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- NEW YORK - A survey
of college students finds that many subscribe to the unscientific notion
that serious and fatal illness is sometimes a payback for bad behavior.
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- The findings were presented Saturday at the 107th annual
convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston, Mass.
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- "Even adults abandon scientific reasoning under
certain circumstances," said researcher Lakshmi Raman in a statement.
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- In the study, Raman and fellow Ohio State University
researcher Gerald Winer randomly assigned 239 college students to view
one of five vignettes about a character who had contracted a serious illness.
The person was described as having behaved badly in various ways.
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- After the participants viewed the vignettes, the researchers
asked them if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, "I believe
that serious illnesses happen at least slightly more often to people who
deserve them," as expressed by the presenter in the scenarios.
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- Between 19% and 44% of the college students agreed with
this concept of so-called "immanent justice."
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- The greatest number of participants (44%) agreed with
the concept when a character in the vignette made the statement, "what
goes around comes around." This indicates that, "language has
a powerful role in our cognitive processes," Raman said in a press
release.
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- Raman and Winer believe that even though adults have
an understanding of the biological causes of illness, they may use immanent
justice reasoning to explain circumstances when no rational explanation
is available.
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- "We found adults are often a lot less sophisticated
in their reasoning than we would imagine," said Winer.
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