Altruistic behavior and the bidimensional just world belief

LAURENT BÈGUE, MARIE CHARMOILLAUX, JULIEN COCHET, CAROLINE CURY, and FLORENCE DE SUREMAIN
University of Grenoble

Thirty participants were sampled after donating charity to a street beggar and were compared by means of 2 short scales of belief in a just world for self (BJWS) and belief in a just world for others (BJWO) with 30 randomly selected people who passed the beggar by without donating charity. We assumed that BJWO would be negatively related to altruistic behavior, whereas BJWS would be positively linked with it. A logistic regression analysis introducing BJWS, BJWO, and participants' age and gender as predictors showed that BJWO was negatively related to altruistic behavior, whereas the BJWS tended to be positively associated to it. No effects were observed for age or gender.