18.8: The Just World Hypothesis

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We tend to think that the world is fair and just, that people usually get pretty much what they deserve, and they deserve pretty much what they get. The psychologist Melvin Lerner called this phenomenon the just world hypothesis: we think that things turn out, by and large, the way that they should. Life is basically fair. There is a good deal of evidence that many of us tend to think this way. There are, of course, exceptions. Bad things (e.g., some terrible disease from out of the blue) do sometimes happen to good people. But when this occurs, it often seems almost puzzling, unexpected. Typically, we tend to think, we reap pretty much what we sow.

Lerner has shown that when people learn about an unfair outcome that is otherwise difficult to explain, they look for a way to blame the victim (“they must have done something to deserve this misfortune”). In an experiment by Ronnie Janoff-Bulman and her coworkers, subjects heard a description of a young woman’s friendly behavior to a man she had met. They thought that her behavior was entirely normal and appropriate.

But other subjects, who heard the same description but were also told that she was then raped by the man, thought that her behavior was more than friendly, and that it encouraged the rape (“She was asking for it”). They blamed the victim (this is still not uncommon in cases of rape). Hindsight bias may also be involved here, since once an outcome (the rape) is known, people often think they could have seen it coming.

We may want to believe in a just world to make ourselves feel safer and more secure. We assure ourselves that, if we do the right things, disaster probably won’t strike us (that wouldn’t be fair). But when we look at actual cases, we see that bad things can easily happen to good people, and that people who aren’t so good can do quite well. Good luck or bad luck can strongly affect things.

To the extent that we think this way, we will tend to think that most people who aren’t doing well are getting what they have coming. So, if a group is treated badly, we may feel, they must have some defects that explain the bad treatment.