Just-world_phenomenon.txt

The just-world hypothesis (also called the just-world theory, just-world fallacy, just-world effect, or just-world phenomenon) refers to the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just. As a result, when they witness an otherwise inexplicable injustice they rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it. This deflects their anxiety, and lets them continue to believe the world is a just place, but often at the expense of blaming victims for things that were not, objectively, their fault. Another theory entails the need to protect one's own sense of invulnerability. This inspires people to believe that rape, for example, only happens to those who deserve or provoke the assault. This is a way of feeling safer. If the potential victim avoids the behaviors of the past victims then they themselves will remain safe and feel less vulnerable. Two studies gave women what appeared to be painful electric shocks while working on a difficult memory problem. More women of broadly the same age and social group who observed the experiment appeared to blame the victim for her fate, praise the experiment, and rate her as being less physically attractive than did those who had seen her but not the experiment. In another study, female and male subjects were told two versions of a story about an interaction between a woman and a man. Both variations were exactly the same, except at the very end the man raped the woman in one and in the other he proposed marriage. In both conditions, both female and male subjects viewed the woman's (identical) actions as inevitably leading to the (very different) results. The just-world phenomenon was first theorized by Melvin J. Lerner. Zick Rubin and Letita Anne Peplau expanded on that work in the 1970s. Blaming a victim because "just-world theory is under threat" is related to the "social self" (we blame) and not to "individual self" (I blame). Not actually knowing the actual cause of aggression encourages us to blame the victim. Researchers have been analyzing the just-world belief theory to help understand the decline of anti-bullying attitudes. "This is the idea that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get." The study determined that children do seek to understand, justify, and rectify the different injustices they come across in everyday life. However further research is needed to link the two together. Historically, this concept can be dated back to the theodicy of Gottfried Leibniz, a theory that was attacked by Voltaire in his 1759 novel Candide. The concept is made use of in Robert Browning's 1855 poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came: One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupified, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain. In academia · In information technology · In medicine · In nursing · In teaching · In the military · In the workplace · Cyber-bullying · Gay bullying · Hazing · Mobbing · Passive aggression · Peer victimization · Psychological abuse · Rankism · Relational aggression · School bullying · School pranks · Verbal abuse Betrayal · Bystanders · Character assassination · Defamation · Destabilisation · Discrediting · False accusations · Gossip · Harassment · Humiliation · Incivility · Innuendo · Insult · Intimidation · Moving the goalposts · Personal attacks · Psychological manipulation · Rudeness · Sarcasm · Setting up to fail · Smear campaign · Social rejection · Social undermining · Taunting · Teasing · Whispering campaign · Yelling Act Against Bullying · Beatbullying · Bullying UK · Kidscape · GRIN Campaign Andrea Adams · Louise Burfitt-Dons · Tim Field · Andy Hickson · Heinz Leymann · Gary Namie · Kenneth Westhues Anti-Bullying Day · Anti-Bullying Week · International STAND UP to Bullying Day · Anti-bullying legislation Tyler Clementi · Ryan Halligan · Megan Meier · Phoebe Prince · Nicola Ann Raphael · Dawn-Marie Wesley · Kelly Yeomans · Jeff Weise · Jim in Bold · Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold · Seung-Hui Cho · Jamey Rodemeyer Abuse · Bullycide · Control freak · Complex post-traumatic stress disorder · Emotional blackmail · Just-world hypothesis · Narcissism · Personal boundaries · Personality disorders · Psychological projection · Psychological trauma · Psychopathy · Scapegoating · Self-esteem · Sycophancy · Victim blaming · Victim playing · Victimisation · Youth subculture