BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD AND REDISTRIBUTIVE POLITICS*

BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD AND REDISTRIBUTIVE

POLITICS*

ROLAND BE ´ NABOU AND JEAN TIROLE

International surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in

different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to

which people are responsible for their own fate. At the same time, social ethnographies

and experiments by psychologists demonstrate individuals’ recurrent

struggle with cognitive dissonance as they seek to maintain, and pass on to their

children, a view of the world where effort ultimately pays off and everyone gets

their just desserts. This paper offers a model that helps explain i) why most people

feel such a need to believe in a “just world”; ii) why this need, and therefore the

prevalence of the belief, varies considerably across countries; iii) the implications

of this phenomenon for international differences in political ideology, levels of

redistribution, labor supply, aggregate income, and popular perceptions of the

poor. More generally, the paper develops a theory of collective beliefs and motivated

cognitions, including those concerning “money” (consumption) and happiness,

as well as religion.

“Individuals have a need to believe that they live in a world where people

generally get what they deserve.” The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental

Delusion [Lerner 1982].

INTRODUCTION

International surveys reveal striking differences between the

views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth

and poverty, the extent to which individuals are responsible for

their own fate, and the long-run rewards to personal effort. American

“exceptionalism,” as manifested by the widely held belief in

the American Dream, is but the most striking example of this

phenomenon. At the same time, ethnographic studies of the working

and middle classes reveal that people do not come to these

views as dispassionate statisticians. On the contrary, they con-

* We are grateful for helpful remarks and suggestions to Samuel Bowles,

Edward Glaeser, Robert Lane, and George Loewenstein, as well as to seminar and

conference participants at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Institute

for Advanced Study, the University of California-Berkeley, Universita` Bocconi,

Columbia University, the De´partement et Laboratoire D’Economie Applique

´e in Paris, the European University Institute, Georgetown University, Harvard

University, Johns Hopkins University, Mannheim University, the

University of Miami, New York University, Universita` di Pisa, Princeton University,

Stanford University, the Universite´ de Toulouse, and University College

London. Be´nabou gratefully acknowledges support from the John Simon Guggenheim

Memorial Foundation and the National Science Foundation (SES-0424015),

as well as the hospitality of the Institute for Advanced Study during the academic

year 2002–2003.

© 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology.

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2006

699

stantly struggle with the cognitive dissonance required to maintain

and pass on to their children the view that hard work and

good deeds will ultimately bring a better life, that crime does not

pay, etc., in spite of signals that life may not always be that fair.

Psychologists have similarly documented the fact that most individuals

feel a strong need to believe that they live in a world that

is just, in the sense that people generally get what they deserve,

and deserve what they get. When confronted with data that

conflicts with this view they try to ignore, reinterpret, distort, or

forget it—for instance, by finding imaginary merits to the recipients

of fortuitous rewards, or assigning blame to innocent

victims.

This paper proposes a theory of why people may feel such a

need to believe in a just world; of why this need, and therefore the

prevalence of the belief, may vary considerably across countries;

and of its implications for redistributive policies and the stigma

borne by the poor.

The basic model works as follows. Because of imperfect willpower,

people continually strive to motivate themselves (or their

children) toward effort, educational investment, perseverance in

the face of adversity and away from the slippery slope of idleness,

welfare dependency, drugs, etc. In such circumstances, maintaining

somewhat rosy beliefs about the fact that everyone will ultimately

get their “just desserts” can be very valuable. If enough

people thus end up with the view that economic success is highly

dependent on effort, they will represent a pivotal voting bloc, and

set a low tax rate. Conversely, when people anticipate little redistribution,

the value of a proper motivation is much higher than

with a generous safety net and high taxes. Everyone thus has

greater incentives to believe in self-sufficiency, and consequently

more voters end up with such a world-view. Due to these complementarities

between individuals’ ideological choices, there can be

two equilibria. A first, “American” equilibrium is characterized by

a high prevalence of just-world beliefs and a relatively laissezfaire

public policy. The other, “European” equilibrium is characterized

by more pessimism and a more extensive welfare state.

Agents are also less likely to blame poverty on a lack of effort or

willpower, but aggregate effort and income are lower than in the

first equilibrium.

More generally, this paper proposes a mechanism for the

emergence and persistence of collective beliefs and ideologies.

Three other main applications are thus developed. The first con-

700 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

cerns perceptions of the link between “money and happiness” and

the related dichotomy observed between consumerist and leisurist

societies. The second is the affective (anxiety-reducing)

dimension of just-world beliefs, which can play a similar role to

that of the functional, motivation-related one. The third is religion,

that is, beliefs about the likelihood of an afterlife and the

nature of its rewards and punishments.

I. SELF-RELIANCE AND REDISTRIBUTION

The extent of direct and indirect redistribution—through

taxes and transfers, social insurance, education finance, and labor

market regulation—differs remarkably across advanced democracies,

as epitomized by the contrast between the United

States and Europe. While there are potential explanations for

this puzzle that do not involve differences in beliefs about the

causes of wealth and poverty (e.g., Be´nabou [2000] and Alesina

and Glaeser [2004]), considerable evidence suggests that citizens’

views on the role of self-reliance versus societal factors do play a

major role.1

1. Importance of beliefs. Data from the World Values Survey

[Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote 2001; Keely 2002] show that

only 29 percent of Americans believe that the poor are trapped in

poverty and only 30 percent that luck, rather than effort or

education, determines income. The figures for Europeans are

nearly double: 60 percent and 54 percent, respectively. Similarly,

Americans are about twice as likely as Europeans to think that

the poor “are lazy or lack willpower” (60 percent versus 26 percent)

and that “in the long run, hard work usually brings a better

life” (59 percent versus 34–43 percent [Ladd and Bowman 1998]).

Large disparities in attitudes also exist within Europe, especially

between OECD and Eastern European countries [Suhrcke 2001].

1. Models stressing the role of beliefs about social mobility include

Hirschman and Rothschild [1973], Piketty [1995, 1998], Be´nabou and Ok [2001],

Rotemberg [2002], and Alesina and Angeletos [2005]. An alternative class of

theories emphasizes how welfare states and laissez-faire societies can arise as

multiple steady states from the joint dynamics of the wealth distribution and

redistributive policies [Be´nabou 2000, 2006; Saint-Paul 2001; Hassler et al.

[2003], Desdoigts and Moizeau 2005]. A third line of explanation points to differences

in political institutions such as a centralized versus a federal state, or in

more exogenous national factors, particularly ethnic heterogeneity; see Alesina,

Glaeser, and Sacerdote [2001] and Alesina and Glaeser [2004] for comprehensive

overviews.

BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD 701

Such massive differences cannot be ignored, especially since

there is a strong correlation between these beliefs and actual

levels of redistribution: see Figure I, reproduced from Alesina,

Glaeser, and Sacerdote [2001]. The standard interpretation is one

where popular beliefs determine policy outcomes, and indeed it is

the case that individual voters’ perceptions of the extent to which

people control their own fate are major determinants of their

...