This belief generally implies the existence of cosmic justice, destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, order, or the anglophone colloquial use of "karma".
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.
[1] 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.
Aristotelian ethics views "justice" as the chief of the virtues, moral sense being deeply rooted in the nature of humans as social and rational animals.
During his clinical training as a psychologist, he observed treatment of mentally ill persons by the health care practitioners with whom he worked.
[7] Lerner also describes his surprise at hearing his students derogate (disparage, belittle) the poor, seemingly oblivious to the structural forces that contribute to poverty.
[5] 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.
In 1966, Lerner and his colleagues began a series of experiments that used shock paradigms to investigate observer responses to victimization.
[2] 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.
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.
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.
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.
[19] In the early 1970s, social psychologists Zick Rubin and Letitia Anne Peplau developed a measure of belief in a just world.
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.
[26] This finding is in keeping with Lerner's understanding of belief in a just world as functioning as a "contract" that governs behavior.
[7] There is additional evidence that belief in a just world is protective of the well-being of children and adolescents in the school environment,[27] as has been shown for the general population.
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.
These studies have found sociopolitical correlates of just-world beliefs, including right-wing authoritarianism and the Protestant work ethic.
[44] 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.
[45][clarification needed] Belief in unjust world has been linked to increased self-handicapping, criminality, defensive coping, anger and perceived future risk.
[51] 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.
[21] Strong belief in a just world is associated with greater acceptance of and less dissatisfaction with negative events in one's life.
[54] 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.
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,[54] Russia,[55] Brazil,[56] and France.
[5] Their work resulted in a volume edited by Lerner and German researcher Leo Montada titled Responses to Victimizations and Belief in a Just World.