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General belief in a just world is associated with dishonest behavior (2017)
- iosystem 4y agoThe just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. For example, the assumptions that noble actions will eventually be rewarded and evil actions will eventually be punished fall under this hypothesis. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of— either a universal force that restores moral balance or a universal connection between the nature of actions and their results. This belief generally implies the existence of cosmic justice, destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, and/or order. It is often associated with a variety of fundamental fallacies, especially in regard to rationalizing suffering on the grounds that the sufferers "deserve" it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis They found that people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. Why do people believe in the just-world fallacy? The just-world theory (Lerner, 1980) assumes that people want to believe that they live in a world where good things happen to good people and bad things only to bad ones and where therefore everyone harvests what they sow (see also Furnham, 2003; Dalbert, 2009; Hafer and Sutton, 2016).Sep 25, 2017 Who believes in a just world? Believers in a just world have been found to be more religious, more authoritarian, and more oriented toward the internal control of reinforcements than nonbelievers. They are also more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- keithalewis 4y ago
- pygy_ 4y agoYour last and penultimate paragraphs are almost identical, likely an editing error
- pygy_ 4y agoIn other words, "might makes right".
- afarrell 4y agoIt is more like "right makes might" -- The belief that people who act rightly will become stronger and therefore strength is a sign of moral rectitude.
- pygy_ 4y agoWell, it's probably both, feeding one another.
- furyg3 4y agoThis is how I read it as well. I'm doing well because I deserve it, other people are doing badly because they don't. In this sense the title can be read as "Incompassionate people behave antisocially"
- pygy_ 4y ago> I'm doing well because I deserve it ... and therefore I behave in unethical ways. It's not my fault, it's destiny.
- denton-scratch 4y ago> Why do people believe in the just-world fallacy? I'm not sure that "fallacy" is the right word, there. A fallacy is an error of reasoning; BJW is simply a belief, it's not usually derived from reasoning. In fact I suspect it's deeper than even beliefs; my guess is that people don't know they believe in a just world. So I don't think people "believe in" a just world; rather, their behaviour, including the things they say they believe, are the manifestation of their personality. I suspect people that find the world scary and dangerous are more inclined to believe in "pie in the sky when you die". Finding the world scary and dangerous is a personality type, not a belief system.
- andruby 4y agoreading that, I would imagine this also relates to people in privileged situations thinking that they have "earned" that privilege for a reason. And thus that people in underprivileged situations have earned that too. Yikes. I can see how that can lead to social issues when a large portion of the "haves" believe in this just-world hypothesis. Is there any data/research that quantifies this belief in different countries/cultures?
- netsharc 4y agoWell, the US is a fine example of your realization. People like to preach "You just need work hard and you'll be successful.". If you believe that, then on the flip side you'd have to believe, "Those poor people are poor because they're lazy.". To me that's why there's a lot of people screaming and yelling about "Handouts for the poor!". A good video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTDGdKaMDhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTDGdKaMDhQ , or even a longer documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago> As expected, general BJW significantly predicted the probability of flipping the winning coin side, with higher levels leading to a higher probability. Maybe the Just World was just rewarding people who believed in the Just World by granting them the desired coin flip?
- andrewclunn 4y agoI'm fairly skeptical of any of the social sciences per issues with the demarcation problem and reproduction of results. I'm even more so of studies with any ideological, political, or religious bend to them. That said, with the world as clearly unjust as it is at present, I do wonder who (beyond perhaps the most sheltered and naive of individuals) would still believe that the world itself is innately just? Most Western and Eastern religions teach that it is after we pass on that we are judged, not in this world. Class struggle based secular left philosophy is downright obsessed with the notion of injustice. Perhaps only secular, right, Darwinian philosophies could lead one down this road, and as a formerly right-wing atheist, I can tell you that it's not a very common world view in the least. So I'm guessing this is largely a selection bias for people who haven't thought too deeply about their views or values and are niave to how the world works.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoI assume you're talking about social Darwinism when referring to Darwinian philosophies? You might want to specify that to distinguish it from the application of Darwinian thinking to the social sciences, which I think is the right way forward scientifically and has nothing to do with moral judgements.
