Bartholomaeus Jonathan, Burns Nicholas, Strelan Peter
School of Psychology, The University of Adelaide, SA, Australia.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2023 Apr;49(4):510-526. doi: 10.1177/01461672211072823. Epub 2022 Jan 29.
Belief in a just world for the self (BJW-self) is a resource that promotes adaptive functioning. We theorize that BJW-self has such an effect because it is empowering. This article reports on four studies ( = 967) testing whether BJW-self encourages more positive and less negative affect indirectly through empowerment. There was support for this hypothesis at a trait level across all studies, and specifically in Study 1. Experimental evidence, however, was more complex. Study 2 demonstrated the causal effect of the mediator, empowerment, on affect. Study 3 demonstrated that affirming BJW-self enhanced empowerment with an associated increase in positive affect and reduced negative affect. Study 4 showed that enhancing empowerment did not significantly influence the effect of affirmed BJW-self on affect, but blocking empowerment did, although this finding is qualified by no significant effect on empowerment. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings, and the challenges of experimentally manipulating BJW-self.
对自我公正世界的信念（BJW-自我）是一种促进适应性功能的资源。我们的理论是，BJW-自我有这样的效果是因为它赋予人力量。本文报告了四项研究（N = 967），测试BJW-自我是否通过赋予力量间接鼓励更多积极情绪和更少消极情绪。在所有研究中，在特质水平上都支持这一假设，特别是在研究1中。然而，实验证据更为复杂。研究2证明了中介变量“赋予力量”对情绪的因果效应。研究3表明，肯定BJW-自我会增强赋予力量的感觉，同时伴随着积极情绪的增加和消极情绪的减少。研究4表明，增强赋予力量感并没有显著影响被肯定的BJW-自我对情绪的作用，但阻碍赋予力量感则有影响，尽管这一发现因对赋予力量感没有显著影响而受到限制。我们讨论了这些发现的理论意义，以及实验操纵BJW-自我的挑战。
