Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239–243

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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Reports

Can happy mood reduce the just world bias? Affective influences on blaming
the victim
Liz Goldenberg ⁎, Joseph P. Forgas
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Do temporary moods influence people's tendency to blame victims for undeserved negative events? Based on
Received 22 December 2010 research on the just world effect and recent affect theories, this experiment predicted and found that positive
Revised 23 May 2011 mood decreased and negative mood increased people's motivation to blame innocent victims for their
Available online 23 July 2011
misadventures. Participants (N = 70) were induced into positive or negative mood by viewing films, and
subsequently read a newspaper article describing a random assault on either a fellow student (in-group
Keywords:
Social judgment
member) or a corporate employee (out-group member). Their reactions were assessed on three measures:
Mood attributions of responsibility, dissociation from the victim and character evaluations. Positive mood reduced
Attribution and negative mood increased the tendency to blame the victim, and in-group victims were blamed more than
Just world bias out-group victims. These results are discussed in terms of recent theories of affect and motivation, and their
implications for real-life social judgments are considered.
© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Is the world a just place? Although we all would prefer to think so,
our belief in a just and predictable world is often challenged by news
that innocent people may suffer terrible misfortunes. According to the
fascinating literature on the ‘just world’ effect, people often cope with
such threatening information by, paradoxically, blaming innocent
victims for their misadventures (Lerner & Simmons, 1966; Lerner,
1980). Although affect is likely to play an important role in motivated
cognition in general (Trope, Igou, & Burke, 2006) and the ‘just world’ bias
in particular (Lerner, Goldberg, & Tetlock, 1998; Thornton, 1984), there
has been no prior research on how pre-existing positive or negative
moods may influence the motivation to blame victims. This experiment
sought to demonstrate that positive mood may reduce, and negative
mood increase the tendency to blame victims for their misfortunes.
The just world effect
Although the term victim implies an innocent person suffering an
adverse outcome, the idea that misfortunes are causally linked to a
person's past transgressions has long been dominant in intuitive
reasoning and in religious and moral theorising. Lerner (1980)
proposed the first psychological explanation for the seemingly
irrational ‘blaming the victim’ effect, suggesting that humans possess
a basic need to believe that the world is a just place and people get the
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jp.forgas@unsw.edu.au (L. Goldenberg).
outcomes they deserve. Evidence that challenges the ‘just world’ view –
such as innocent persons being victimized – constitute a profound
psychological threat to this belief (Hafer, 2000). Motivated defensive
strategies, such as blaming the victim, may help to restore a sense of
justice and predictability to one's world view. By blaming a victim a
person can also bolster the cherished belief in individual mastery,
reassuring themselves that it is within their power to avoid similar
misfortunes by acting differently (Dalbert, 2001).
Several motivated justice-preservation strategies have been identi-
fied in the literature, such as attributing responsibility internally (to the
victim), dissociating from the victim, and forming negative character
evaluations (for a review, see Hafer & Begue, 2005). We shall look at all
three measures here, and for our purposes, the term ‘blame’ will be used
to refer to all three of these justice-preservation strategies.
Belief in a just world is also positively related to psychological
adjustment and the ability to cope with one's misfortunes (Dalbert, 1999,
2001, 2002). People often experience negative affect when events
challenge their belief in a just world (Lerner & Goldberg, 1999), and
blaming the victim is likely to be partly motivated by the need to alleviate
the aversive affective state produced by encounters with injustice
(Lerner & Goldberg, 1999; Thornton, 1984). It seems highly likely then
that pre-existing affective states may also influence just world
attributions, yet this effect has not been examined previously. Instead
of focusing on the affective consequences of exposure to such events, this
experiment will explore how antecedent positive and negative moods
may influence the tendency to blame victims for their misfortunes.
Thus, this study extends the recent literature on mood effects on
judgments to a new domain, just world attributions. For the purposes
of this research, we may define moods as “low-intensity, diffuse, and

0022-1031/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.07.007
240 L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239–243
relatively enduring affective states without a salient antecedent cause
and little cognitive content” (Forgas, 1992, p.230). We focus on moods
rather than emotions here, as mood states are more likely to be
subconscious, enduring and have more reliable and enduring
judgmental consequences (Forgas, 2002) than do context-specific
emotions (Forgas, 2006).
Past research on the blaming the victim effect also found that
defensive attributions are more likely when the victim is an in-group
member rather than an out-group member (Aguiar, Vala, Correia, &
Pereira, 2008; Correia, Vala, & Aguiar, 2007), as the misfortunes of in-
group victims present a greater threat to one's just world beliefs
(Correia & Vala, 2003). As the victim becomes more similar to the
observer, the threat to the belief in personal mastery and a just world
increases. In the present study victim group membership was also
manipulated by describing the victim as either an in-group member
(fellow student) or as an out-group member (corporate employee).
Extrapolating from previous findings, we expected that in-group
victims should be blamed more than strangers.
Mood effects on blaming the victim
Mood states have significant cognitive as well as motivational
consequences for social judgments and behaviors (Forgas, 2006).
Recent research shows that moods can influence the valence of the
information people rely on (congruence effects; Bower & Forgas,
2001; Forgas, 1995, 2002), how they process information (processing
effects; Bless & Fiedler, 2006), as well as influencing people's
motivational resources to cope with threatening information (mood
as a resource effects; Ragunathan & Trope, 2002). While most prior
studies focused on the cognitive consequences of moods (Forgas,
1998), motivational effects received far less attention. There is some
evidence that negative affect is one of the consequences of exposure
to information that challenges just world beliefs (Lerner et al., 1998;
Thornton, 1984). Blaming the victim may thus be partly motivated by
the need to alleviate an aversive affective state and restore justice
(Thornton, 1984). There is some evidence that mood states can
motivate quite elaborate ego-defensive strategies, such as self-
handicapping (Alter & Forgas, 2007). It is rather surprising then that
there has been no prior research investigating how antecedent mood
states may influence the blaming the victim effect.
There are three main theories that suggest that moods may exert
an important motivational as well as a cognitive influence on how just
world attributions are formed (Forgas, 2006). (1) Motivational
accounts such as the mood as resource theory suggest that positive
mood may function as a motivational resource enabling individuals to
deal with potentially threatening information (Raghunathan & Trope,
2002; Trope & Neter, 1994). This model is likely to apply to just world
judgments as positive mood may act as a resource and thus reduce the
need to engage in defensive blame strategies. Conversely, negative
mood may increase the motivation to rely on justice-preservation
strategies. Thus, as exposure to injustice produces negative affect,
positive mood should reduce, and negative mood should increase the
motivation for people to engage in victim blame, in an attempt to
alleviate aversive affect (Dalbert, 2001; Hafer, 2000).
Moods also have cognitive consequences, for example, by
influencing (2) information processing styles (Bless & Fiedler, 2006).
Happy persons tend to focus more on pre-existing, internal informa-
tion, processing assimilatively, while sad persons pay more attention
to new, outside information, processing accommodatively (Forgas,
2011; Forgas, Goldenberg, & Unkelbach, 2009; Tan & Forgas, 2010).
This theory also suggests that greater attention directed at external
aversive events in a negative mood may also increase the tendency to
engage in defensive attributions, while positive mood should reduce
this effect. Finally, (3) mood congruence occurs (Forgas, 2002, 2006)
when moods selectively prime mood-congruent information in
memory, and people recall and use more affectively congruent
information in their judgments (Bower, 1981; Forgas, 2002, 2006;
Forgas & Bower, 1987). Thus, as a result of mood congruence, positive
mood should reduce people's tendency to selectively encode and
remember the details of aversive events, decreasing the need to
engage in defensive attributions.
