Simple psychology for daily life: Just-world fallacy
The just-world fallacy is a phenomenon in which people correlate morality of actions to their eventual outcomes. This leads to people believing positive outcomes are driven solely by morally upstanding actions and habits, and conversely that poor outcomes are evidence of morally corrupt actions.
A common scenario in which we observe this fallacy is in successful people attributing their success not to a measure of good fortune, but to morally upstanding actions and habits. These same people may be quick to dismiss the less fortunate as being lazy, corrupt, or otherwise undeserving of sharing in that same success.
We should watch for this fallacy in play from ourselves and others in scenarios such as:
- Attributing someone struggling to find a job as being a sign of laziness, when economic pressures or a shifting job market may be the cause.
- Assuming our own success was not aided by good fortune, and that we therefore have no lessons left to learn.
- A manager with similar or lesser skills, results, and experience to subordinates finding themselves elevated based on nepotism rather than merit.
- Believing impoverished people lack money and resources due to laziness rather than circumstance.
- Blaming ourselves when something goes wrong, despite having done all we could with information and opportunities available to us leading up to the unfortunate event.
It’s been hypothesised that prescribing to just world beliefs has practical benefits. These have been posited as helping maintain some feeling of control in the chaotic world, helping to deal with guilt, and protecting the ego from harsh realisations about the self and reality.
Rarely will making someone aware of their erroneous thinking due to this fallacy have them reconsider their stance; it’s more likely it will put them on guard. Use knowledge of this fallacy instead to navigate around potential friction or confrontation.
