Explaining unfair and fair outcomes: The therapeutic value of attributional analysis

What happens when people witness others experiencing outcomes which, they believe, are undeserved? This question was addressed in an experiment that tested the prediction that (a) third-party witnesses of unfair events, especially those with a strong belief in a just world, experience distress that (b) is reduced if they are afforded the opportunity to explain the causes of the unfair events. Sixteen vignettes that varied in the fairness of their outcomes were presented to 183 participants who expressed either a strong or weak belief in a just world. After reading each vignette, some participants were asked to provide a detailed causal analysis of the event, while other participants were neither encouraged nor given the opportunity to engage in causal analysis. As predicted, only those participants who manifested a strong belief in a just world and who made causal attributions exhibited a reduced level of distress about the event outcomes. Strong believers were not only somewhat more distressed by examples of unfairness but, unexpectedly, by instances of fairness as well. They also reported lower levels of distress following causal analysis of both fair and unfair outcomes. The results suggest that strong believers in a just world, as compared with weak believers, may manifest a distinctive attributional style that is activated when they encounter event outcomes in which issues of justice are clearly implicated. Upon learning about these events and their outcomes, believers in a just world may have a greater need to understand their causes regardless of the fairness of the outcome, experience more distress when prevented from achieving a causal understanding, and show more relief when allowed to do so. No specific attributions (e.g. the influence of others, personal dispositions, God, luck) were found to be more distress-reducing than others.