Paradoxically, people's fundamental need to believe that the world is a fair place often leads them to blame victims rather than to prosecute the offenders. For example, in a 2009 study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Kees van den Bos, when people were faced with situations that highly threatened their belief in a just world, those who were primed to think about their social group were more likely to blame the victims. A recent article in Time Healthland explores this and other social psychology research on the "just world hypothesis" and how it may help explain why so many people took a blind eye to or defended the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse.
Print to Page
Email to a Friend