Skip to main content

Just-world Bias

 


Human beings have infinite ways of deluding themselves. ‘Just-world bias’ is just one of them. It is the belief that we live in a just world which rewards us for our good deeds and punishes for the evil ones. In other words, we believe that there is a moral order in the world or the universe by which our actions merit just consequences. You get what you deserve. What you reap is what you sowed. What goes around comes around. Karma. Most religions believe in the just-world concept in one form or another. In religions, a god or some divine entity controls this system. Many people who are not religious believe in a universal force that maintains this moral balance.

The naked truth is that there is no such force or divine entity dishing out justice to us from somewhere out there. The death of an innocent child due to a pandemic alone should be enough to make us realise that the heavens are not a bit as fair as we would wish them to be. We can choose to hoodwink ourselves with beliefs such as punishment for the sins of one’s previous birth. The child is paying for the sins of its previous birth. Dharma is religiously vindictive. Or you may believe that the child is paying for the sins of its parents. “If the fathers eat sour grapes, the children’s teeth are set on edge,” says the Bible.

When the coronavirus started killing thousands of people, many religious leaders ascribed it to God’s way of punishing us for our sins of commission and omission. “Thank God for the coronavirus” was the title of a sermon preached by Omar Ricci at the Islamic Centre of Southern California when the pandemic had started extracting its toll. The coronavirus was Allah’s gift to mankind, according to this religious leader. Many Christian and other religious preachers said the same thing in different words: God is reminding us of our need to repent and mend our ways.

It is very convenient to have a god sitting somewhere up there and serve as the Great Arbiter of human actions. It gives a heavenly bliss to some people to believe that the meltdown of the World Trade Centre was a divine retribution for the American sins.

Whether it is a natural disaster like a pandemic or a manmade evil like a terrorist attack, the just-world bias can justify it easily. The just-world bias is an acceptance of evil, so to say. The psychology department of the University of Kassel, Germany, conducted a research on the correlation between belief in just world and dishonesty. The research showed a strong link between the belief in just world and antisocial tendencies. It is easy to convert your wicked deeds into holy ones if you can give your deeds a moral sanction coming from a god or religion or something as holy as that. Were the crusaders of the Dark Ages saints or antisocial elements in religious garbs? What about the religious terrorists of today? What about the nationalists of present India?

You can convert your wickedness into holiness just by convincing yourself and a significant number of others that your act is a divine retribution for the wrongs done by any community. The Kassel University research found strong correlation between the just-world bias and religiousness on the one hand, and antisocial tendencies as well as exploitation and victimisation of others, on the other. That is, those who believe in the just-world notion tend to be religious and antisocial and exploitative.

To sum up, the just-world bias is a self-delusion. It gives you the comfort of thinking that the other people deserve the calamities they are suffering. It is also an indirect way of patting yourself on the back that you are better than them and that is why the calamity did not visit you. What’s more, it makes you feel that none less than god himself is on your side.

 

PS. This is powered by #BlogchatterA2Z

Read the previous parts of this series below:

A: Absurdity

B: Bandwagon Effect

C: Chiquitita’s Sorrows

D: Delusions

E: Ego Integrity

F: Fictional Finalism

G: The Good Child

H: Humanism: Celebration of Life

I: Intelligence is not enough

Tomorrow: Kafka’s Prison

 

Comments

  1. This made for an interesting read. Had no idea that just-world bias is a concept on its own. Though i agree with most of the points you mentioned there
    Deepika Sharma

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People have more biases and delusions than truths. But they pretend otherwise.

      Delete
  2. Also its a convenient way of absolving yourself of any responsibility or accountability - no?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, indeed. It's facile to shift responsibility to some divine entity.

      Delete
  3. Had no idea about this just-world bias concept. but it really makes you really think about your perceptions

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My purpose is precisely to set readers thinking. Glad you said that the post achieves that.

      Delete
  4. God loves all His children.
    But, still we all have different lives.
    Bias or karma or payback...no one knows. But, like Newton's Law in Physics, all religions have this- 'every action has an equal & opposite reaction'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Newton has his place, no doubt. But not in universe's morality.

      Delete
  5. Just World , I wonder if anything is 'just' now a days! The political scenario, the religious fanaticism, the extremities of fake propaganda and the consequences compel us to re think this very concept. I enjoyed reading your post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a highly unjust world. But most people believe otherwise. Strange.

      Delete
  6. analytical, honest and straight as always. I'm honoured to have you in my space.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation