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=                         Just-world_fallacy                         =
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                            Introduction
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The just-world fallacy, or just-world hypothesis, is the cognitive
bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" - that actions
will necessarily have morally fair and fitting consequences for the
actor. For example, the assumptions that noble actions will eventually
be rewarded and evil actions will eventually be punished fall under
this fallacy. In other words, the just-world fallacy is the tendency
to attribute consequences to--or expect consequences as the result
of-- either a universal force that restores moral balance or a
universal connection between the nature of actions and their results.
This belief generally implies the existence of cosmic justice,
destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, order, or the
anglophone colloquial use of "karma". It is often associated with a
variety of fundamental fallacies, especially in regard to
rationalizing suffering on the grounds that the sufferers "deserve"
it. This is called victim blaming.

This fallacy popularly appears in the English language in various
figures of speech that imply guaranteed punishment for wrongdoing,
such as: "you got what was coming to you", "what goes around comes
around", "chickens come home to roost", "everything happens for a
reason", and "you reap what you sow". This hypothesis has been widely
studied by social psychologists since Melvin J. Lerner conducted
seminal work on the belief in a just world in the early 1960s.
Research has continued since then, examining the predictive capacity
of the fallacy in various situations and across cultures, and
clarifying and expanding the theoretical understandings of just-world
beliefs.


                             Emergence
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Many philosophers and social theorists have observed and considered
the phenomenon of belief in a just world, going back to at least as
early as the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, writing , who
argued against this belief. Lerner's work made the just-world
hypothesis a focus of research in the field of social psychology.


Melvin Lerner
===============
Lerner was prompted to study justice beliefs and the just-world
fallacy in the context of social psychological inquiry into negative
social and societal interactions. Lerner saw his work as extending
Stanley Milgram's work on obedience. He sought to answer the questions
of how regimes that cause cruelty and suffering maintain popular
support, and how people come to accept social norms and laws that
produce misery and suffering.

Lerner's inquiry was influenced by repeatedly witnessing the tendency
of observers to blame victims for their suffering. During his clinical
training as a psychologist, he observed treatment of mentally ill
persons by the health care practitioners with whom he worked. Although
Lerner knew them to be kindhearted, educated people, they often blamed
patients for the patients' own suffering. Lerner also describes his
surprise at hearing his students derogate (disparage, belittle) the
poor, seemingly oblivious to the structural forces that contribute to
poverty. The desire to understand the processes that caused these
phenomena led Lerner to conduct his first experiments on what is now
called the just-world fallacy.


                           Early evidence
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In 1966, Lerner and his colleagues began a series of experiments that
used shock paradigms to investigate observer responses to
victimization. In the first of these experiments conducted at the
University of Kansas, 72 female participants watched what appeared to
be a confederate receiving electrical shocks for her errors during a
learning task (learning pairs of nonsense syllables). Initially, these
observing participants were upset by the victim's apparent suffering.
But as the suffering continued and observers remained unable to
intervene, the observers began to reject and devalue the victim.
Rejection and devaluation of the victim was greater when the observed
suffering was greater. But when participants were told the victim
would receive compensation for her suffering, the participants did not
derogate the victim. Lerner and colleagues replicated these findings
in subsequent studies, as did other researchers.


                               Theory
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To explain these studies' findings, it was theorized that there was a
prevalent belief in a just world. A just world is one in which actions
and conditions have predictable, appropriate consequences. These
actions and conditions are typically individuals' behaviors or
attributes. The specific conditions that correspond to certain
consequences are socially determined by a society's norms and
ideologies. Lerner presents the belief in a just world as functional:
it maintains the idea that one can influence the world in a
predictable way. Belief in a just world functions as a sort of
"contract" with the world regarding the consequences of behavior. This
allows people to plan for the future and engage in effective,
goal-driven behavior. Lerner summarized his findings and his
theoretical work in his 1980 monograph 'The Belief in a Just World: A
Fundamental Delusion'.

