Belief in a Just World Promotes Youth Intergenerational Altruism by Increasing Subjective Well-Being: Authenticity Makes a Difference.

Men with high belief in a just world evaluated a videotaped rape victim more negatively than did men with low belief in a just world. Women with high belief in a just world were less negative toward the rape victim than women with low belief in a just world. Participants with low belief in a just world recommended significantly longer prison sentences for the rapist. Evaluations of the rapist and rape victim were not influenced by information about the outcome of the case (the rapist was never caught, the rapist was caught and sentenced to either 1 or 15 years in prison). Implications for just-world beliefs of jurors in rape trials were discussed.

1. Introduction - Hedvig Sallay and Claudia Dalbert The Development of the Belief in a Just World 2. Parenting and yound adolescents' belief in a just world - Claudia Dalbert and Matthias Radant 3. The development of the belief in a just world: The impact of being raised in a one-parent or an intact family - Hedvig Sallay and Claudia Dalbert 4. Transmission of the belief in a just world in the family - Ute Schonpflug and Ludwig Bilz 5. Transformation of the Justice motive? Belief in a just world and its correlates in different age groups - Jurgen Maes and Manfred Schmitt The Belief in a Just World as a Resourse for Mental Health and Coping in Adolescence 6. Belief in a just world, subjective well-being and trust of young adults - Isabel Correia and Jorge Vala 7. Belief in a just world, personality and well-being of adolescents - Claudia Dalbert and Jozef Dzuka 8. The Implications and functions of just and unjust experiences in school - Claudia Dalbert 9. Two facets of the belief in a just world and achievement behaviour at school - Jurgen Maes and Elizabeth Kals 10. Belief in a just world as a resource for different types of young prisoners - Kathleen Otto and Claudia Dalbert Belief in a Just World and Career Development 11. Belief in a just world as a resource for unemployed young adults - Claudia Dalbert 12. Belief in a just world and young adults' way of coping with unemployment and the job search - Vera Cubela Adoric 13. Entering the job market: Belief in a just world, fairness and well-being of graduating students - Hedvig Sallay 14. Belief in a just world and adolescents' vocational and social goals - Dorothea Dette, Joachim Stober and Claudia Dalbert 15. Developmental trajectories and developmental functions of the belief in a just world: some concluding remarks - Claudia Dalbert and Hedvig Sallay

The influence of belief in a just world on individuals' mental health has been extensively researched. We examined the impact of belief in a just world on subjective well-being, focusing mainly on the mediating role of sense of control in this relationship. Participants were 372 Chinese undergraduate university students who completed the Belief in a Just World Scale, the Sense of Control Scale, and the Subjective Well-Being Scale. The results revealed that both their belief in a just world and their sense of control were significantly correlated with their subjective well-being. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that sense of control partially mediated the effect of belief in a just world on subjective well-being. Our findings extend previous results and provide valuable evidence that belief in a just world predicts subjective well-being.

When do people derogate or psychologically distance themselves from victims? Belief in a just world and ingroup identification

Belief in a just world (BJW) has been shown to be positively correlated with the two components of subjective wellbeing (SWB): life satisfaction and positive affect. Although both directions of causality are theoretically possible and the BJW theory explicitly states that direction of causality is from BJW to SWB, until now the causal direction of these associations had not been empirically tested. The three experimental studies presented in this paper include manipulations of either BJW, mood or life satisfaction. A total of 338 undergraduate students participated. There were no effects of experimentally induced mood changes on BJW (Study 1) but the saliency of life satisfaction reinforced BJW (Study 2). An increase in self-reported life satisfaction when BJW is primed was found (Study 3), although the activation of BJW had no impact on the mood of the participants (Study 3). Therefore, the present results show that transient affective states do not influence or are influenced by BJW, and that this relationship is present only for the more stable affective dispositions. These studies therefore support the bilateral character of the association between life satisfaction and BJW.

Long-term focus and prosocial–antisocial tendencies interact to predict belief in just world

Although the perception of justice is a core need of all individuals, the adaptive value of belief in a just world (BJW)-in everyday life and when facing severe distress-has been typically investigated in separate studies. In this article, we tested, in only one study, the possibility that BJW can be a personal resource and a coping resource. We analysed data from the European Social Survey comprised of random representative samples of 27 European countries (N = 24,776 participants). We considered distressing circumstances both at an individual level (health impairment and financial difficulty) and at a macroeconomic contextual level. The results showed that for people both facing and not facing financial or health-related distress, BJW was positively associated with well-being, supporting BJW as a personal resource. Furthermore, we found that the decrease of well-being of people facing distress, both at an individual level and at a contextual level, compared to people not facing distress, was lower for individuals with higher BJW than for individuals with lower BJW, supporting BJW as a coping resource.

The belief in a just world is a mindset that facilitates our ability to cope with life events by fostering a sense of control. Nursing students' beliefs in a just world and their attitudes towards death can influence how they will care for their patients. The intent of this descriptive and cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between nursing students and their beliefs in a just world and their attitudes towards death. Quantitative data was collected using the Descriptive Characteristics Questionnaire, the Belief in a Just World Scale, and the Attitude towards Death Scale. The sample included 270 participants. It was determined that as nursing students' beliefs in a just world increased, they developed positive attitudes towards death. It is recommended that discussions on the subject should be included in the education curriculum to increase nursing students' beliefs in a just world and their awareness about death.

