Karma and The Just World Hypothesis

Karma and The Just World Hypothesis

I mentioned earlier that I am teaching an introductory psychology class this fall and last night we ventured into social psychology. As we discussed kinds of biases we covered the relationship between the bias of Blaming The Victim and the Just World Hypothesis. It works like this: the world is just and fair and because it is just and fair, people that find themselves the victim of unfairness or injustice must deserve the unfairness or injustice.

Sounds surprising at first but play it out a little and the view is probably more common than you think.

Consider karma. Ask most people in everyday sorts of conversations and they will endorse karma or some kind of variant. So I mentioned to the class that I have a knack for quickly becoming the most unpopular person in a room and doing so in record time. I mentioned that one time some colleagues were discussing diets and which one and this and that and asked my opinion. I gave it: Diets don’t work. Thanks Debbie Downer. Who needs cancer when we have this guy around?

Speaking of cancer, I was recently asked by current colleagues about believing in karma: I don’t. “What! Of course you do!” I don’t. I asked my colleagues that if karma is true and that if people get what is coming to them and that what goes around comes around, then why do kids get cancer? What did the kids do to deserve that come-around? 

Here is the kipper though. One colleague said “their parents must have done something." One student in the class also felt this way. 

So after some lively debate and tangents into Leibnitzian Best of All Possible Worlds talk I wrapped it up by pointing out that you can choose to believe in karma or the Just World Hypothesis but that it logically follows that you must blame victims. 

This is not a forced dichotomy. It is merely a conditional. 

The world is just
If the world is just, then a person will experience injustice if and only if they acted unjustly
[ergo]
A person that experiences injustice acted unjustly

In symbolic logic it might look like this:

1.    1.   j

2.     2.  (j>(i_­=u))

[(i>u)

3.      3. Asm ~(i>u)

4.      4. i               from 3 negative implication rule

5.      5. ~u           from 3 negative implication rule

6.      6. (i=u)      from 1,2 modus ponens rule

7.      7. (i>u)      from 6 iff simplification rule

8.      8. u             from 4,6 contradicting 5

(i>u) from 3-8 reductio ad absurdum 8 contradicts 5

As uncomfortable as it may seem and as unpopular as it may make you, the truth will set you free. Free from what?

No one better than Woody Allen captures the debate in movie form. The Seder scene from Crimes and Misdemeanors