Lerner hypothesized that the belief in a just world is crucially
important for people to maintain for their own well-being. But people
are confronted daily with evidence that the world is not just: people
suffer without apparent cause. Lerner explained that people use
strategies to eliminate threats to their belief in a just world. These
strategies can be rational or irrational. Rational strategies include
accepting the reality of injustice, trying to prevent injustice or
provide restitution, and accepting one's own limitations. Non-rational
strategies include denial, withdrawal, and reinterpretation of the
event.

There are a few modes of reinterpretation that could make an event fit
the belief in a just world. One can reinterpret the outcome, the
cause, and/or the character of the victim.  In the case of observing
the injustice of the suffering of innocent people, one major way to
rearrange the cognition of an event is to interpret the victim of
suffering as deserving. Specifically, observers can blame victims for
their suffering on the basis of their behaviors and/or their
characteristics. Much psychological research on the belief in a just
world has focused on these negative social phenomena of victim blaming
and victim derogation in different contexts.

An additional effect of this thinking is that individuals experience
less personal vulnerability because they do not believe they have done
anything to deserve or cause negative outcomes. This is related to the
self-serving bias observed by social psychologists.

Many researchers have interpreted just-world beliefs as an example of
causal attribution. In victim blaming, the causes of victimization are
attributed to an individual rather than to a situation. Thus, the
consequences of belief in a just world may be related to or explained
in terms of particular patterns of causal attribution.


Veridical judgment
====================
Others have suggested alternative explanations for the derogation of
victims. One suggestion is that derogation effects are based on
accurate judgments of a victim's character. In particular, in relation
to Lerner's first studies, some have hypothesized that it would be
logical for observers to derogate an individual who would allow
himself to be shocked without reason. A subsequent study by Lerner
challenged this alternative hypothesis by showing that individuals are
only derogated when they actually suffer; individuals who agreed to
undergo suffering but did not were viewed positively.


Guilt reduction
=================
Another alternative explanation offered for the derogation of victims
early in the development of the just-world fallacy was that observers
derogate victims to reduce their own feelings of guilt. Observers may
feel responsible, or guilty, for a victim's suffering if they
themselves are involved in the situation or experiment. In order to
reduce the guilt, they may devalue the victim. Lerner and colleagues
claim that there has not been adequate evidence to support this
interpretation. They conducted one study that found derogation of
victims occurred even by observers who were not implicated in the
process of the experiment and thus had no reason to feel guilty.


Discomfort reduction
======================
Alternatively, victim derogation and other strategies may only be ways
to alleviate discomfort after viewing suffering. This would mean that
the primary motivation is not to restore a belief in a just world, but
to reduce discomfort caused by empathizing.  Studies have shown that
victim derogation does not suppress subsequent helping activity and
that empathizing with the victim plays a large role when assigning
blame. According to Ervin Staub, devaluing the victim should lead to
lesser compensation if restoring belief in a just world was the
primary motive; instead, there is virtually no difference in
compensation amounts whether the compensation precedes or follows
devaluation. Psychopathy has been linked to the lack of just-world
maintaining strategies, possibly due to dampened emotional reactions
and lack of empathy.


                        Additional evidence
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After Lerner's first studies, other researchers replicated these
findings in other settings in which individuals are victimized. This
work, which began in the 1970s and continues today, has investigated
how observers react to victims of random calamities like traffic
accidents, as well as rape and domestic violence, illnesses, and
poverty. Generally, researchers have found that observers of the
suffering of innocent victims tend to both derogate and blame victims
for their suffering. Observers thus maintain their belief in a just
world by changing their cognitions about the victims' character.

In the early 1970s, social psychologists Zick Rubin and Letitia Anne
Peplau developed a measure of belief in a just world. This measure and
its revised form published in 1975 allowed for the study of individual
differences in just-world beliefs. Much of the subsequent research on
the just-world hypothesis used these measurement scales.

