Just-World Hypothesis
Good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. It's a comforting belief — and it's a lie your brain tells you so you can sleep at night.
The just-world hypothesis is the deep, often unconscious belief that the world is fundamentally fair. People get what they deserve. If someone is successful, they must have earned it. If someone is suffering, they must have done something wrong. This belief protects you from a terrifying reality: that bad things happen to people who did nothing to deserve them, and that you could be next.
This is why people blame victims. It's not cruelty — it's self-protection. If that person got sick because of their lifestyle, then you're safe because yours is better. If they lost their job because they were lazy, then your job is secure because you work hard. The alternative — that it could happen to anyone, at random, without reason — is psychologically intolerable.
The just-world belief is one of the strongest shields protecting existing power structures. If the rich deserve their wealth and the poor deserve their poverty, then nothing needs to change. The system isn't broken — people just need to try harder. It's a story that benefits those at the top and is believed most fervently by those at the bottom.
References
- Melvin Lerner — The Belief in a Just World (1980)
- John Jost — A Theory of System Justification (2020)