Introduction: An Overview: Advances in `Belief in a Just World' Theory and Methods M.J. Lerner, L. Montada. Advances in Research on Observers' Reactions to Victims. Immanent Justice and Ultimate Justice: Two Ways of Believing in Justice J. Maes. BJW and Self-Efficacy in Coping with Observed Victimization: Results from a Study About Unemployment C.Mohiyeddini, L. Montada. How Do Observers of Victimization Preserver Their Belief in a Just World Cognitively or Actionally? Findings From a Longitudinal Study B. Reichle, et al. Innovative Extensions of BJW and Self-Experienced Injustices: Individual Differences in the Belief in a Just World and Responses to Personal Misfortune C.L. Hafer, J.M. Olson. Belief in a Just World, Well-Being, and Coping with an Unjust Fate C. Dalbert. Analytic Perspectives for Assessing the Construct: Belief in a Just World: Measuring the Beliefs in a Just World A. Furnham. Eight Stages in the Development of Research on the Construct of Belief in a Just World J. Maes. Looking Back and Then Forward to the Next Generation of Research on BJW: Belief in a Just World: A Hybrid of Justice Motive and Self-Interest? L. Montada. 4 Additional Chapters. Index.

In a cross-sectional study with N = 627 individuals (Mage = 22.8, SDage = 7.3, 147 males, 480 females, 106 non-religious, 456 religious), we investigated personal belief in a just world (BJW) as a resource for undergraduates’ subjective well-being and expected a positive relation between both constructs due to recent studies. We not only aimed at replicating but also extending recent findings by investigating a Russian sample, measuring different dimensions of well-being, and considering self-esteem and resilience as potential mediators in the relation of BJW and well-being. We also controlled for confounding effects of age, gender, religiosity, and general BJW. The findings show that personal BJW related to all investigated indicators of well-being (depressive symptoms, positive and negative affect, and mental well-being). Self-esteem mediated all relations between personal BJW and indicators of subjective well-being whereas resilience mediated relations of personal BJW to positive affect and mental well-being. The pattern of results persisted when we controlled for age, gender, religiosity, and general BJW. Our results confirm that the personal BJW world functions as a psychological resource in undergraduate students.

Belief in a just world has been widely regarded as a psychological factor that supports adolescent adjustment. However, prior research has primarily relied on cross-sectional designs and has seldom explored longitudinal temporal relations, particularly how emotional and behavioral difficulties might influence, and be influenced by, belief in a just world. This four-wave longitudinal study investigated the bidirectional associations between both personal and general belief in a just world and internalizing and externalizing problems among Chinese secondary vocational school students, a group facing unique academic and social risks. Participants included 3312 secondary vocational school students (41.5 percent female; average age at baseline = 15.71 years, standard deviation = 0.86), with data collected across four waves at six-month intervals. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models revealed robust reciprocal associations between personal belief in a just world and internalizing or externalizing problems. While general belief in a just world did not significantly predict internalizing problems, internalizing problems significantly predicted a decline in general belief in a just world. Externalizing problems significantly predicted subsequent declines in general belief in a just world. General belief in a just world predicted lower externalizing problems only from Time 3 to Time 4, suggesting a possible age-related effect. These findings underscore the developmental significance of belief in a just world as both a protective factor and a belief system that can be shaped by adolescents' emotional and behavioral functioning in educational contexts marked by disadvantage.

This research explored relationships between beliefs about justice, illness causal attributions and fairness judgements of those causes. Participants (n = 200) completed questionnaires assessing their belief in a just world (BJW) and measuring causal attributions and fairness judgements for 42 illness causes classified into behavioural, environmental and hidden (genetic, mystic, psychosocial) categories. As predicted, BJW was correlated positively with all fairness judgements, but with none of the illness causal attributions. Behavioural causes of illness were judged to be fairer than environmental causes, which were judged fairer than hidden causes. Finally, for environmental and hidden causes (uncontrollable illness attributions), positive correlations between causal attributions and their corresponding fairness judgements were found only among participants with high BJW. Implications of these findings for decision makers and health professionals are discussed, with emphasis on the need to consider the combined effect of causal attributions and BJW on illness fairness judgements.

The association between belief in a just world and endorsing conspiracy theories is moderated by ambiguity tolerance, but not scientific reasoning

In a questionnaire study, we examined the age of “coming out” (i.e., acknowledging one's sexual identity) in gay and bisexual men as predicted by belief in a just world (BJW), personal efficacy (PE), physical attractiveness, childhood gender identity/role, and demographics. As hypothesized, men with a higher BJW, greater physical attractiveness, greater degree of same‐sex behavior, and younger age reported an earlier age of coming out. An interaction between BJW and childhood gender identity/role showed, as expected, that the relation with BJW only occurred among men with greater childhood femininity. Unexpectedly, PE was unrelated to age of coming out. Results add to previous studies on the coming‐out process and to work suggesting a buffering effect of BJW in other contexts.

Drawing on justice motive theory (Lerner et al. in Berkowitz and Walster (eds) Advances in experimental social psychology. Academic Press, New York, 1976), in the present work we examine belief in a just world as an underlying (latent) factor, reflected in general and personal beliefs. We first conducted a meta-analysis encompassing 51 articles, 76 samples, 19 countries and 23,900 participants, which revealed a positive association between the two forms of belief in a just world across studies (meta-analytic r = .52 [95% CI = .48, .56], p < .001) and within each of the individual samples. These results suggest that general and personal belief in a just world could be treated as joint indicators of a latent belief in a just world factor. In a second study, an online sample of participants (n = 311 participants, 54% women, Mage = 37.78 years) completed measures of general and personal belief in a just world, which we treated as indicators of latent belief in a just world. Measures of subjective well-being and psychological well-being were treated as indicators of latent well-being. Indicators loaded strongly on their respective latent factors, and the latent factors were strongly positively correlated (r = .74, p < .001). These results suggest that the link between belief in a just world and well-being may be even more substantial than has been previously recognized. In accordance with the original conceptualization of belief in a just world in justice motive theory, our results suggest benefits to examining the shared and unique aspects of general and personal beliefs in a just world.