Louis Pasteur once wrote that chance favors the prepared mind. But is that the way it always works? Isn't it also true that, sometimes, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people? In other words, do you think the world is just? Why or why not? Assuming that life isn't fair, should we even attempt to make it so? Does success in life really have little to do with the effort you put into it?
FTA:
The Misconception: People who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it. The Truth: The beneficiaries of good fortune often do nothing to earn it, and bad people often get away with their actions without consequences.
A woman goes out to a club wearing stilettos and a miniskirt with no underwear. She gets pretty drunk and stumbles home in the wrong direction. She ends up lost in a bad neighborhood. She gets raped.
Is she to blame in some way? Was this her fault? Was she asking for it?
People often say yes to all three in studies asking similar questions after presenting similar scenarios.
It is common in fiction for the bad guys to lose and the good guys to win. It's how you would like to see the world- just and fair. In psychology, the tendency to believe this is how the real world actually works is called the Just-World Fallacy.
More specifically, this is the tendency to react to horrible misfortune, like homelessness or drug addiction, by believing the people stuck in horrible situations must have done something to deserve it...
A giant amount of research has been done since his studies, and most psychologists have come to the same conclusion: You want the world to be fair, so you pretend it is...
You've heard "what goes around comes around" before, or maybe you've seen a person get what was coming to them and thought, "that's karma for you." These are shades of the Just World Fallacy.
It sucks to think the world isn't fair. It feels better to believe in karma and justice, in fairness and reward. A world with the righteous on one side of the scale, and evil on the other - that seems to make sense. You want to believe those who work hard and sacrifice get ahead, and those who are lazy and cheat do not.
This, of course, is not always true.
DISCUSS!
Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Nov 8, 2010 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=375
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