Stockholm Syndrome: Origins, Evidence, and Institutional Legitimation

This article examines whether Stockholm syndrome, a term that emerged from the 1973 Norrmalmstorg bank robbery, is supported by the available evidence. Using primary sources and a review of the literature, it finds that the psychiatrist who pioneered the label never assessed the hostages, that the hostages' behavior may reflect reasonable responses to danger, and that the term followed a hostage's public criticism of how police handled the situation. Drawing a distinction between the cultural reach of Stockholm syndrome and the clinical record behind it, the article explores the consequences of this gap for psychology and its neighboring fields. The term continues to appear in textbooks and applied settings despite this evidentiary gap. Scholarship also suggests that the label has often been applied along gendered lines, including to women whose responses were characterized as irrational. The term's wide circulation may have narrowed what questions get asked about captivity bonding and kept explanations like trauma bonding from receiving consideration. From this, the article develops a broader account it terms circular institutional legitimation, in which a construct gains apparent scientific authority through successive institutional adoptions that substitute for empirical validation. Author's expanded version. Material added after publication differs from published version, published as Head, K. R. (2026). Stockholm syndrome: Origins, evidence, and institutional legitimation. National Social Science Journal, 64(3), 141–171.