Just-World Hypothesis

Definition

The just-world hypothesis is the belief that, in general, the social environment is fair, such that people get what they deserve. The concept was developed in part to help explain observations that to preserve a belief that the world is a just place, people will sometimes devalue a victim. A just world is defined as a world in which people do get what they deserve. The justworld hypothesis is important because it suggests that people may treat certain victims badly, oddly enough, out of a desire to sustain their belief in justice. It also suggests that people may go to great lengths to maintain a sense that the world is just, giving evidence that the human motivation for justice is very strong.

Background and History

The seminal experiment illustrating this phenomenon was conducted by Melvin Lerner and Carolyn Simmons in the 1960s. In this experiment, people watched on a television monitor a woman who appeared to be receiving painful electric shocks from a researcher. In actuality, the footage was prerecorded and the events were only simulated by actors. As the woman did nothing to deserve the shocks she was receiving, she can be seen [Page 514]as suffering unjustly. People who watched this unjust suffering described the victim's character quite negatively if they could not compensate her (or at least were not sure they could compensate her) and if they thought that they would continue to see her suffer. People described the victim's character most negatively when they also believed that she was behaving altruistically; that is, she chose to suffer for their sake. The findings were explained by suggesting that people have a strong need to believe that the world is a just place in which individuals get what they deserve. Victims who continue to suffer through no fault of their own (and especially very good people, like the altruistic woman in the early experiment) threaten this belief in a just world. As a way of dealing with that threat and maintaining a belief in a just world, people may try to restore justice by helping or compensating victims. When it is not possible to help or compensate victims, people may reinterpret the situation by, for example, claiming that a particular victim is a bad or otherwise unworthy person. By devaluing or derogating the victim in this way, his or her fate seems more deserved and people's sense of justice is maintained.

There was much controversy about how to interpret the results of the original experiment. For example, some researchers suggested that people devalued the victim to reduce their own feelings of guilt at letting her continue to suffer. However, further experiments showed that people sometimes devalue a victim of injustice even when they could not have played any role in the victim's situation. This and other proposed alternatives were, for the most part, dealt with through further study and argumentation, leading to a general acceptance of the notion that people will sometimes devalue a victim of injustice because they need to believe in a just world.

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