- cloutchaser 4y agoIs this a roundabout way of saying belief in utopias is really not a good strategy for life. Or don’t trust anyone who believes in a utopian world…
- pygy_ 4y agoDestiny is the metaphysical expression of narcissism, the cosmic projection of the navel.
- xdavidliu 4y agothis comment strongly resembles something that Deepak Chopra would say.
- bjornsing 4y agoI had a similar thought: BJW seems like a pretty strong defense mechanism. Somewhat simplistically you could say that one purpose of defense mechanisms is to be able to bend the rules a bit without feeling too bad about ourselves. It’s perhaps not very surprising that people with strong defense mechanisms behave more antisocially.
- headsoup 4y agoPeople with strong defence mechanisms often likely have underlying trauma/anxiety that has created the defenses.
- curiousgal 4y agoI fail to see how psychology studies are at all useful. Like what do they teach us? The setups are always frail and the studied population is always Mechanical Turk workers or college students. The conclusions are always beyond far reaching. Edit: drinking game: drink every time I use the word always. I guess that's how frustrating I find this field. sigh
- r12343a_19 4y ago> we recruited 501 American participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk The Mechanical Turk folks are the new sociology students. This study has 100% chance of not being reproducible or statistically representative. > 63.3% of the participants reported having flipped the winning outcome [...] in a previous study using a similar coin-toss game with an online (MTurk) sample (Schindler and Pfattheicher, 2017), 76.7% of the participants reported having flipped the winning coin-side So, just world people are 13% more honest than the general population? How can you name the title then "General Belief in a Just World Is Positively Associated with Dishonest Behavior" when clearly, everybody is dishonest and these bunch were actually... less so? > Given that general BJW was found to be linked to antisocial tendencies, we expected stronger general BJW to be linked to more dishonesty. I postulate academia strongly correlates with dishonesty.
- light_hue_1 4y agoI post fairly often here about how terrible different studies are. And many are pretty bad! This... is a horrifically bad take on the study. > So, just world people are 13% more honest than the general population? How can you name the title then "General Belief in a Just World Is Positively Associated with Dishonest Behavior" when clearly, everybody is dishonest and these bunch were actually... less so? What!? How can you arbitrarily compare another study that used a different experimental design to this one? Just pick out two percentages that are totally unrelated, subtract them, and then complain about something? This is like saying, 30% of bananas in my house are bad. 42% of cars on my street are red. Why do I have this huge 12% gap between the two!? What nonsense. > I postulate academia strongly correlates with dishonesty. I postulate that reading comprehension is important! And that maybe, if you don't know what you're talking about, you shouldn't dump on people's work? That being said. There are issues with this study. In addition to MTurk being noisy, the primary problem is that the effect size is very small! The authors deftly hide this in the standard way by not plotting the raw data (likelihood of cheating vs belief in a just world), which would show a very small difference. This is yet again a case of "we found a statistically significant but likely meaningless and unlikely to be replicated difference".
- 4y ago
- amadeuspagel 4y agoObvious explanation: People who lie when they are asked whether they believe in a just world, lie more in general.
- tsol 4y ago"Positively associated". So this is just a correlational study that means nothing.
- epistasis 4y agoCorrelative associations don't mean nothing, or at least I can't imagine why that would be the case. Could you explain a bit more?
- tsol 4y agoCorrelation doesn't equal causation. Plenty of things are correlated that have nothing to do with each other. Edit: For example, here are some weird correlations of no real significance-- https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- furyg3 4y agoAnd yet, all causal relationships correlate! Please stop using this idea to 'debunk' science. It does not mean what you think it means...
- xmzx 4y agoAnd everything that is caused by something is also correlated, it just requires more time and research to figure it out.
- tsol 4y agoTechnically true, but not every weak correlation is worth talking about. I would have thought HN had more rigor than that. If you guys want to talk correlations, there are much more interesting ones like 'Internet Explorer marketshare is positively associated with murder rate'.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoThat doesn't mean that correlation means nothing though. It might mean something, or it might not. Correlation studies can give pointers as to where to concentrate more research efforts. That's valuable because money doesn't grow on trees and research costs money.
