Body shortness lowers belief in a just world: The mediating role of life satisfaction

Abstract

Previous studies on body height in psychology mainly focus on how others perceive people with different body height and how body height affects an individual's self-perception. As being short is often associated with various unjust experiences, we aim to examine whether and how body height shapes people's lay belief about the world, specifically belief in a just world (BJW). We hypothesize that people with shorter body height would have lower level of BJW, and this effect can be mediated by life satisfaction. We conducted a survey among 182 college students in China to test our hypotheses. We found that individuals with shorter height had lower belief in a just world compared to their taller counterparts, and this effect can be partially mediated by life satisfaction. Implications for future research are discussed.