What goes around comes around: coping with threats to Belief in a Just World and its relationship with Locus of Control

Abstract

The present research studied Lerner's (1970, 1980) just-world theory by manipulating two factors referred to an innocent victim and measuring several possible responses that participants may give when their belief in a just world was potentially threatened. Participants read a story about a victim who varied in terms of attractiveness (likeable or not) and responsibility for having caused her own incident (low responsibility vs. high responsibility). The general pattern of results was as follows: for the unlikeable low-responsibility victim, the primary response to protect justice-related beliefs was character derogation; instead of blame, for the likeable high-responsibility victim the protective measure appeared to be monetary compensation, as well as for the likeable low-responsibility victim, which was compensation too. Eventually, the unlikeable high-responsibility slightly put the blame on the victim. Concerning locus of control, the more a participant believed the world is just, the more internal his/her locus of control was. Major implications and future directions are suggested.