The Automatic Activation Of Belief In A Just World-the Evidence From Eye Movements

When confronted with bad things happening to good people, observers should sympathize andhelp them. But in fact, sometimes it is on the contrary, people will reject and derogate the innocent victims.To explain this phenomenon, Lerner proposed belief in a just world (BJW). It means people believe thatthey live in a world in which people get what they deserve. People reject and derogate innocent victims isin order to maintain this belief. The main idea of belief in a just world is "good things happen to goodpeople and bad things happen to bad people ". In daily life, people also have another belief,"people whoget good outcome are good people and who get bad outcome are bad people ". The author called this belief“inverse belief in a just world”(IBJW). The purpose of this article is to test the hypothesis that BJW andIBJW are automatically activated in an unfolding scenario under the eastern culture. To test this novelprediction, the author eye-tracked observers in a visual world paradigm, in which eye movements aroundvisually presented objects are closely time-locked with some related auditory input. This approach is highlysensitive in that it allows an implicit, incremental analysis of gaze preference between visual objects as ascenario develops.The experiment1adopted visual world paradigm to investigate whether others’ moral charactercould affect people’s expectation of their deserved outcome, thus to demonstrated the automatic activationof belief in a just world. The results show that when the scenario is not unfolded, the participants alreadyexpect the outcome which is consistent with belief in a just world, based on the experimental text. Theparticipants of good people group bias to fixate the good outcome and the participants of bad people groupbias to fixate the bad outcome. With the scenario is unfolding, participants again expect the outcome whichis consistent with belief in a just world and show the appropriate visual preferences, before the outcome isnot disambiguated.Experiment2also adopted visual world paradigm to investigate whether others’ outcome couldaffect people’s judgment to their moral character, thus to demonstrated the automatic activation of inversebelief in a just world. The results show that in the fully process of scenario unfolding, there is no significantdifference between good outcome group and bad outcome group in the visual preferences of good/bad moral character. The participants do not expect the moral character which is consistent with inverse beliefin a just world in real timeComprehensively discus the results of the two experiments, the author draw the followingconclusions:(1) In the process of scenario unfolding, Oriental belief in a just world is automatically activated.People will form the expectation which is consistent with belief in a just world. People expect good thingshappen to good people and bad things happen to bad people;(2) In the process of scenario unfolding, inverse belief in a just world did not get instantactivation. Others’ outcome do not affect people’s judgment to their moral character in real time.