Researchers ran a simple experiment on 5,000 people: half were first reminded of COVID-19, then everyone picked a hypothetical roommate. That single reminder was enough to make people measurably more prejudiced against Asian and Hispanic applicants, who had nothing to do with the pandemic or anyone’s lost job (Lu et al., 2021). A threat went looking for someone to blame, and landed on an out-group.
Scapegoating (dumping collective frustration onto a target who did not cause it) happens because the real cause is usually too big, too abstract, or too powerful to punch, so the anger goes looking for someone who is.
It is an old, ugly pattern
The COVID experiment is just the latest proof of something long documented. In the US South from 1882 to 1930, the years when cotton prices fell (economic pain rose) were the years when lynchings of Black men rose. The victims had nothing to do with cotton or the economy. The hardship simply got displaced onto a blameless target. The link held up even when later researchers re-ran it with far stricter methods (Hepworth & West, 1988).
The mechanism, in plain steps
- Frustration builds, from hardship, fear, or helplessness, and needs somewhere to go.
- The real cause is unreachable: the economy, fate, vast systems, your own failures. You cannot fight it.
- So the anger redirects onto a target you can reach, someone weaker, more visible, and different. This is displaced aggression (hitting a safe target instead of the real, untouchable one).
- Blaming them feels good, and that relief is what keeps it going.
Why a scapegoat is so satisfying
- It turns a complicated, hopeless problem into a simple story: “THEY did this to us.”
- It gives you a target you can actually attack.
- It unites the in-group against a common enemy, the us-versus-them instinct firing.
- It protects you: it is not my fault, or bad luck. It is them.
The giveaway: the scapegoat is chosen for being easy to blame, not for being responsible. The blame does not track who caused the harm. It tracks who is weak, visible, and different.
The dark payoff of this whole part
Scapegoating runs on tribal instinct and is powered by moral disengagement, dehumanize them, then blame them. And leaders exploit it on purpose: handing an angry public a scapegoat both deflects from their own failures and rallies the group behind them.
Why this matters
- When you are angry or afraid and someone hands you a simple, satisfying target to blame, be suspicious. Real causes are usually diffuse and dull; scapegoats are convenient and vivid.
- Ask the question that breaks it: did this group actually cause the problem, or are they just the easiest to hit?
- Watch leaders who blame one group for everything. That is rarely analysis. It is deflection plus cohesion.
A scapegoat is not chosen because they are guilty. They are chosen because they cannot fight back, and because blaming them feels better than facing what really went wrong.