All three affect theories considered here lead to a convergent
prediction that positive affect should reduce, and negative affect should
increase people's tendency to engage in defensive justice-preservation
strategies by blaming the victim. However, as the blaming the victim
effect is largely a motivated bias intended to reduce discomfort and
restore the belief in a just world, the motivated mood as resource theory
seems the most likely to apply here. In an attempt to obtain selective
evidence about these alternative theories, and clarify the mechanisms
responsible for the predicted effects, memory data (relevant to
evaluating the mood congruence account) and processing latency data
(relevant to evaluating the information processing account) will also be
collected here. Further, we also expected that in-group victims should
be blamed more than out-group victims.
Method
Overview, participants, and design
70 students (51 females and 19 males) participated in the
experiment for course credit. The session was introduced as comprising
two ‘unrelated’ studies, (a) a film evaluation study (in fact, the mood
induction) and (b) a study of social judgments (in fact, the just world
study). First, participants watched either the positive or negative mood
induction video. Next, they read a newspaper article describing a
physical attack on either a fellow university student (in-group
condition) or a corporate employee (out-group condition), and then
provided judgments on three measures: attribution of responsibility,
dissociation from the victim, and, character evaluations. Participants then
completed questionnaires designed to assess CUED recall and recogni-
tion memory for the content of the newspaper article. The procedure
concluded with a debriefing when the effectiveness of the mood
induction was also assessed. The study comprised a 2 (mood: positive or
negative) × 2 (group membership: in-group or out-group) between-
subjects design.
The mood induction
Participants watched 10-minute edited films ‘in order to select films
for a later study’. In the positive condition they saw segments from a
comedy (Fawlty Towers), and in the negative condition they saw
excerpts from a sad film (Angela's Ashes). In addition, the induced mood
state was further reinforced by playing mood-consistent background
music during the experiment (Eich & Macaulay, 2000). This was
explained to participants by the experimenter as she will be ‘listening to
music while completing other work’.
The social judgment task
Next, as part of the second, social judgments study participants
were asked to read a newspaper article on the computer screen
reporting a recent random physical attack in a deserted lane where
the victim was assaulted and severely injured by two strangers on his
way home one night. The article was accompanied by an emotionally
evocative picture of the bloodied victim in a hospital bed. The victim
was described either as a current student at the university (in-group
condition) or a corporate employee working in a bank (out-group
condition).
Immediately after reading the article participants answered a
series of eight questions presented in a random order on the computer
screen on a 1–8 scale. The questions measured three aspects of victim
blame: two questions assessed responsibility attribution (to what
 L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239–243
extent could the victim have prevented what happened, how
responsible was the victim for what happened). Two questions
assessed dissociation from the victim (would you behave the same way
in the same circumstances, how likely is IT that such events could
occur to a personal friend). The final four scales assessed impressions
of the victim on bipolar scales measuring competence, respectability,
likeability and self-confidence.
Memory tasks and processing latencies
Memory for the information presented in the newspaper article
was also assessed using a cued recall memory task, followed later by a
recognition task containing 8 original statements and 8 distracter
statements. The time taken to read the newspaper article and reaction
times for the 8 judgments concerning the victim were recorded by the
computer program used to administer the task.
Manipulation checks and debriefing
A careful debriefing concluded the procedure. Participants first
completed a ‘film evaluation questionnaire’ (in fact, the mood
validation) asking them how they felt immediately after watching the
films on four nine-point bipolar scales (happy-sad; calm-aroused; good-
bad; relaxed-tense). Participants were also asked to write down the
occupation of the victim to check the effectiveness of the in-group/out-
group manipulation. Great care was taken to remove any residual mood
effects.
Results
Validation of the manipulations
Three participants were excluded from the analysis as they indicated
suspicion about the manipulations, and three further participants were
excluded as their English competence was inadequate, leaving 64
participants in the analysis. The four mood self-rating scales were
subjected to a principal components analysis, resulting in two
components: mood valence (happy-sad; good-bad; relaxed-tense,
VAF = 67.1%), and arousal (calm-aroused, VAF = 22.9%). Ratings on the
three valence scales were combined into a single affective valence
measure (Cronbach's α = .92). A t-test on the valence measure
confirmed that participants in the positive mood condition rated
themselves as significantly happier (M = 1.81, SD= 1.43) than did
those in the negative mood condition (M = −2.63, SD= 1.1; t(62) =
13.89, p b .001), confirming that the mood induction was highly
effective. The mood induction did not influence self-reported arousal
levels (M = 0.16, SD= 2.44 vs. M = −0.75, SD= 2.02; t(62) = 1.62,
p N .05). The group membership manipulation was also successful, as all
participants correctly identified the victim's occupation.
