Be good and good things will happen to you; be evil and you will attract misfortune. I bet you didn’t even blink while reading that because it sounds so common sense. 

Not so fast. It turns out that agreeing with the previous statement is a good indication that you have fallen for the just-world hypothesis, a common cognitive bias which may lead to a lack of empathy for the suffering of others and a tendency to overestimate the morality of your own deeds. (And let’s face it, nobody wants that.)

Keep reading to find out what the just-world fallacy is, how it can lead to undesirable behavior such as victim blaming and what you can do to fight it most effectively and improve your critical thinking skills.

What is the just-world hypothesis? A definition from psychology

The just-world hypothesis (also known as the just-world fallacy) is the belief that everything happens for a reason and that the Universe is inherently fair. It implies that bad people will receive appropriate retribution for their actions, while good people will be rewarded for their behavior. While there is sometimes an observable connection between behavior and reward, this fallacy can make people jump to inaccurate conclusions about the world and pass wrongful moral judgments based on opinion rather than evidence.

Where does the just-world hypothesis come from?

The just-world hypothesis was studied for the first time by the psychologist Melvin J. Lerner in the 1960s, who was prompted to investigate justice beliefs by the Milgram experiment, which had proved that humans are capable of causing suffering to others when instructed to do so, despite being aware of the effects of their behavior. He noticed that even the most intelligent of his colleagues had a tendency to blame their patients for their mental health struggles, which made him believe there was something larger at play than just the behavior of a few heartless individuals.

Lerner is credited with proving that the just-world fallacy exists and is also the one who named it the ‘justice motive’. However, this only clears up the terminology side of the equation and does not address the real source of the bias. So where does it really come from? Are we born with it or is the just-world fallacy a cultural or even religious phenomenon?

While religious belief correlates with buying into the just world hypothesis (more on that later) and might be one of the main reinforcers of this bias, most people acquire this erroneous thinking pattern during childhood. 

Almost every form of media, be it books or movies, drills into us the idea that good always prevails and evil is defeated. (I challenge you to find a fairytale in which this is not the case.) 

As with all cognitive biases, the just-world fallacy is simply a shortcut that our brain develops in order to make decisions faster. However, the situations in which we have acquired this shortcut may be vastly different from those in which we try to apply it, thus making their conclusions wrong and causing us more harm than good. 

Being repeatedly exposed to the narrative that good always triumphs over evil creates a connection between morality and good outcomes (“good karma”), as well as a tendency to believe that villains “have it coming”.

What is an example of the just-world hypothesis?

To better understand how the just world hypothesis can lead critical thinking astray, let’s look at Helen and her friend Tim as an example.

Tim is a highly organized type A person. He never misses a deadline, misplaces his keys or arrives late for an appointment. (We all know a Tim and we secretly admire and hate them all at the same time.) Helen is the exact opposite: although she has a big heart, she’s clumsy and forgetful and tends to do everything at the last minute.

After spending a lovely evening together, Tim was walking Helen to her car when they noticed a tree branch had fallen on the roof of the vehicle causing massive damage. While Helen started crying worrying about how she would pay the repair bills, Tim callously noted: “If you would have gotten here in time, you would have found a spot in the nearby parking lot and this would have never happened!”

Needless to say that the remark upset Helen even more, as it lacked any kind of empathy towards her bad luck. This couldn’t have been her fault - if they had chosen another restaurant which didn’t have a parking lot nearby, a tree could have just as well fallen on Tim’s car, despite his careful parking habits. While his intention was not to offend Helen, having fallen prey to the just-world fallacy he attributed the car damage to her general clumsiness and ended up hurting his relationship.

This anecdote shows that ironically, the more righteous your own behavior, the more likely you are to believe that people who fall short of your standards receive appropriate punishment in every situation, so you should be especially wary of this fallacy if you identify as an ambitious type A.

Is the just-world hypothesis wrong?