- dav_Oz 4y agoTwo types of BJW (general and personal) are investigated in this study: higher general BJW was linked to more dishonest behavior and there was no significant relationship between personal BJW and levels of dishonesty. General BJW: refers to the belief that the world is a just place in general, where all people normally get what they deserve, are treated fairly, and will be compensated for experienced injustices. Personal BJW: refers to the belief that oneself will be treated fairly and that one’s own life is just (Dalbert, 2009; Hafer and Sutton, 2016), which people normally endorse more strongly than the general belief (Dalbert, 1999; Hafer and Sutton, 2016). Furthermore, personal BJW can in particular be seen as an expression of social desirability (Alves and Correia, 2010) so that people deliberately give high ratings of their levels of personal BJW to distinguish themselves from others. Beyond that, they believe that stronger personal BJW conveys specific images of being likable, competent, and successful. All in all, general BJW is often related to harsh responses to other people (e.g., disadvantaged individuals or groups) and derogation of victims, which can be seen as a negative or maladaptive side-effect of BJW, whereas, in contrast personal BJW is rather linked to subjective well-being or interpersonal trust, which seems to be a positive or adaptive consequence of a high BJW The unexpected result was that people with high personal BJW weren't significantly more just than people with no/or little such belief. People with higher general BJW expectedly have it easier to justify their own dishonest behavior (e.g. "it doesn't matter what I do now justice will be served in the great scheme of things").
- evelynsalt 4y agoGood that you bring this up. Other comments here do not seem to be aware that this study is only saying one type of just world believers are likely to be dishonest. Others here seem to think all just world believers are likely to be dishonest. Just because you think the world is unjust doesn't mean you are likely to be honest. What matters is what you think about others. Do you think other people are living in a just world? e.g. do you think homeless people are mostly drug addicts? If you do then it is very likely you are a dishonest person.
- dmos62 4y agoI'd like to provide my anecdotal experience with the just-world worldview. During a short period, I experienced a few events outside my control that shook my sense of security. One was a family member becoming ill, and the other was war. I was in distress: my world-view at the time was implicitly built around justice, and it could not account for what was happening. Over a few months, I found comfort in a different world-view: that justice is a fiction. That brought me so much comfort that it seemed almost like joy. This is my current world-view. A more elaborate description of this world-view is that morality, justice, caring, altruism, and all the other good things, only have an effect in-so-far as they have an effect, if that makes sense. No more, no less. They're tools, constructs and behaviours, and, on their own, without context, they are meaningless. This is harder to formulate that I expected. I have noticed that with this mindset, I have become more selfish, less considerate. On the plus side, I have become calmer and more level-headed. I now also find it easier to sympathize with both "perpetrators" of injustice, as well as with "victims" of injustice. Before, I sympathized more with the victims, and tended to dismiss the aggressors. Now, I don't feel like there's a qualitative difference between the two, to put it harshly. I'm not sure what to make of this yet. My new, "selfish" mindset is definitely an adaptation to injustices I perceived, and might be a regression. But, also, it might be that I have discarded a less-than-useful concept of justice from my mind, and now that I don't identify with "victims" anymore, I have to build up another foundation for cooperative behaviour.
- DougN7 4y agoI’m sitting here pondering what you wrote and trying to understand what you mean. “Life isn’t fair”, or just for that matter, are absolutely true in my opinion. However, justice is still a goal worth striving for. Do you still agree with that, or did that go out the door because of your experiences? And, I am sorry for the harsh experiences you’ve had. I can relate to loved ones being sick, but thankfully not to war.
- dmos62 4y agoHey, thanks for relating. To answer your question, I guess I've become a bit "robotic", for the lack of a better word, about justice. I find that kindness, protection, being fair, etc. are important ways to take care of others, which to some extent is pleasant on its own, but also can have desirable knock-on effects. In short, good will leads to good will. I don't experience it as a moral or metaphysical dilemma, but as a calculation.
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoThe description of why people who believed in a just world might be more dishonest seemed to be a highly complicated chain of rationalization that I don't think most people would make. How do you tell anyway that people believe in a just world? I didn't follow that in the document. Do you assign believe in a just world to people's statements on the matter, if so I offer a counter theory - Noticeable statements of belief in a just world is positively associated with dishonest behavior, and under this theory people who are dishonest say they believe in a just world a lot to make other people think they can't be dishonest, they're talking about honesty all the time!