Blaming the victim
The eight scales measuring blame for the victim were subjected to
a principal components analysis (Furnham, 2003; Maes, 1998), and
three components were identified. The first component was labelled
general evaluation, marked by four scales (respectability; compe-
tence; likeability; and confidence; VAF = 34.22%) that were combined
into a single measure (Cronbach's α = .79). This component captures a
key theoretical construct identified in the literature on blaming the
victim (Gruman & Sloan, 1983; Murray & Stahly, 1987). The second
component labelled responsibility attribution consisted of two items
(responsibility; capacity to prevent incident, VAF = 23.31%; Cronba-
ch's α = .68). Finally, the third component, dissociation from the victim,
consisted of two items (would behave differently; wouldn't happen to
a friend; VAF = 11.87%; Cronbach's α = .62).
241
Attribution of responsibility
The effects of mood and victim group membership on attributions
were examined in a 2 (mood: positive, negative)× 2 (victim group
membership: in-group, out-group) ANOVA. Group membership had a
significant main effect: the victim was judged as more responsible for
the incident when described as a fellow student rather than a corporate
employee (M = 5.31, SD= 1.67 vs. M = 4.2, SD= 1.74; F(1,62) = 7.17,
p b .01). This result confirms that an attack on an in-group victim was
more threatening and more likely to result in victim blame compared to
an out-group victim, consistent with a stronger just world effect. We
also found a significant mood main effect in the predicted direction
(Fig. 1). Participants in the positive mood condition blamed the victim
significantly less (M = 4.28, SD= 1.71) than did those in the negative
mood condition (M = 5.23, SD= 1.74), F(1,62) = 5.29, p b .025.
Dissociation from the victim measure
The 2 × 2 ANOVA of the dissociation measure also revealed a
significant main effect due to in-group vs. out-group status.
Participants dissociated themselves more from the in-group victim
(M = 5.09, SD = 2.03) than the out-group victim (M = 4.03,
SD = 1.48), F(1,62) = 6.11, p b .016. Mood also had a main effect on
the dissociation measure. Participants in the positive mood condition
dissociated themselves less from the victim (M = 4.13, SD = 1.69)
than did those in the negative mood condition (M = 5.0, SD = 1.9),
F(1,62) = 4.14, p b .05, once again confirming that positive mood
reduced, and negative mood increased the tendency to display the
‘just world’ bias by blaming the victim.
Evaluation of the victim
We found no main effects due to group membership, F(1,62) =
1.33, p N .05, or due to mood, F(1,62) = 2.9, p N .05, on the overall
evaluation of the victim. This result indicates the absence of a basic
mood-congruent effect on these judgments, suggesting that mood
effects on attributions and dissociation were more likely to be due to
motivational effects rather than a simple mood-congruent bias, an
issue that was explored further in additional analyses.
Additional analyses and alternative explanations
Further analyses were conducted to clarify the mechanisms
responsible for these effects and to eliminate alternative explanations.
Although the mood-as-a-resource model provides the most concep-
tually plausible account, it is possible that people in a positive mood
blamed the victim less because either they (a) processed external
Fig. 1. Mood effects on blaming the victim: positive mood decreased, and negative
mood increased the tendency to attribute responsibility to the victim as well as
dissociate from the victim (average judgment for in-group and out-group targets).
242 L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239–243
information about the incident less carefully (the information-
processing explanation), or (b) their positive mood selectively primed
a more optimistic, benign interpretation of the event (the mood-
congruence explanation). These possibilities were explored by
analysing mood effects on the processing latency and memory data.
Processing latencies
An ANOVA found no significant differences in time taken to read
the story in the positive (M = 47.91 s, SD = 13.97 s) and negative
(M = 48.28 s, SD = 14.53 s) mood conditions, F(1,62) = 0.01, p N .05.
