically starting to feel like they “have a character defect.”… These dynamics are … not mere reflections of an abstract ideology of individualism but of … a job search … which [highlights an] ultimately seemingly flawed self as the focus of the blame…. Too much “empowerment” may boomerang and backfire [and] sets the stage for later self-blame and curtailment of effort and engagement.

When things go well – say, when the job market is booming – Americans’ sense of personal empowerment and responsibility can indeed empower them. When things don’t go well and their ego defenses are vulnerable, as is more often the case with less-advantaged individuals, then the notion that “it is all in your hands” can lead to self-defeating self-blame.

(Re-posted on Boston Review’s BR Blog on August 21, 2014.)

Share this:

  • Share
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blame, individualism, unemployment |

  • Made in America: Now available in Paperback, on Kindle, and via Google eBook

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 450 other subscribers
  • Comment Back to:

    madeinamericathebook @ gmail.com
  • * 2010 winner, PROSE Award for U.S. History, American Association of Publishers.
    * "A shrewd, generous, convincing interpretation of American life" -- Publishers Weekly
    * "Masterful and rewarding . . . exactly the sort of grand and controversial narrative, exactly the bold test of old assumptions, that is needed to keep the study of American history alive and honest" -- Molly Worthen, New Republic Online
    * "... brave and ambitious new book ...." "Made in America sheds abundant light on the American past and helps us to understand how we arrived at our own historical moment, and who we are today." -- David M. Kennedy, Boston Review
    * "... this book ... already belongs to the prestigious line of works which decipher the singular character of America. It is in itself a mine of definitive information for all those who are interested in American society and its fate in modernity" [trans. from the French] -- Nicolas Duvoux, Sociologie

  • Pages

    • About the book
      • Corrections & Updates
    • About the author
  • Previous Posts