If you’re still doubting that the just-world hypothesis is not true, consider the following quote:

“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you're a good person is like expecting a bull not to attack you because you're a vegetarian.” – Dennis Wholey

The just-world hypothesis is wrong because it fails to take into account a fundamental truth about the world: that randomness exists and seeps into every aspect of one’s life. The existence of randomness invalidates the belief that ‘everything happens for a reason’ because it implies that some things happen only by chance and are not caused by any obvious external factors. 

Assuming a die that is not rigged, it is not up for debate that rolling it means there is a chance it will land on any of its 6 faces; this is a fact. Looking back at our previous example, believing that Helen’s car being hit by a tree is retribution for her negligence is the same as believing that getting a 3 on a die roll is due to the weather being bad today. 

There *might* be some correlation, if the window was open and the wind was strong enough to oppose resistance during the roll and make the die fall on a 3, but correlation is not causation. Similarly, being careless might increase your chances of bad things happening to you, but it is not a guarantee. 

There is a big difference between believing that a certain type of behavior increases the chances of something bad happening and accepting this as a certainty. In other words, the just-world hypothesis might be true in some instances, but it is surely not true in all of them.

The connection between just-world fallacy and other cognitive biases

Bad things come in twos (or threes), or so the Asian proverb goes. In the case of cognitive biases this is definitely the case, as some of them tend to cluster and reinforce each other to cloud our judgment. Let’s look at how the just-world fallacy, self-serving bias and fundamental attribution error relate to each other to better understand how we can recognize them for what they are (predictable, reproducible thinking errors) even when they act together to mislead us.

Self-serving bias vs. just-world hypothesis

The self-serving bias is the human tendency to believe that our accomplishments owe to our skill, while our failures happen invariably due to luck. The just-world hypothesis reinforces this bias by adding an implicit moral judgment to events, even when there is none. 

How does this work?

Since our egos are always trying to preserve our self-esteem, we naturally gravitate towards thinking that we are good people and tend to ignore any evidence to the contrary. Due to the just-world fallacy, we believe that our accomplishments represent a reward for our virtuous character, which makes us less likely to analyze when we win simply due to the randomness of the Universe and not due to our actions. This is why the 2 cognitive biases form a self-reinforcing loop that does not allow us to appraise our efforts effectively.

Fundamental attribution error vs. just-world hypothesis

There is a 3rd bias that extends the aforementioned loop, called the fundamental attribution error. This fallacy represents the belief that everyone else’s success is simply a fluke, while their failures are a reflection of their (bad) character. In a way, the fundamental attribution error is the opposite of self-serving bias and is influenced by the just-world hypothesis in a similar way.

The Just-world hypothesis and philosophy

The just-world hypothesis relies on the assumption that everything is predetermined (“everything happens for a reason”), rather than the product of randomness acting in the Universe. As such, the difficulty of opposing this bias is related to your view of this philosophical question.

The major religions have certainly been a significant reinforcer of the just-world hypothesis, as they all disregard the existence of randomness in the world and attribute all possible outcomes to the decisions of a Higher Power. Using their individual terminology, they all promise retribution for those who behave immorally and rewards for those who follow their prescribed path.

Since philosophy is rooted in rationality and not belief, it is very different in how it addresses the existence of randomness in the Universe. The Stoics in particular have been known to recognize the chaotic nature of the world, with Seneca famously saying: 

“Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.” – Seneca

Religion tends to explain randomness away by stating that it is still the result of the decisions of a Higher Power, but whose logic we humans are simply too limited to understand. In other words, even the things that appear to be random are not. (Note that the simple fact that they even provide an explanation for randomness implicitly confirms its existence and observability.)

Certainly, accepting the existence of randomness is uncomfortable because it puts all of our actions into perspective: they are nothing but small efforts in the face of chance, which could steam-roll them whenever it pleases. 

