Research explores if perceiving what happens as just relates to how people cope with financial and health difficulties in different economic contexts. Results indicate that BJW can attenuate the negative impact of these adverse situations on well-being, especially in favorable economic contexts.
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Perceiving what happens as just has been operationalized within the framework of The Belief in a Just World (BJW) Theory. This theory has been studied by Isabel Correia, a researcher at the Centre for Psychological Research and Social Intervention (CIS-Iscte).
“Generally speaking,” says the researcher, “this belief translates into the perception that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, or, in other words, that people get what they deserve. Therefore, events in life are just.”
According to the research already conducted, this perception of justice relates to the way people deal with adverse day-to-day situations, for example by perceiving events as challenges rather than threats, protecting them from the stress associated with unfair or unpredictable events through a sense of control. In fact, BJW can help explain several behaviors, including the legitimization of economic inequalities, or the devaluation of informal caregivers’ suffering. As the authors explain in the paper, this behavioral attribution is functional, since it gives meaning to the unpredictable or unfair event, attenuates feelings of injustice and reduces negative emotions, contributing to the maintenance of well-being and allowing the preservation of justice perceptions.
As per the research team, BJW can be distinguished at two levels: personal - events in a person's life are fair; and general - the world is a fair place, and these two components are highly correlated. In the present study “we used the measure of BJW general, which was assessed in the European Social Survey, and we studied how it relates to macroeconomic contextual measures and well-being,” explains researcher Helena Carvalho, from the Center for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte).
The study was based on data from 38396 participants taken from the European Social Survey (European Social Survey European Research Infrastructure (ESS ERIC), 2018), a questionnaire made up of random samples representative of 27 European countries. The research team, composed of Isabel Correia (CIS-Iscte), Helena Carvalho (CIES-Iscte), Kathleen Otto (Philips Marburg University) and Gabriel Nudelman (The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo), analyzed distress factors at the individual level, namely health impairment and financial distress, but also at the level of the macroeconomic context, namely GDP per capita. The aim was to understand how BJW changes the impact of these factors on well-being. According to the research team, GDP was chosen because it is a widely recognized indicator of a country's economic health, which influences social well-being.
Through a multilevel analysis and controlling for various individual factors (including gender, age and education, religion, political ideology) and at the country level (Gini, an indicator of inequality of income), the results of the study indicated a positive association between BJW and the well-being of people with and without financial and health difficulties. For the research team, this is a result that supports the idea that the belief in a just world serves as a personal resource that promotes well-being.
Furthermore, the results also revealed that for people in distressed situations, well-being was less affected for those with higher levels of BJW (compared to those with lower levels of BJW), suggesting that BJW can serve as a coping strategy, lessening the impact of distress. However, this protective factor of BJW seems to depend on contextual factors: in countries with higher GDP, people may benefit from more support systems (e.g. health insurance, sickness benefits), which may increase this protective effect of BJW on health problems.
To the research team, “This study not only reinforces the notion that belief in a just world is an integral part of individual well-being, but also a coping resource for dealing with daily adversity,” calling for further exploration of the justice-related mechanisms that influence people's and society's perceptions and beliefs.
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