Similarly, no significant differences were found between the positive
(M = 68.91 s, SD = 27.19) and negative (M = 59.72, SD = 15.87) mood
conditions in the time taken to complete the judgments, F(1,62) =
2.73, p N .05. Thus, neither the reading latency nor the judgmental
latency data support the hypothesis that mood-induced differences in
processing style could have been responsible for the observed effects.
Memory measures
An ANOVA investigated mood congruent effects on memory by
analysing differences in the number of details recalled by happy and
sad participants, as coded by two raters (Cronbach's α = .89). Only
negative details were analysed as the target story contained no
positive information. Results showed no significant mood congruence
in memory between the positive (M = 14.7, SD= 3.83) and the negative
(M = 15.8, SD= 4.84) mood conditions, F(1,62) = 1.01, p N .05. A signal
detection analysis of recognition data using a recognition test
comprising 16 statements (8 original and 8 distracter items) revealed
no difference in recognition between the positive (d′ M = 4.84,
SD= 1.82) and negative (d′ M = 5.19, SD= 2.04) mood conditions, F
(1,62) = 0.51, p N .05. In addition, an analysis of recognition bias also
failed to show any differences between the positive (β M = 7.47,
SD= 2.21) and negative (β M = 7, SD= 1.95) mood conditions, F
(1,62) = 0.81, p N .05. Thus, neither recall nor recognition memory
results show any mood-congruent effect, suggesting that selective
attention to, and memory for mood congruent information was not a
source of the blaming the victim effect observed.
When considered jointly, these results confirm that neither mood
effects on processing style, nor mood-congruent effects on the
information remembered can explain the results, leaving the
motivational account as the most likely explanation of the results
obtained.
Discussion
Receiving information about the misfortunes of innocent people
challenges our cherished belief in a just and predictable world. By
assigning some blame to the victim it is possible to alleviate such
distress and to maintain belief in predictability and personal control
(Lerner, 1980). Overall, our results show that positive mood reduced,
whereas negative mood increased people's tendency to blame the
victim. We also found that, paradoxically, in-group victims were
judged as more responsible for negative outcomes compared to out-
group victims. These findings have several interesting theoretical and
practical implications.
Theoretical implications
How well can the three theories we considered in the introduction
explain our findings? Previous research has shown that temporary
mood states can have a profound influence on cognitive and
motivational processes in social judgments (Forgas, 2002, 2006),
influencing both the content and process of cognition, as well as affecting
people's motivational resources to cope with adverse information
(Forgas, 2002, 2006; Trope et al., 2006). Overall, the present results
are most consistent with a motivational explanation, as we found no
evidence either for mood effects on processing strategies, nor for mood-
congruent effects. As the processing latency data indicated no difference
across the mood conditions, increased blaming the victim in negative
mood and decreased blaming in positive mood was not due to the
differential processing of the target information. Further, mood-
congruence also cannot explain our findings, given the absence of any
mood-congruent effects on memory and evaluative judgments.
Therefore, the motivational account suggesting that positive mood
may act as a motivational resource when dealing with threatening
information remains the most plausible explanation for our findings
(Trope & Neter, 1994). Reduced blaming the victim in a happy
compared to a sad mood is consistent with the idea that positive mood
can function as a resource, allowing happy people to more effectively
cope with adverse and threatening information (Raghunathan &
Trope, 2002; Trope, Ferguson, & Raghunathan, 2000). Prior work on
the just world effect also favors a motivational rather than a cognitive
explanation. Several studies found that bolstering a person's motiva-
tional resources, such as offering social support, and increasing self
worth allows individuals to better deal with threatening information
without resorting to victim blaming (Furnham, 2003). This experi-
ment confirms that positive mood may function in a similar way, as a
resource that can reduce the motivation to blame the victim as a
justice-preservation strategy. The evidence we presented for such an
explanation here is somewhat indirect, and we recognize that
alternative theoretical explanations may well be possible. Following
the demonstration of mood effects on the just world bias here, the
more detailed analysis of the precise strategies responsible for this
effect will be the task of further research.