This perhaps explains why people prefer to adopt the just-world heuristic and take a fatalistic stance. This is not without peril: the cost of not fighting this fallacy is that you will be less effective in steering your efforts correctly when you attempt to reach your goals because you are not able to identify the causality between what you do and the results you see.

Why is the belief in a just-world a defensive belief?

It could be argued that the just-world hypothesis has emerged as a defensive belief, since expecting that the world will treat us fairly helps us remain optimistic about the future. 

Believing that everything happens for a reason gives us (an arguably irrational) confidence that the world is predictable, which makes us more likely to set goals and follow through on achieving them. 

On the other hand, recognizing that randomness exists in the Universe necessarily implies that despite our best efforts, we might not succeed in our endeavors. This thought could lead some people to inaction because they might view any effort as futile. 

You can see why Mother Nature would try to bias us towards action by any means possible: it ensured the survival of our ancestors when they were chased by dangerous predators, for example. This further supports the existence of the just-world fallacy as a defensive belief.

If there were absolutely no correlation between your actions and their results, you would never attempt anything significant. However, if there’s anything I want you to take away from this post, it’s this: everything you do or observe around you is a bet. You can increase your odds of winning, but you can never guarantee the outcome. You also cannot derive a completely certain conclusion about what led to a specific result without knowing all the variables involved.

The problem with just-world hypothesis

If you think that aside from a loss of personal agency, there is no risk in believing that everything happens for a reason, you’ll be surprised to learn that victim blaming and the persistence of social inequality owe a lot of their prevalence to the just-world hypothesis. Here’s why.

What is the connection between the just-world hypothesis and victim blaming?

Victim blaming is the act of holding the victim of a crime partially or completely responsible for the crime that they fell victim to. 

The just-world hypothesis can be a reason for which victim blaming occurs because it makes people more likely to believe that bad things only happen to bad people and thus to believe that the victim ‘had it coming’.

Between this erroneous thought and finding some obvious (but wrong) reason for which the victim was subject to the crime there is just a small step. Consider the case of a woman being assaulted. A person reading about this crime in the news and looking at a picture of the victim might be tempted to think that this happened to the woman because she was wearing a mini skirt and somehow invited the aggressor to attack her. This obviously cannot be the justification for the crime, but so many people stop questioning their logic and proceed to victim blame due to their own incapacity (or even unwillingness) to be rational and see through their biases.

How might the just-world hypothesis allow for the continuation of social inequalities?

In a similar fashion, the just-world fallacy can allow for the continuation of social inequalities, since believing that everything happens for a reason will also make people prone to believe that the underprivileged are in their current condition due to some kind of retribution from the Universe, when in fact they have just been unlucky to be born poor.

How can you fight against the just-world fallacy?

The first step to counteracting any cognitive bias is awareness. You’re already doing well on that front because you’ve read this post so good on you! (Don’t forget to share it with your friends so they can be better critical thinkers too! 😉 ) 

Since you know how the just-world fallacy manifests, you are more likely to notice it as it starts to get a grip of your thoughts and stop it before it leads you astray. Remember its main cue: the (fatalistic) thought that everything happens for a reason. 

The best thing you can do to fight this heuristic is to turn “everything happens for a reason” into an opportunity for curiosity and rationality. You can do this by trying to identify the reason for which something happens using the scientific method. By making a conscious effort to understand the world, you will increase your chances of making better decisions and succeeding in anything you set out to do.

If you’d like an even more action-focused approach to fighting this bias, I suggest you do some journaling. Write why you think various things happened to you and those you know, whether you feel that they were fair or not, and read those reflections later after their impact is no longer so fresh in your memory. You might discover that a little distance helps see them more objectively and allows you to recognize whether you have been ignoring the impact of randomness in your life. 

If this is the first time you hear of cognitive biases and their detrimental impact on your decision-making abilities, it’s time to read up on more to stay ahead of your peers. How about this post about the self-serving bias?