    • Baseball and Originalism: Opening Day, 2023
    • Why Red v. Blue Became Me v. You: Polarization, Part II
    • How Red v. Blue Became Me v. You: Polarization, Part I
    • The Covid Experience Reveals How Weird America Is
    • Americans Continue to Associate. For What Cause?
    • Slavery, Capitalism, and Reparations
    • Opening Day, 2022: Still Unresolved
    • No Peace, No Justice
    • The Right’s Reaction to Americans’ Leftward Shift: A Supreme Example
    • The Culture Has Moved Left… So the Right has Mobilized
    • Overcoming Distance and Embracing Place: Personal Ties in the Age of Persistent and Pervasive Communication
    • The Death Surge Before Covid-19: Who, What, and Why.
    • Women Rising: Life Stories from the Last Century
    • Whither Big Tech, or When Novelties Become (Regulated) Necessities
    • Opening Day, 2021: Baseball’s Crises
    • First Takes on the Election #2: What About the Polls?
    • The Political Census
    • First Takes on the Election: #1, What Happened?
    • Now for Something Different: Is Sex Wilting?
    • Explaining Trump: The Next-to-Last Time (I Hope)
    • Covid-19: Exceptionalism with a Vengeance
    • Is Left Cancel Culture Cancelling Left Culture?
    • BLM Protests: Surprisingly Successful… So Far. Why?
    • White Liberals’ Political Correctness Could Help Trump Get Re-Elected
    • Asteroidal Change or Glacial Change? Peering Over the Covid-19 Horizon
    • Opening Day Under Covid-19: Do Fans Matter?
    • COVID-19: Balancing Short-Term Solutions and Long-Term Effects. Are There Lessons from 1918?
    • Bernie: The Left is Still Waiting for the Proletariat Vote
    • AG Barr says attacks on religion are loosening the hounds of hell. Are they?
    • One Year Down, One to Go: Still Explaining Trump
    • Lead, Brains, and Behavior: Sociology Meets Biology
    • The Year’s Racial Flare-Ups: Signs of the Future or Signs of a Last Gasp?
    • [Bracket] Political Commentary [End Bracket]
    • Parental Love, Opportunity Markets, and Inequality
    • Brain Twisting, or How We Evolved
    • Opening Day, 2019: Data-Crunching, Inequality, and Baseball
    • Fixing Inequality: More Opportunity is Not the Answer
    • A Christian America? The Talk and the Walk
    • Shareholder Value: Law, Inequality, and the Doubting Justice
    • After the Election: More Polarization or Less?
    • Searching for the Authentic Self (… and Finding Trump)
    • The Politics-Religion Vortex Spins
    • Loneliness Epidemic: An End to the Story?
    • Get by with a Little Help from…
    • Feel-Good or Do-Good Politics
    • Do Americans Tolerate Zero Tolerance?
    • How Can Size of Community Still Matter?
    • Sending a Message by Pollster
    • Loneliness Scare Again… and Again… and…
    • Where Have You Gone, “Alienation”?
    • Opening Day, 2018: Politics, Race, and Baseball
    • Local Cultures
    • Chain Migration
    • Explaining Trump Some More
    • “Okie from Muskogee” a Half-Century On
    • Reversing American Voluntarism
    • National Character? A Reply to Stearns
    • Do We (Still) Value Family?
    • Is Marriage Over? For Whom?
    • Bannon, Brown, and the Identity Debate
    • The Great “American” (or is it New York?) Songbook
    • Is Health Care a Right?
    • Church Social
    • Inequality is about Security and Opportunity
    • Democracy in America, France, and “Hamilton”
    • Opening Day, 2017: Inequality on the Field, in the Stands
    • Voting for the Five Percent
    • More (on) Polarization
    • Americans and the Unassimilables
    • Explaining Trump
    • ***** Hiatus *****
    • The Great Settling Down
    • Election Reflection
    • Is the U.S. No Longer Religiously Exceptional?
    • Technology and Housework: Other Tasks for Mother?
    • Can Sociability Blunt Political Polarization?
    • The End of Good Work?
    • RFD, Media, and Democracy
    • Long Tails, Big Cities, Critical Masses
    • A Woman President?
    • Magazines: 19th Century Internet
    • Friends and “FB Friends”
    • Reversal of Fortune: American Cities
    • Does Education Work?
    • A Tony by Any Other Name…
    • Bernie, Hillary, and Historical Memory
    • Driving Cattle, Driving Exceptionalism
    • Build Bigger Wall? Get More Undocumented.
    • Opening Day 2016
    • Great Again
