What is the “Just-World Hypothesis”? How is this idea a bad thing?
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In addition to what others have said, it’s bad because it leads people to blame victims. The rape victim must’ve dressed slutty, the poor person must be lazy, the person shot by police must have been a criminal.
It’s an excuse to never try to improve the world, because if bad things only happen to bad people, then it’s ok for bad things to happen.
The Just World Hypothesis is simply, if your actions are good upon the world, the world will be kind to you in kind (and vice versa).
It’s a bad mindset because it’s not how the world works, and if you do good deeds expecting good deeds in turn and they don’t show up, you’ll be disillusioned.
It’s the frame of mind that people get what’s coming to them, good people get rewarded for their good deeds, bad people get punished.
It’s bad only in that it is not an accurate statement of reality. There are plenty of situations of injustice, where good actions are punished, and bad actions are rewarded. It also oversimplifies people. There is no such thing as a truly “good person”, nor is there really a “pure evil” person, so this framework tends to draw hard lines where there really aren’t any.
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