The Relationship Between Belief in a Just World and Antisocial Behavior Through Anticipated Guilt, Victim Deservedness, and Punishment Frame

According to the just world hypothesis, people need to believe that they deserve what they get and get what they deserve. This belief in a just world (BJW) seems to be related to antisocial behavior. However, the mechanisms that underlie this relationship have not been fully explored. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between BJW for others (BJW-Other; the belief that people, other than themselves, get what they deserve) and BJW for the self (BJW-Self; the belief that people feel they get what they deserve) with intentions to commit everyday crimes, victim deservedness, and anticipated guilt. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 364 undergraduate students (79.1% female, 18.7% male, 2.2% diverse) aged between 19 and 54 (<i>M</i> = 19.87; <i>SD</i> = 3.02) (Study 1). It was replicated in a further study that also measured perceptions of everyday crime as just punishment of its victims (e.g., for their privilege or complacency) in a sample of 302 (57.6% female, 41.4% male, and 1% diverse) non-university students aged between 20 and 99 (<i>M</i> = 41.76; <i>SD</i> = 13.12) (Study 2). In both studies, results indicated that the negative relationship between BJW-Self and intentions to commit everyday crimes was mediated by increased anticipated guilt. The more the participants in both samples endorsed BJW-Self the more they felt anticipated guilt, and in turn, the less they intended to offend. The results suggest that BJW-Self may play a role in fostering anticipated guilt and in turn deterring them from committing everyday crimes.