engleski

Belief in a just world, life satisfaction and depression in adults

Belief in a just world (BJW) reflects a schema of an ordered and meaningful world, which should contribute to the individual’ s sense of security, control, and invulnerability and, thus, allow effective daily functioning. This basic assumption is supported by several sets of empirical findings, including positive relationships between belief in the justness of the world and various dimensions of well-being and adjustment, such as optimism, trust in people, and sense of coherence. This study aimed at providing further empirical evidence of the adaptive functioning of this belief by exploring its relationship with life satisfaction and depression. The study was conducted in an age heterogeneous group of Croatian adults who completed measures of the beliefs in a personal and general just world as well as of the life satisfaction and depression. As predicted, both just-world beliefs were found to correlate positively with the life satisfaction and negatively with depression. However, the relationships were more pronounced for the personal than the general BJW. Moreover, the personal BJW was found to explain the general BJW’ s relationships with life satisfaction and depression. The overall pattern provides further support for the notion that the belief in a personal just world is particularly important for subjective well-being and mental health.

belief in a just world; life satisfaction; depression; adults

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