Why Perpetrators and Innocent Victims are Sometimes Harshly judged? Belief in a Just World and Other Situational Determinants

Abstract

Although Belief in a Just World (BJW) has positive influences on well-being, the attempts to maintain these beliefs may give rise to awry judgments in contexts of harm. In a scenario-based study, we examined the associations of general belief in a just world (GBJW) with BJW maintenance strategies, including victim blaming, victim derogation, perpetrator demonization, and compensation. We hypothesized that because these harsh judgments about victims and offenders along with compensation are used as defensive mechanisms against threats to BJW, using a specific strategy depends on the availability of each strategy and the level of a person’s GBJW. Thus, we also tested whether GBJW and situational cues for victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness have interaction effects on various strategies to defend BJW. By manipulating the characteristics of the victim (professor vs. car dealer) and offender (with evilness cues vs. without evilness cues) in a crime scenario, the interaction effects on judgments about victims and perpetrators as well as compensation were investigated. The results indicated that while GBJW interacted with victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness to predict demonization and derogation, there was no three-way interaction and two-way interaction effects between victim’s respectability and perpetrator’s evilness on the four BJW-maintenance strategies. Taken together, our findings highlight the nuanced effects of just world beliefs on how people react to and make sense of violent incidents.