Do You Believe the World Is Fair?
Fair to you, fair to others, fair now or fair in the end - four very different beliefs
Most people carry a quiet assumption that effort pays off and that people, more or less, get what they deserve. Psychologists have studied that assumption for fifty years and found it has two faces. Believing the world is fair to you seems to help you get out of bed and plan ahead. Believing it is fair to everyone can make it easier to blame people for their own bad luck. This test separates the two, and adds two related beliefs about when justice arrives.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
There are no right answers here - only honest ones. Answer with your gut feeling about how the world actually works, not how it should.
What it measures
The belief that the world is just for you personally and for people in general, the two scales distinguished by Lipkus, Dalbert and Siegler, plus two related beliefs described by Maes: immanent justice (misfortune is deserved) and ultimate justice (injustice is put right eventually). It is not locus of control, which is about whether you can influence outcomes, not whether outcomes are fair.
Based on: Belief in a just world for self and others (Lipkus, Dalbert & Siegler, 1996; Lerner, 1980)
Possible results
Fair to me
Whether you feel your own life has treated you fairly.
Fair to others
Whether you think people in general get what they deserve.
Deserved misfortune
Whether you read bad luck as a sign that someone earned it (immanent justice).
Justice in the end
Whether you trust that unfairness gets put right eventually (ultimate justice).
Common questions
What is the just-world fallacy?
It is the tendency to assume that people's outcomes reflect what they deserve, so that victims must somehow have earned their fate. Melvin Lerner's experiments in the 1960s and 70s showed people derogating an innocent victim they could not help. The belief protects our sense of safety - if bad things only happen to those who deserve them, we are safe - at the cost of fairness to others.
Is believing in a just world good or bad for you?
Both, depending on whose world. Research since the 1990s shows that believing the world is fair to you tends to go with less depression and higher life satisfaction, while believing it is fair to everyone is more tied to harsh judgements of the poor, the sick and victims. That is why the test separates them.
Is this the same as locus of control?
They are related but distinct. Locus of control asks whether outcomes depend on your own actions or on outside forces. Just-world belief asks whether outcomes are deserved. You can feel fully in control of your life and still think the world is deeply unfair to other people.
Sources
- Lipkus, I. M., Dalbert, C., & Siegler, I. C. (1996). The importance of distinguishing the belief in a just world for self versus for others: Implications for psychological well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. doi:10.1177/0146167296227002
- Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. Plenum Press.
- Maes, J. (1998). Immanent justice and ultimate justice. In L. Montada & M. J. Lerner (Eds.), Critical Issues in Social Justice: Responses to Victimizations and Belief in a Just World, Springer US. doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-6418-5_2
- Furnham, A. (2003). Belief in a just world: Research progress over the past decade. Personality and Individual Differences. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00072-7
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from published scales, so scores are not comparable to the published norms. Only the first two bars correspond to the scale of Lipkus, Dalbert and Siegler; the other two come from Maes's separate work on immanent and ultimate justice and are related constructs, not validated factors of that scale. Most studies used Western samples, and the links to wellbeing and to victim-blaming are correlations, not proof of cause.