Group membership also influenced the attribution of responsibility
and dissociation from the victim, but not the overall evaluation of the
victim. To the extent that the misfortunes of an in-group victim present a
greater threat to the belief that one lives in a just predictable world, it
makes sense that participants felt a stronger need to blame, and
dissociate themselves from an in-group victim. However, the absence of
an interaction between mood effects and group membership suggests
that the motivational benefits of positive mood in reducing the ‘blaming
the victim’ effect were sufficiently powerful to apply equally to in-group
and out-group victims. Our results also suggest that responsibility
attribution and dissociation were more effective techniques for
restoring just world beliefs than simply devaluing the victim as a person
(Correia, Vala, & Aguiar, 2001; Karuza & Carey, 1984). The absence of
mood effects on the evaluation measure is also consistent with this idea.
Practical implications
Exposure to information about adversity befalling innocent others
is a daily experience that challenges our beliefs in a predictable and
fair world. This study was successful in showing that transient moods
can play an important role in determining how people react to such
information. The common propensity to engage in victim blame
seems highly dependent on one's mood: happy persons are less likely
to engage in such strategies than are people in a negative mood, a
finding with some interesting practical implications.
For example, in legal and forensic settings exposure to graphic and
threatening evidence may influence a juror's ability to remain
objective (Bright & Goodman-Delahunty, 2004; Diamond, 2006).
The present study suggests that mood may exert an additional
influence on how such information is perceived and attributed. The
common assumption by legal professionals that jurors make decisions
based on rational processes is increasingly open to questioning
(Forgas, 2010). The finding that happy people are less inclined to
blame a victim may have important implications for the way news
stories and political messages are interpreted in the electronic and
print media. Affective influences on blaming the victim may also be
important in organisational, clinical and educational settings where
the combination of mood and in-group vs. out-group victim status
may influence responsibility attributions.
 L. Goldenberg, J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 239–243
Limitations and future prospects
The kind of mood effects on defensive attributions such as the just
world bias demonstrated here can be highly sensitive to contextual and
situational variables. There is scope in future studies to explore how
situational factors such as the type of victim, the nature of the crime, the
personal relevance of the incident and personality variables may interact
and moderate mood effects on blaming the victim (Hafer & Bègue,
2005). As our study found that mood significantly influenced blaming
the victim strategies (attributing responsibility and dissociation), but
not the evaluation of the victim, it would also be useful in future work to
explore the specific mechanisms responsible for these effects.
Further, it would also be useful to explore the generalizability of
our results to various real-life situations. Future studies may also
incorporate an intermediate, baseline neutral mood condition in order
to explore the relative contribution of positive and negative moods to
defensive attributions. In addition, future work might also look at the
consequences of specific emotions, such as anger, disgust, and fear on
blaming the victim (Lerner & Keltner, 2000).
Notwithstanding these limitations, the present results offer clear
support for the proposition that unrelated prior mood states have a
significant influence on people's need to defend their belief in a just
world. It seems that a happy mood acts as a prophylactic against
threatening information about the unpredictability of negative events.
Although more work is needed before we can be confident about the
specific mechanisms responsible for these effects, motivational
processes are likely to play an important role (Lerner, 1980).
In conclusion, the need to explain why undeserved misfortunes
occur has been a major puzzle for moral philosophers and writers
since time immemorial. Since Lerner and Simmons (1966) pioneering
work, we know the need to maintain an illusion of mastery and
predictability plays an important role in such judgments. This
experiment extends recent research on affect and motivated
cognition (Alter & Forgas, 2007; Bower, 1981; Forgas, 1995, 2002)
to the new domain of just world attributions, and shows that positive
mood reduces, and negative mood increases the need to blame
victims for their misfortunes. Our results are broadly consistent with
recent affect motivation theorising (Raghunathan & Trope, 2002;
Trope & Neter, 1994), and suggest that further research on affective
influences on just world attributions is likely to be of considerable
theoretical as well as applied interest.
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