Self-Esteem as Predictor of Belief in Just World among University Students: The Moderating Role of Personality Factors

Justice has always been one of the major concerns for human beings. Belief in the just world phenomenon is an indicative of justice motive. People are motivated to believe in a just world stating that people generally get what they deserve (Lerner, 1965). Belief in just world enables individuals to confront their physical and social environment in an effective manner. Belief in just world helps individual to commit himself to pursuit long range goals and helps to the socially regulated behaviors of day to day life (Lerner & Miller, 1978). The predictors and outcome being studied in the current research are different aspects of positive psychology which is of the interest of the researchers in the recent decade. Belief in just world phenomenon is an important component of positive psychology because it is related to justice (Seligman, 2002). The belief will be higher in just world and will be proportionate to self-esteem (Lipkus, Dalbert, & Siegler, 1996).Research studies on the relationship between belief in just world and personality was triggered by the introduction of the first belief in a just world scale by Rubin and Peplau (1973, 1975) which assessed individual differences. This approach inspired researchers that the belief in a just world should be investigated within the framework of personality dispositions, and by this approach, positive associations were found particularly with internal locus of control and authoritarianism (Fumham & Procter, 1989). Researchers (Correia, Kamble, & Dalbert, 2007; Lipkus et al., 1996) found a positive relationship between personality dispositions and belief in just world. Thus, personality traits are directly correlated with belief in the just world. In studies conducted by Heaven and Connors (1988) and Rim (1983), a negative correlation between neuroticism and belief in the just world was found. In addition, women who scored low on belief in just world were found to be more introverted (Heaven & Connors, 1998). Extraversion and openness were positively correlated with general belief in a just world. The same results were found for belief in a just world for self, which also correlated negatively with neuroticism (Dalbert et al., 1987).Finally, the research provided evidence that the belief in a just world as a personality trait is correlated with global personality dimensions. Particularly, empirical findings indicate a negative association between personal belief in just world and neuroticism, consistent with the positive outlook that the belief in a just world provides (Lipkus et al., 1996). Nevertheless, studies controlling for neuroticism evidenced the increment validity of the personal just world belief (Dalbert & Dzuka, 2004). Just like personality, a good deal of research (Delbert, 2002; Correia, Kamble, & Dalbert, 2007) indicates self-esteem as positive predictor of belief in just world. As high self-esteem boosts the self-acceptance, selfcompetence, and self-concept levels of adolescents which results in positive psychological consequences and high belief in just world also breeds positive psychological consequences indicates that high self-esteem predict belief in just world. Therefore, lower selfesteem and lower belief in just world results in destructive outcomes like low anger and low fear of future (Correia, Kamble, & Dalbert, 2007; Delbert, 2002; Steensma & van Dijke, 2006).Keeping in view the previous researches, in the current research, the moderating role of personality factors between self-esteem and belief in the just world has been investigated. The focus of previous research was on investigating the moderating role of belief in just world with different variables i.e. hostile attribution bias, victim blaming, etc (Begue & Muller, 2006). However, in the present research, it is investigated whether personality plays a moderating role between selfesteem and belief in just world. Past research focused more on investigating the outcomes of the belief in just world (Hafer & Begue, 2005; Mudrack, 2004; Otto & Dalbert, 2009; Sallay, 2004) but the present study focuses on examining the predictors of belief in just world. …