Just world

We feel safer when we can somehow blame the victim of misfortune. Fatalism is a form of self-defense that helps us maintain our belief that life is safe, orderly and predictable. But the “just world” hypothesis is a danger to workplace safety for a variety of reasons:

* It leads to more risk-taking because we don’t believe we deserve to get hurt.
* It stifles incident analysis because we blame the victim and leave it at that.
* It prevents us from getting involved in safety efforts because everything happens for a reason and people get what they deserve.
* It reduces public funding for government agencies that target occupational safety.

More lives of American workers are lost in occupational mishaps and vehicle crashes than to cancer and heart attacks combined. Yet government support for cancer and cardiovascular disease research far outweighs the amount allocated for research and interventions to prevent injuries and fatalities in the workplace. I believe the just-world hypothesis is partly responsible for this unjust situation.