    • A Celebrity Strong Man
    • Survey Says . . .
    • Veterans and Suicides?
    • Odd Man In
    • The Pace, the Pace
    • A Street Divided
    • A History of Health and Health Inequalities
    • Why Diversity
    • Family Wages
    • What Happened When They Came?
    • The Grandma (and pa) Effect
    • Turkle, Times, Technology, Trauma–Yet Again
    • Just Deserts
    • Cell Phone Etiquette
    • Changing Hearts, Changing Matters, 2011-2015
    • American Self-Creation
    • The Immigrant-Crime Connection
    • Black by Choice?
    • The Marriage Contract
    • Attaining Adulthood
    • Left Out: Working-Class Kids
    • Life is a Stage, or Several
    • Family Farms vs. Americanism
    • Censor This, Political Correctness
    • Opening Day 2015
    • Science vs. Religion… or Science and Religion?
    • Building the Natural Market
    • Dressing Down
    • Untangling the Race Gap
    • Finding Public Relief
    • Surveying Change
    • Snap Decisions and Race
    • Holy-Day Exceptionalism
    • Where Does the “Don’t Shoot” Movement Go?
    • Reporting from America’s “Slums”
    • Racism as Mental Illness?
    • Which University?
    • The “Shared” Economy
    • Of Places Past
    • Long Story of the “Long Tail”
    • The Blameless Only
    • When Epidemic Hysteria Made Sense
    • Latest News on “No Religion”
    • Vocabulary Retrogression
    • American Way-Differentism: More a Club than a Family
    • Do Ideas Matter?
    • Alternative to Empathy
    • Women Dining
    • Too Much Social Science?
    • Ferguson and Social Media
    • Blame Who or What
    • “Libertarianism is Strange” Revisited
    • All Tech Is Social
    • How Ideas Make Themselves Matter
    • Women in Politics 1780-2014
    • Government Works
    • Telling Stories vs. Telling Data
    • Persistence of Race, 2014
    • Selfishness or Self-Awareness?
    • Virtuous Debt
    • Work Hours and the Pay Gap
    • Life in Public, Then and Now
    • Mourning 9/11 Victorian Style
    • A “Friends” Gripe
    • Bible Readings
    • Old Days, Fast Times
    • De-Democratizing?
    • Eco-Puritanism
    • Bring Me Your….
    • Thinking Inequality
    • Which Radical Ideas Come True?
    • Pastime – Opening Day 2014
    • Where Did “Hispanics” Come From?
    • Kitty Genovese: The Emblematic Story
    • Public Health
    • Exceptionalism Ending?
    • Risk-Sharing
    • Folktales of the Policy Elites
    • Male (Job) Insecurity
    • Libertarianism is Very Strange
    • Art and the Machined World
    • The Public Housing Experiment
    • The S-Curve of Cultural Change
    • Artful History
    • Inventing the Social Network
    • American Dream, Twisting
    • Deservingness
    • Place Matters More
    • Squirrely History
    • Atheist Evangelism: “Nothing New Under the Sun”
    • The Giving Season… and Era
    • Cell Phone Science
    • Boo! Americans and the Occult
    • You Call That a Shutdown?
    • More Inequality Updates
    • Political Responses to the Crash
    • Child Labors
    • Word Counts and What Counts
    • Loss of Economic Exceptionalism
    • Learning Sympathy
    • Respecting the Science
    • Economic Equality, 1774 and Beyond
    • Declaring You’re a “None”
    • Extremely Local
    • Robert Bellah
    • Inequality Hits Home
    • The Supreme Court Ducks Immutability
    • Postcard from Paris
    • America’s Religious Market
    • American-Made Ethnic-Americans
    • New Media and Old Manifestations
    • Novel Data: Promise and Perils
    • Immigrants and Historical Amnesia
    • Inequality Update
    • Psychologically Damaged
    • Race in the Eye of the Beholder
    • Getting Smarter
    • Suicide Boom?
    • Tweedledee-Tweedledum Nostalgia
    • Sexual License, Sexual Limits
    • Markets, Prices, and Justice
    • Immigration and Political Clout
    • Is the Gender Revolution Over?
    • Writerly Baseball – Opening Day 2013
    • Back Home
    • Catholic Schism
    • How Material Are We?
    • Unholy Alliance: Laissez Faire and the Church
    • The ’60s Turn 50
    • The Left’s Religion Problem
    • Paying Attention to the Kids
    • We’re # Last!
    • Risk Taking
    • The Elderly and Their Children
    • Guns
    • A Modern “Antebellum Puzzle”?
    • Makes One Anxious
    • Psychological Labeling … and Enabling?
    • The Giving Nation? Philanthropy’s Problems