- weatherlight 4y agoThe world isn't just but justice is worth striving for.
- headsoup 4y agoI disagree. Understanding and fairness is worth striving for. Justice implies retribution, of being wronged and having to 'right' things. It is, as they say, in the eye of the beholder and justice is not equal to all beholders. Tell me how you have a just world for everyone?
- denton-scratch 4y ago> Justice implies retribution I don't think that's true. It's sometimes taken to include retribution; but a lot (most?) justice is about reverting the consequences of "wrong" actions - inadvertent or deliberate. So the victim of a wrong action is restored to the position they would be in if the action had not been taken. I see retribution as distinct from justice; in addition to putting things right again, "We are now going to visit on you the Universe's retribution for your moral turpitude". Bzzzt.
- drnonsense42 4y agoI’m not going to win any upvotes for saying this but I think it’s worth mentioning that this study is dishonest, blatantly politically-themed, and likely intended to score points within the authors’ circle. In other words, it’s meant to be printed off and used as toilet paper. Seeing papers like this is a frightening reminder, at least for me, about how inefficient and wasteful our society has become, in that we continue to funnel large amounts of resources to professions or groups like this.
- norwalkbear 4y agoI agree
- wruza 4y agoLayman theory ahead. Empathy is a feature but it is in conflict with harsh parts of reality. Mind always tries to resolve conflicts either by action or by reinterpretation for it to work. When there’s no adequate action and no stops for reinterpretation (e.g. lack of knowledge or general intelligence), it has nothing to do but write it off as one’s own fault, fate, or natural balance. It is dishonesty by very design and it gave birth to many societal phenomena.
- agentgumshoe 4y agoI think you're talking there of the lacking bridge between empathy and compassion (the willingness to act)? An inability to even empathise is generally indicated as tending towards sociopathy.
- vintermann 4y ago"Belief in a just world" is pretty vague, because it can mean both 1. That justice will eventually happen. 2. That justice has already happened, and what you're looking at that looks like injustice to you actually isn't. I think everyone falls between those two extremes in practice.
- samloveshummus 4y agoI'm not sure that those really are the extremes. I think quite a lot of people believe that justice may or may not ever happen depending on how we choose to act as a civilization. Even further than that, many people believe injustice is an inevitable feature of existence.
- norwalkbear 4y agoSocial science has a replication crisis and small sample size problem. I find this interesting though if I thought it was true.
- sinuhe69 4y agoOne central tenet of Buddhism is the belief in karma: you will rip what you sow (in many previous lives). Thus it’s safe to say almost all Asian believe in a just world. According to this study, this will make the Asian comparatively more dishonest?? There is an another aspect: if you believe in karma, in general it will also affect your behaviors, make you more likely to adjust your actions towards other beings, be less harsh to other people, a bit more moral. How will that make you more dishonest? I would say belief in god’s judgment is also a form of karma. Will that make all Christians more dishonest? Somehow it’s very hard for me to believe!
- denton-scratch 4y agoKarma isn't as simple as the common beliefs about it. "Karma" just means action; supposedly, actions sow seeds that have consequences. Those consequences may materialise in this life, or not. Only the most consequential actions plant seeds that endure into the next life. Karma teachings aren't really Buddhist; the Buddha just taught what was the common belief system in his time. Karma comes from the Vedas. > How will that make you more dishonest? I don't think belief in karma makes you less harsh to others. I think it leads to a sort of tokenism: "I've done my kind act for today". And I think it leads to a sort of devil-take-the-hindmost attitude to people who are suffering: they are "working out their karma", i.e. their suffering is actually good for them.
- ncmncm 4y agoBJW may be taken as a proxy for common religious convictions, specifically those that posit fairness mechanisms such as heaven/hell, karma, reincarnation. It is clearly smart to use the BJW designation instead, to avoid being pilloried.
- IceMetalPunk 4y agoI mean, anyone who's willing to lie to themselves about everything they see around them in the world has to be dishonest, right?