The 'Just World' hypothesis

‘It's not fair!' is a cry that often comes from the lips of children and finds expression in adult thinking. We have courts that try to mete out justice in the real world, but many people expect that the universe itself will somehow impose justice so that the bad will eventually be punished and the good rewarded -possibly after death. Human social evolution has instilled in (most of) us a sense of fairness. We do not like to see evil rewarded and goodness ignored. We have established complex social institutions to punish the bad and reward the good. However, it is not always the case that the meek inherit the earth. There is a fallacy known as the just world hypothesis that refers to a belief that events are not random and that there is a force at work in the universe that administers reward and punishment so that the scales of justice remain in balance. Thus, someone seen to be suffering supposedly deserves it. If someone wins the lottery, they must presumably deserve it.

Lerner and Simmons (1966) wanted to find out under what conditions a person who is seen to be suffering either elicits compassion or is deemed to deserve what is happening to them. In their experiment, participants found themselves witnessing someone taking part in a ‘different" experiment receiving painful electric shocks. After ten minutes of this, the participants in one condition were asked to rate the attractiveness of the person receiving the shocks. They were also told that there would be another ten minutes of shocks to be administered. Lerner and Simmons hypothesized that the participants would devalue the victim's personal characteristics given that they were about to watch him suffer yet more, because the idea that an innocent person was about to suffer goes against the view that the world is just. In other conditions, the participants were told that the ten minute bout of pain was at an end, or that the victim would be rewarded in some way, and one in which the participants had some perceived control over the fate of the victim after the first ten-minute session. This last condition produced the most positive view of the victim (the participants showed most compassion). When the suffering could not be stopped, the participants showed the greatest ‘rejection’ and ‘devaluing" of the victim (in Lerner and Simmons’ (1966, p. 209) words). In conclusion, they argue that their results provide ‘strong support for the assertion that people have a great need to believe in a good and just world".

An unfortunate effect of the just world fallacy, therefore, is victim blaming. A woman who is raped after a night out having drunk too much ‘got what she deserved". The just world fallacy here manifests itself as a ‘reasonable" explanation for suffering. This kind of thinking allows us to believe that the world is predictable and where good things only happen to good people and bad things to bad people. It provides a sense of control and an explanation for otherwise random disasters.

Things happen for a reason

The idea that the universe is just implies that things happen for a reason - in this case, to reward or punish. We are not talking about natural cause and effect here but something supernatural. For example, Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic Jewish pastor, claimed that Hurricane Joaquin that devastated Hawaii in 2015 was a ‘sign of God's wrath" because of the legalization of gay marriage, abortion, and the relationship between the UN and Israel (Baggs, 2016). Similarly, Pastor Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries stated in 2020 that the US would be protected from coronavirus as Donald Trump is against abortion. It wasn't. Others have also blamed floods in the US and in India on God’s displeasure: they are a punishment for moral decay, homosexuality, abortion, same-sex marriage, LGBT +, and so on. In such cases, an event is deemed to be serving some purpose, the alternative being that the universe is random, and many people do not like that idea. Furthermore, if something appears to serve a particular purpose, then some would argue that this shows evidence of design. This is known as the teleological fallacy. Yet again, this may be a continuation of a child's view of the world where agency is ascribed to items that seem to do things such as computers and the wind. Keleman (2004) refers to children’s ■promiscuous teleology' where they assume that biological entities, such as a lion, have a purpose but so do non-biological entities such as clouds whose purpose is to make it rain. She suggests children may be ‘intuitive theists" predisposed to see some kind of design or intention behind natural phenomena.