By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
After traveling to Syria in the midst of a brutal war, 26-year-old Kayla Jean Mueller was captured by ISIS six months ago. The terror group now claims she was killed in a Jordanian airstrike while Americans hold out a little hope that she might be alive. As much as we understand the horror and sympathize with her family, for how many of us is our first thought something like this: What was she doing in a place like that in the first place? She is an aid worker who has worked in some risky places in the past, but a young American woman traveling to Syria just as ISIS is coming to power? The situation certainly invites a focus on the victim’s choices. But it also plays into a strong and well-documented psychological bias called the “Just World Hypothesis,” or more simply “Belief in a Just World” (Lerner, 1980). It is best understood as a need to believe that the world is a just place and people tend to get what they deserve. A corollary is that when something tragic does occur, we are motivated to find ways to blame the victim’s own choices.
Just world beliefs are a psychologically understandable reaction to the perception that the world is a threatening place. Believing that things “happen for a reason” is one strategy for reducing that perceived threat. But just world beliefs carry some consequences anytime we evaluate the conduct or circumstances of others — in court, for example. A recent column in The Guardian provides a timely reminder of these consequences. The piece by Oliver Burkeman is entitled, “Believing that life is fair might make you a terrible person.” The mindset invites negative biases by providing a strong psychological pull to place greater control within the hands of those who have suffered negative consequences. “Faced with injustice, we’ll try to alleviate it,” Burkeman writes, “but, if we can’t, we’ll do the next best thing, psychologically speaking: blame the victims of the injustice.” The net effect of that bias, in and out of court, isn’t just.
The Not-So-Just Effects of “Just World” Beliefs
A robust body of research (see Hafer & Begue, 2005) has shown that belief in a just world varies by individual and can be reliably measured on a self-report scale. More recent data also shows that just world beliefs can differ when applied to oneself or to others (Begue & Bastounis, 2003), with the main harms of victim-blame occurring with those most prone to apply just world beliefs to others. The basic construct of belief in a just world is based on experiments going back to 1966. This early research showed that if a loss could be effectively compensated, subjects tended to treat the victim as innocent. But if the suffering could not effectively be compensated, then participants were motivated to either minimize the suffering in their own estimation or to find fault with the victim. In other words, the scales had to be righted one way or the other. As the authors summarize in the original study (Lerner & Simmons, 1966) “The sight of an innocent person suffering without possibility of reward or compensation,” Lerner and Simmons concluded,” motivated people to devalue the attractiveness of the victim in order to bring about a more appropriate fit between her fate and her character.”
That tendency makes it worthwhile to measure just world beliefs in mock trials and, when possible, in voir dire. Knowing who is most and least likely to gravitate toward a “blame the victim” approach can be useful in shaping your message and prioritizing your strikes. Those beliefs can have real consequences. In The Guardian article, Burkeman cites research indicating that belief in a just world is associated with reduced tendency to believe in affirmative action, for example, and an increased tendency toward authoritarianism.
For the Plaintiff: Address Victim Blaming
The most common context in which a just world mindset applies in court is against a plaintiff. Most obviously, it applies in personal injury and wrongful death cases where the tragedy is very clear and tangible, but it also applies in any setting where a plaintiff is trying to gain redress based on a loss. The question back of, “What could you have done to avoid it?” will always be on jurors’ minds. Even when the law of a case does not allow a claim of contributory negligence, jurors will still find a way to discount an eventual award based on any projections of the plaintiff’s own culpability. So the psychological motivation to increase that culpability in order to make the world seem more just is a constant challenge.
In addressing that challenge, portraying helplessness doesn’t necessarily help. The plaintiff might truly have little or no control over the circumstances that led to the loss, but jurors can be quite creative in coming up with something the plaintiff could have and should have done differently in order to escape the problem. Instead of downplaying it, embrace your client’s power and build a positive case to support the conclusion that the plaintiff behaved responsibly and did her best with everything within her sphere of control. It’s a mistake to think that your only burden is to prove your claims, and forget about the implicit but universal burden to defend your client.
For the Defense: Address Lawsuit Rationalizing
While just world beliefs apply most obviously to the plaintiff, they relate to the civil defendant as well. After all, someone who has been sued is also in an unfortunate place, and that motivates jurors to rationalize the misfortune. Even if the claim itself isn’t bourn out, there is still something that the defendant could have and should have done in order to avoid being sued. Over the years, we have collected data on attitudes about litigation and over the years, 65 percent or more will express the belief that the fact that a lawsuit made it to trial means that the defendant probably did something wrong.
So while legally you might have presumption, psychologically, forget about it. And a belief in a just world provides further motivation for jurors to focus on what you could have done differently. So just as it is a mistake for plaintiffs to believe it’s enough to just prove their claims, it is similarly a mistake for defendants to feel they can win just by preventing that proof from the plaintiff. “Defend your client’s actions and choices” remains the rule.
Like all psychological biases, just world beliefs are complex. It doesn’t just cut one way or the other, and it doesn’t simply balance itself out. Instead, the question of just world beliefs — how they play out, who they help and who they hurt — are going to vary based on the specifics of each individual case.
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Other Posts Relating to “Just World:”
- Be Relatively Cautious With Absolutist Jurors
- Watch Out For Scrooge
- Spot the Jurors Who Feel Entitled to Award Higher Damages