These studies on victims of violence, illness, and poverty and others
like them have provided consistent support for the link between
observers' just-world beliefs and their tendency to blame victims for
their suffering. As a result, the existence of the just-world
hypothesis as a psychological phenomenon has become widely accepted.


Violence
==========
Researchers have looked at how observers react to victims of rape and
other violence. In a formative experiment on rape and belief in a just
world by Linda Carli and colleagues, researchers gave two groups of
subjects a narrative about interactions between a man and a woman. The
description of the interaction was the same until the end; one group
received a narrative that had a neutral ending and the other group
received a narrative that ended with the man raping the woman.
Subjects judged the rape ending as inevitable and blamed the woman in
the narrative for the rape on the basis of her behavior, but not her
characteristics. These findings have been replicated repeatedly,
including using a rape ending and a "happy ending" (a marriage
proposal).

Other researchers have found a similar phenomenon for judgments of
battered partners. One study found that observers' labels of blame of
female victims of relationship violence increase with the intimacy of
the relationship. Observers blamed the perpetrator only in the least
intimate case of violence, in which a male struck an acquaintance.


Bullying
==========
Researchers have employed the just-world fallacy to understand
bullying. Given other research on beliefs in a just world, it would be
expected that observers would derogate and blame bullying victims, but
the opposite has been found: individuals high in just-world belief
have stronger anti-bullying attitudes. Other researchers have found
that strong belief in a just world is associated with lower levels of
bullying behavior. This finding is in keeping with Lerner's
understanding of belief in a just world as functioning as a "contract"
that governs behavior. There is additional evidence that belief in a
just world is protective of the well-being of children and adolescents
in the school environment, as has been shown for the general
population.


Illness
=========
Other researchers have found that observers judge sick people as
responsible for their illnesses. One experiment showed that persons
suffering from a variety of illnesses were derogated on a measure of
attractiveness more than healthy individuals were. In comparison to
healthy people, victim derogation was found for persons presenting
with indigestion, pneumonia, and stomach cancer. Moreover, derogation
was found to be higher for those suffering from more severe illnesses,
except for those presenting with cancer. Stronger belief in a just
world has also been found to correlate with greater derogation of AIDS
victims.


Poverty
=========
More recently, researchers have explored how people react to poverty
through the lens of the just-world fallacy. Strong belief in a just
world is associated with blaming the poor, with weak belief in a just
world associated with identifying external causes of poverty including
world economic systems, war, and exploitation.


The self as victim
====================
Some research on belief in a just world has examined how people react
when they themselves are victimized. An early paper by Dr. Ronnie
Janoff-Bulman found that rape victims often blame their own behavior,
but not their own characteristics, for their victimization. It was
hypothesized that this may be because blaming one's own behavior makes
an event more controllable.


                       Theoretical refinement
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Subsequent work on measuring belief in a just world has focused on
identifying multiple dimensions of the belief. This work has resulted
in the development of new measures of just-world belief and additional
research. Hypothesized dimensions of just-world beliefs include belief
in an unjust world, beliefs in immanent justice and ultimate justice,
hope for justice, and belief in one's ability to reduce injustice.
Other work has focused on looking at the different domains in which
the belief may function; individuals may have different just-world
beliefs for the personal domain, the sociopolitical domain, the social
domain, etc. An especially fruitful distinction is between the belief
in a just world for the self (personal) and the belief in a just world
for others (general). These distinct beliefs are differentially
associated with positive mental health.


                             Correlates
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Researchers have used measures of belief in a just world to look at
correlates of high and low levels of belief in a just world.

Limited studies have examined ideological correlates of the belief in
a just world. These studies have found sociopolitical correlates of
just-world beliefs, including right-wing authoritarianism and the
Protestant work ethic. Studies have also found belief in a just world
to be correlated with aspects of religiosity.

Studies of demographic differences, including gender and racial
differences, have not shown systematic differences, but do suggest
racial differences, with black people and African Americans having the
lowest levels of belief in a just world.

