The Just-World Fallacy. The Misconception: People who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it.
It sucks to think the world isn’t fair. It feels better to believe in karma and justice, in fairness and reward. A world with the righteous on one side of the scale, and evil on the other – that seems to make sense.
The Truth: The beneficiaries of good fortune often do nothing to earn it, and bad people often get away with their actions without consequences.
"...found that people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to ‘feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims.’”
Great read. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallacy/
Thank you for sharing this, Katia!
Here is the key line to me:
"You want the world to be fair, so you pretend it is."
I cannot choose what happens to me; I can only choose how I react.
And I react in a way that reflects my values.
Because I want the world to be fair, I try to react in a way that reinforces that worldview.
I concur that not everyone acts this way, interacts this way, and reacts this way.
Which is, in part, what makes the world so unpredictable.
Cannot disagree with that, Adam. The way we view the world and react to its stimuli is very subjective; however, more often than not we do forget that our reaction is a pure representation of the experience/values etc. and we tend to judge others based on 'our' view (the only 'right' one). And yes, we tend to interpret and describe the world and events in a way it makes us secure and allows all the events easily fit in our own representation of the world. This is something Daniel Gilbert in "Stumbling on Happiness" is talking about as well.
Life is like business. It's 20 percent what happens to you, and 80 percent how you respond. [read more]
Knowing that lots of random things happen, is it best to be inclined toward random acts of kindness and goodness?
I think so.
Absolutely, I think so as well. We choose how we respond, hence we can always be inclined towards acts of kindness and have this response set as a default. Unfortunately, there are numerous situations where this response will be shaped and turned into something else just because the world is not 'just and fair' in the meaning the majority of us apply to it.
Btw, thanks for shashing the post :)
You're very welcome, Katia.
I like this post so much I'm stashing it again.
And thank you for making me think about which situations do not call for kindness.
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