# 47. Manipulation of Morality ## 47.5 Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 47.5.3. The Just-World Fallacy This is the tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that therefore people "get what they deserve." Here the manipulator assures the victim that the world is somehow a "just place" - that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". This means that people who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it and that bad people ultimately get what's coming to them. The fallacy concludes that human actions eventually yield morally fair and fitting consequences, so that, ultimately, noble actions are duly rewarded and evil actions are duly punished. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to, or expect consequences as the result of an unspecified power that restores moral balance. The fallacy is that this implies (often unintentionally) the existence of such a power in terms of some cosmic force of justice, just deserts, stability, or order in the universe. The reality, of course, is quite different where we see the beneficiaries of good fortune often doing nothing to earn it, and bad people often getting away with their actions without consequences whilst hard-working, generous, moral people suffer abjectly.