The development of measures of just-world beliefs has also allowed
researchers to assess cross-cultural differences in just-world
beliefs. Much research conducted shows that beliefs in a just world
are evident cross-culturally. One study tested beliefs in a just world
of students in 12 countries. This study found that in countries where
the majority of inhabitants are powerless, belief in a just world
tends to be weaker than in other countries. This supports the theory
of the just-world fallacy because the powerless have had more personal
and societal experiences that provided evidence that the world is not
just and predictable.

Belief in unjust world has been linked to increased self-handicapping,
criminality, defensive coping, anger and perceived future risk. It may
also serve as ego-protective belief for certain individuals by
justifying maladaptive behavior.


                          Current research
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Although much of the initial work on belief in a just world focused on
its negative social effects, other research suggests that belief in a
just world is good, and even necessary, for mental health. Belief in a
just world is associated with greater life satisfaction and well-being
and less depressive affect. Researchers are actively exploring the
reasons why the belief in a just world might have this relationship to
mental health; it has been suggested that such beliefs could be a
personal resource or coping strategy that buffers stress associated
with daily life and with traumatic events. This hypothesis suggests
that belief in a just world can be understood as a positive illusion.
In line with this perspective, recent research also suggests that
belief in a just world may explain the known statistical association
between religiosity/spirituality and psychological well-being. Some
belief in a just world research has been conducted within the
framework of primal world beliefs, and has found strong correlations
between just world belief and beliefs that the world is safe, abundant
and cooperative (among other qualities).

Some studies also show that beliefs in a just world are correlated
with internal locus of control. Strong belief in a just world is
associated with greater acceptance of and less dissatisfaction with
negative events in one's life. This may be one way in which belief in
a just world affects mental health. Others have suggested that this
relationship holds only for beliefs in a just world for oneself.
Beliefs in a just world for others are related instead to the negative
social phenomena of victim blaming and victim derogation observed in
other studies.

Belief in a just world has also been found to negatively predict the
perceived likelihood of kin favoritism. The perspective of the
individual plays an important role in this relationship, such that
when people imagine themselves as mere observers of injustice, general
belief in a just world will be the stronger predictor, and when they
imagine themselves as victims of injustice, personal belief in a just
world will be the stronger predictor. This further supports the
distinction between general and personal belief in a just world.


International research
========================
More than 40 years after Lerner's seminal work on belief in a just
world, researchers continue to study the phenomenon. Belief in a just
world scales have been validated in several countries such as Iran,
Russia, Brazil, and France. Work continues primarily in the United
States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Researchers in Germany have
contributed disproportionately to recent research. Their work resulted
in a volume edited by Lerner and German researcher Leo Montada titled
'Responses to Victimizations and Belief in a Just World'.


                              See also
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*"Best of all possible worlds"
**Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
**'Candide'
**Problem of evil
*Denial
*Divine providence
*Divine retribution
*Divine judgement
*Economic inequality
*Fundamental attribution error
*Hindsight bias
*Gender inequality
*Invisible hand
*
*Mean world syndrome
*Moralistic fallacy
*Moral luck
*Moral panic
*Myth of meritocracy
*Natural disasters as divine retribution
*Revenge
*Shattered assumptions theory
*Social Darwinism
*Social inequality
*Survivorship bias
*System justification
*The banality of evil
*Theodicy
*Victim blaming


                          Further reading
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*
*
*
*
* Reprinted (1977) in Reflections, XII(1), 1-26.
*


                           External links
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*[http://www.units.muohio.edu/psybersite/justworld/index.shtml The
Just World Hypothesis]
*[https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/the-just-world-theory/
Issues in Ethics: The Just World Theory]
*[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/nov/11/oliver-burkeman-just-world-bias
This column will change your life: the just world bias]. Oliver
Burkeman
*[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-column/2015/feb/03/believing-that-life-is-fair-might-make-you-a-terrible-person
Believing that life is fair might make you a terrible person]. Oliver
Burkeman


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