The DOI matches its Crossref record; 40 of the 40 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Who Believes in a Just World?
Abstract
Research with the Just World Scale has indicated that many people believe that the world is a place where good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. Believers in a just world have been found to be more likely than nonbelievers to admire fortunate people and to derogate victims, thus permitting the believers to maintain the perception that people in fact get what they deserve. Other studies have shed light on the antecedents, correlates, and social consequences of the belief in a just world. Everyone may have a version of the just world belief in early childhood (Piaget's “immanent justice”), but some people outgrow the belief quickly and some apparently never do. Believers in a just world have been found to be more religious, more authoritarian, and more oriented toward the internal control of reinforcements than nonbelievers. They are also more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. Suggestions for modifying the belief in a just world are offered, focusing on the socialization techniques employed by parents, teachers, religious institutions, and the mass media.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Hardin, G. (1968) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243 · Cited by 25,167
The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement
Gouldner, A. W. (1960) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2092623 · Cited by 12,001
Adams, J. S. (1965) · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60108-2 · Cited by 10,818
A Theory of Co-operation and Competition
Deutsch, M. (1949) · Human Relations · doi:10.1177/001872674900200204 · Cited by 2,202
"From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding
Geertz, C. (1974) · Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences · doi:10.2307/3822971 · Cited by 2,185
Gergen, K. J. (1973) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0034436 · Cited by 1,845
New directions in equity research.
Walster, E., Berscheid, E., & Walster, G. W. (1973) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0033967 · Cited by 1,649
Rapoport, A., & Chammah, A. (1965) · University of Michigan Press eBooks · doi:10.3998/mpub.20269 · Cited by 1,294
Some Principles of Stratification
Davis, K., & Moore, W. E. (1945) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2085643 · Cited by 995
Social interaction basis of cooperators' and competitors' beliefs about others.
Kelley, H. H., & Stahelski, A. J. (1970) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0029849 · Cited by 904
Cited by
Meaning in the context of stress and coping
Park, C. L., & Folkman, S. (1997) · Review of General Psychology · doi:10.1037/1089-2680.1.2.115 · Cited by 1,821
Experimental Research on Just-World Theory: Problems, Developments, and Future Challenges.
Hafer, C. L., & Bègue, L. (2005) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.1.128 · Cited by 808
The biopsychosocial model of arousal regulation
Blascovich, J., & Tomaka, J. (1996) · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60235-x · Cited by 721
Dalbert, C. (1999) · Social Justice Research · doi:10.1023/a:1022091609047 · Cited by 677
Watts, R. J., Williams, N. C., & Jagers, R. J. (2003) · American Journal of Community Psychology · doi:10.1023/a:1023091024140 · Cited by 508
Metadata
- Authors
- Rubin, Z., & Peplau, L. A.
- Venue
- Journal of Social Issues
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1975-07
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 65-89
- ISSN
- 0022-4537 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-4560
- OpenAlex
- W2140859302
- Cited by
- 817
- References
- 40
- FWCI
- 18.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Who Believes in a Just World? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1975.tb00997.x
- The paper
- Rubin, Z., & Peplau, L. A. (1975). Who Believes in a Just World? Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1975.tb00997.x
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.