    • Religion, Politics, and the Sunday Mail
    • The Happiness Boom
    • What Americans Have Been Thinking
    • The Verdict on Class and Voting
    • Panderocracy
    • 9/11 Reaction and Resilience
    • A Cost of Inequality: Growth
    • Obama’s Racial Penalty
    • Choose Your Choice
    • To the Poorhouse
    • The Polarizing Political Paradox Redux
    • The 47% Charge in U.S. History
    • The Survey Crisis
    • Competitive Intelligence
    • Execution Songs
    • Spiritual and/or Religious
    • “Who Built That?”: Chance and History
    • Meeting, Mating, and the Web
    • Live Long and Prosper — and Plan
    • Voting Violence
    • Sex and the American Car
    • The Assets Gap
    • Differences Under the Differences
    • Why Americans Don’t Vacation
    • Virtuous Voting
    • Clothes Make the Common Man
    • Driving Blind
    • Geography of Inequality
    • Slavery’s Heavy Hand
    • Gay Vows
    • Explaining Poverty (Again)
    • Out- and Insourcing
    • Still Under God
    • The Loneliness Scare is Back
    • Sunday Pleasures, Private Faith
    • Between Dole and Market
    • Opening Day 2012 – Worldwide
    • Tolerating Americans
    • What’s the Common in the Common Good?
    • End Times and Presidents
    • The Abortion Puzzle
    • The Army of Black Liberation
    • The South Has Risen
    • Can’t Believe It
    • Marrying — Up, Down, Sideways
    • Occupy 2012: Another 1968?
    • Over-Impacted
    • How Bad is “European”?
    • Unique, Sovereign, American
    • The Working Class’s Party
    • Reconstructing Memory
    • Make-Your-Own Religion
    • Consume This
    • Self-Absorbed: Emerson & Thoreau
    • What Works? Votes.
    • Stumbling in the Dark
    • More on Occupy
    • Occupy! Now What?
    • Lost Children
    • Cheerful Yanks?
    • Tolerating Ambiguity
    • New News, Old News
    • Unequal Denial
    • Timing is (Not?) Everything
    • Breastfeeding History
    • What’s a Life Worth?
    • Homesick Blues
    • Summer Break
    • Spinsters No More
    • Missing Tramps
    • City Crime; Country Crime
    • Living Togetherness
    • Naturally Clean
    • Women Graduating
    • Home Owning Dreams
    • Technology and Fundamentals
    • Protected Class
    • Faith Endures
    • American Exceptionalism
    • Buying a Head Start
    • A. Lincoln, Socialist?
    • Opening Day 2011
    • Shaken but Secure
    • Jobs Go and Come
    • Heavy Hand
    • The Big Change
    • American Ties (III)
    • Money and Character
    • Going Out–or Home?
    • Degree Inequality
    • American Ties (II)
    • Ugly or Needy
    • 18th-Century Twitterfeed
    • American Ties (I)
    • Grammar Rules
    • Christmas Struggle
    • Ancestor Worship
    • Was Slavery, Is Slavery
    • Hanukkah or Vanish?
    • Pilgrims, Puritans, Americans?
    • Return on Investment
    • Solidarity, Soldiers, and Baseball
    • Win Stay, Lose Change
    • Why Vote?
    • We’re All Geniuses
    • Caring More or Less
    • Life Begins
    • Equal Visions
    • No Dinner Invitations?
    • Depressing Comparisons
    • Labor’s Laboring Efforts
    • Multiculturalism Lite and Right
    • Who Has Your Back
    • A Natural Romance
    • Alone or Lonely?
    • Sentimental Journey
    • LeBron & the 10th
    • We’re #1 !
    • A Fragmenting America? – Pt. 2
    • A Fragmenting America? – Pt. 1
    • Fighting for the 4th
    • Gentrified Memories
    • Juneteenth: Race? Slavery?
    • Boomer Blues
    • No Longer the Tall American
    • A Crime Puzzle
    • Memorial-izing Day
    • Angry Old White Men
    • Sisters Take the Streets
    • Brooks, Policy, and History
    • Tongue-Tied to America
    • Happiness Happy
    • Inventing Friendship
    • American Individualism – Really?
    • Tax Day: The Government-Enterprise System
    • Opening Day 2010
    • Did “Consumerism” Blow Up the Economy?
    • A Christian America? What History Shows
    • The Myth that Never Moves
    • Good Health, Long Life, and Big Government
    • Announcing the “Made in America” Site

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


  • Follow Following
    • MADE IN AMERICA
    • Join 450 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • MADE IN AMERICA
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
%d bloggers like this: