Do innocent victims threaten the belief in a just world? Evidence from a modified stroop task

Two experiments tested whether innocent victims threaten observers' belief in a just world. In both experiments, participants viewed an innocent victi m then performed a modified Stroop task in which they identified the color of several words presented for brief exposures (followed by a mask) on a co mputer screen. When the threat to justice beliefs was presumably highest, c olor-identification latencies were greater for justice-related words than f or neutral words. In Experiment 2, under conditions of high threat, justice -related interference predicted participants' tendency to disassociate them selves from and derogate the victim. These findings suggest that innocent v ictims do threaten justice beliefs and responses to these victims may, at t imes, be attempts to reduce this threat. The methodology presented here may be applied to future investigations of defensive, counternormative process es reflecting people's concern with justice.