Just-World Hypothesis
We believe that the world is fundamentally fair and people get what they deserve.
The just-world hypothesis is the cognitive bias that a person's actions are inherently inclined to bring morally fair and fitting consequences to that person. People have a need to believe that the world is orderly, predictable, and just. This leads to victim-blaming — believing that victims of misfortune must have done something to deserve it — and to under-appreciation of systemic causes of inequality.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Victim Blaming When told about a mugging victim, people often wonder what the victim was doing in a dangerous area at night, implicitly assigning some blame to the victim to preserve their belief in a fair world.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
When a classmate gets a low grade, Zoe thinks, 'They probably didn't study the right material or pay attention in class.'
After hearing about a company's data breach, Robert thinks, 'They must have had weak security practices. Good cybersecurity prevents these things.'
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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