I've Been Thinking

The need to see victims as the recipients of their just deserts can be explained by what psychologists call the “Just World Hypothesis.”[1]

We’ve heard the statements, “Look at how she was dressed, she was asking for it.”

A similar attitude regards the killing of unarmed African Americans in these United States, “Well s/he must have done something, because the police wouldn’t just shoot her/him.”

Statements like these reflect a belief in what is called the Just World Hypothesis. “According to the hypothesis, people have a strong desire or need to believe that the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve.”[2] No it’s not.

Now most people want to live in an orderly society and world. And we need to believe that we have some sort of influence on the outcome of our actions. But Andre and Velazquez go on to write:

Moreover, when we encounter evidence suggesting that the world is not just, we quickly act to restore justice by helping the victim or we persuade ourselves that no injustice has occurred. We either lend assistance or we decide that the rape victim must have asked for it, the homeless person is simply lazy, the fallen star must be an adulterer. These attitudes are continually reinforced in the ubiquitous fairy tales, fables, comic books, cop shows and other morality tales of our culture, in which good is always rewarded and evil punished.[3]

Does this sound familiar to you? It does to me. I’ve heard this attitude expressed out loud in many parts of these United States. One form of this belief that I find irksome is when people suggest that poverty is the result of a moral failing. It’s not; but this belief makes people feel better, because it absolves them of any responsibility to their distressed fellow human beings.

Now we might want to live and let live with people who believe in the Just World Hypothesis because it helps them to cope with the seeming randomness of events in a universe over which we, really, exert no significant control. However, the belief in the Just World Hypothesis may have a significant effect on people’s belief in the need to address issues in society that victimize individuals, such as racism, crime and poverty.

Zick Rubin of Harvard University and Letitia Anne Peplau of UCLA have “found that people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to ‘feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims.’”[4]

People who believe in a just world may feel less compelled to work for justice. After all, they surmise, things are the way they’re supposed to be. (Cue Bruce Hornsby and the Range singing “That’s just the way it is.”)

I spent formative years in the pre- and post-civil rights South, New Orleans and Houston. Racism in the Old South seemed to be fed and nourished by this idea that things were the way they were supposed to be, that’s just the way it is.

When people assume that forces beyond their control mete out justice, this can “result…[in] the abdication of personal responsibility, acquiescence in the face of suffering and misfortune, and indifference towards injustice. Taken to the extreme, indifference can result in the institutionalization of injustice.”[5] Yes it does.

[1] Clair Andre and Manuel Velazquez. “The Just World Theory.” Markula Center for Applied Ethics, https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/the-just-world-theory/.
Accessed 26 July 2024

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid