In a series of experiments, including one published in 1966 with Carolyn Simmons, [psychologist Melvin Lerner] showed that ‘people will arrange their cognitions so as to maintain the belief that people get what they deserve or, conversely, deserve what they get. Belief in a just world happens because we like the feeling that we are in control of our destiny and believing otherwise is threatening…
We use just-world beliefs to make sense of a world filled with an inequality that we feel unable to rectify ourselves. While personal beliefs in a just world can be good for us, as it is empowering and makes us feel in control of our own lives, the implications of general belief in a just world can be devastating for society. General just-world beliefs have been link with many negative attitudes, include toward the poor, and toward victims of crime, including rape.
When we see a poor person on the street, many of us avoid them… [and] even tell them to ‘just get a job.’ This can come in a belief that the person deserves to be poor, because they haven’t tried hard enough or because they made bad decisions. But it is really a way of protecting ourselves. We like thinking that poverty could not happen to us, as we do not deserve such a thing. Similar arguments are used to other those who have been victimized by crime. We blame the victim because it feels safer to think the victim somehow deserved it, than that we could just as easily have been a target.
Humans like a sense of order and control, and we don’t like the idea that bad things can happen to god people. But they do, all the time. Accepting this can help us deal with the underlying inequalities , and try to do something about them.
— Dr. Julia Shaw, Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side
