Edited by Jasmine Ryu Won Kang
The Just-World Hypothesis
The just-world hypothesis is the human inclination to attribute an individual’s circumstances to their personal actions and morality. It represents a form of cognitive bias committed to the assumption of a universal force – religious or secular – that tends to maintain moral balance by ensuring each individual gets what they deserve. Quite ironically, though perhaps unsurprisingly, this defensive view often gives rise to an unjust assignment of blame (as in “victim-blaming”) as a way to rationalize others’ struggles and to reconcile misfortune with one’s own beliefs about the inherent justness of the world. The theory also underlies what Rüsch et al. call “meritocratic worldviews”; these ethical ideologies, akin to the just-world hypothesis, emphasize the causal role of personal choice in effecting circumstance and experience.
In their study titled Do people with mental illness deserve what they get?, Rüsch et al. examine the relationship between “meritocratic worldviews” and mental health stigmatization. The researchers identify a consistent correlation between ethical perspectives rooted in notions of meritocracy and subscription to “guilt-related stereotypes” about mental illnesses: that one is personally, morally responsible for (and “deserves”) the condition with which they are living.
To depart from the study for a moment: what do we really mean when we conventionally speak about deserving? It appears that the word’s usage and meaning are distinctly two-fold. On one hand, deserve appeals to negative consequences inflicted upon an individual as a result of some harm or atrocity for which they are responsible: the killer deserves their prison sentence. This sense of the word evokes the retaliative aspects of the “just-world”, and it is this understanding of deservedness that has for a long time informed the malignant misconceptions about mental health. As such, much of the effort to de-stigmatize mental and mood disorders has aimed to shift the collective mindset away from the view that mental illnesses are derived from (or reflective of) personal attributes, and to resist the harmful and unjustified assignment of culpability.
What is less commonly examined within the context of mental health, however, are the other side of the just-world coin and alternative definition of deservedness that conveys reward instead of repercussion: the student deserves the good grade they have worked hard for. Here, deservedness no longer stems from accountability, but takes on the ideas of justified merits and qualifications one can “earn”; these notions of earning inform a separate class of pervasive, erroneous attitudes towards mental health.
Meriting Mental Health Struggles
Research studies and personal anecdotes have revealed a ubiquitous (albeit often unconscious) belief that mental health struggles should be justified by external factors, and that their legitimacy is contingent on the degree to which they are objectively, empirically grounded. In one of her videos, YouTuber Anna Akana speaks about her sister’s death by suicide and how the grave – but incontrovertible – tragedy at least supplied substantive basis for her depression. As circumstances changed and states of affair “improved”, however, the elimination of some readily perceptible matter to be depressed about gave rise to new conflicted qualms about the validity of her condition.
Socially inculcated and commonly internalized, this ill-defined and arbitrary pressure to “earn” mental health struggles minimizes lived challenges and exacerbates the barriers to seeking and receiving help. It can also imply, as it frequently does, that recognizing and being grateful for one’s privilege somehow precludes the simultaneous validation of their mental health struggles. This perception of incompatibility particularly affects marginalized (such as BIPOC and LGBTQ+) communities and those who have defied systemic odds to attain “objective” circumstantial success, including children of immigrants, first-generation college students, non-males in higher learning institutions or leadership positions, etc. These populations are more prevalently conditioned to believe that their “not having it as bad” as others facing similar alienation diminishes their entitlement to mental health diagnoses. There is also a heightened wariness that naming their struggles and attempting to reach out would be construed as attention-seeking.
These fallacious suppositions augment the stigma and silence around mental health hardships in a detrimental, self-perpetuating cycle. A narrative emphasizing deservedness also depicts mental wellbeing as entirely external and thus remediable by meeting specific qualifications on a specific checklist; the failure to feel a certain way, then, becomes due completely to the failure to do something. This discounts the fundamental complexity of mental disorders and reinforces the dangerous assignment of personal accountability to phenomena that are simply unattributable to individual choice or character.
None of this is to deny that the collective awareness surrounding mental health has been making important and heartening progress. Nevertheless, we are still far from fully reconciling our understanding of mental illnesses with that of their (entirely) physical counterparts, and from affording the two comparable levels of empathy. It seems intuitive and indisputable that just because I have not been laying in the Toronto snow without a coat – or otherwise able to pinpoint the circumstances that have contributed to my cold – does not make my health condition any less impactful or valid. How, then, could we rightfully demand this absurd justification for mental disorders (and even undiagnosed struggles), simply because they are less tangible and readily quantifiable?
As a final note, I would like to highlight that the “external justification” I have been discussing refers to the perceived necessity of circumstantial validation, and not to clinical diagnostic criteria. Stringency for the latter exists for clear and crucial reasons, and this is particularly so when we observe the unfortunate romanticization and co-option of mental illnesses by mainstream media, business corporations, and everyday rhetoric. This topic deserves (excuse me) its own important and lengthy discussion which must be reserved for another occasion. Also, phrases like “struggles” and “diagnoses/ disorders” were both used in order to cater to a general audience at varying stages in their mental health journeys. The demarcation in terminology may not always have been precise and explicit, but the ideas and implications they entail are NOT in reality interchangeable, and I would not like to suggest otherwise.
References
Peterson, C. (2019, July 24). You don’t have to earn your mental health struggles. Retrieved March 10, 2021, from https://theweek.com/articles/853321/dont-have-earn-mental-health-struggles
Rüsch, N., Todd, A. R., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Corrigan, P. W. (2010). Do people with mental illness deserve what they get? Links between meritocratic worldviews and implicit versus explicit stigma. European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, 260(8), 617–625. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-010-0111-4