Belief in just deserts regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 in Japan and its associations with demographic factors and infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics: a cross-sectional study

Introduction

Following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, discrimination related to COVID-19 infection has become a social issue worldwide (Devakumar et al., 2020; He et al., 2020). In addition to discrimination against infected individuals, stigma and prejudice related to race and occupation have also arisen (Bhanot et al., 2021; Lu et al., 2021). High depressive, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms have been observed among individuals affected by discrimination (González-Sanguino et al., 2020).

One of the possible psychological factors that promote discrimination, stigma, and prejudice is the belief in just deserts (BJD) regarding individuals infected with COVID-19. The BJD is the belief that the infected person deserves to be infected. It is based on the belief in immanent justice (BIJ), which is one of the subscales of the belief in a just world (BJW) (Maes, 1998). The BJW is the belief that individuals live in a just world where they get what they deserve and deserve what they get (Lerner, 1980). Maes (1998) proposed and scaled the BIJ and the belief in ultimate justice (BUJ) as important sub-dimensions of the BJW. The BIJ represents “the tendency to perceive or see justice in the events that have occurred,” whereas the BUJ represents “the tendency to believe that forthcoming events will settle any injustice that occurs” (Maes, 1998). While the belief is not necessarily bad, the BIJ tends to attribute the cause of harm to the victim (Maes, 1998) and inflicts severe punishment on the perpetrator (Murayama & Miura, 2015). Significantly, since COVID-19 is an infectious disease, infected individuals are liable to infect other individuals. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of BJD regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 is important to address the issues of discrimination, stigma, and prejudice related to COVID-19. The BJD regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 has been included as a relevant item in a series of surveys on exclusionary attitudes toward out-group members and thoughts on following national policies in various countries after the pandemic (OSF Registries, 2020). This item was included because discrimination against individuals infected with COVID-19 has been a big social issue since just after the pandemic (The Japan Times, 2020), and the belief that “the individuals infected with COVID-19 get what they deserve” in Japan is considered to promote excessive self-responsibility and discrimination (Yoshioka & Maeda, 2020). The Japanese government has developed a public relations campaign to eliminate the preconception that the infection is the fault of the infected individuals, with a view toward reduction of discrimination against COVID-19 (Ministry of Justice, 2022). Indeed, a survey conducted in March–April 2020, which included individuals from Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and China, reported a higher BJD score among Japanese individuals compared to individuals from other countries (Miura, Hiraishi & Nakanishi, 2020). This is consistent with another finding that the Japanese are more likely to engage in immanent justice reasoning than Americans (Murayama, Miura & Furutani, 2021). However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated how demographic factors or infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics are associated with the BJD. The investigations of the BJD regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 are expected to provide us with perspectives on discrimination in Japan and insights into individual perceptions of justice related to COVID-19.

Therefore, in this study, we investigated the BJD regarding Japanese individuals infected with COVID-19. As the first article to investigate the BJD with regard to individuals with COVID-19 in detail, we examined the relevant variables in an exploratory manner. In particular, we explored the BJD’s associations with demographic factors or infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics.

Given the relationship between the BJW and demographic factors (Furnham, 2003), we included demographic factors as the relevant variables. As basic information from respondents, we surveyed gender, age, region of residence, the population density of residence, educational background, occupation, marital status, and presence or absence of children. These factors are known to be associated with psychological attitudes toward COVID-19 (e.g., willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccine, risk perception of COVID-19 infection, etc.) (Nomura et al., 2021; Yamagata, Teraguchi & Miura, 2021; Adachi et al., 2022).

In the context of the COVID-19 outbreak and behavioral regulation, we included infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics; specifically, the history of COVID-19 infection, infection rate, risk perception (i.e., perceived prediction of probability that the average Japanese individual will be infected with COVID-19 within the next nine months), and human rights restrictions (i.e., agreeing with the government-imposed restriction on individuals’ behavior during emergencies). We included items about the history of infection, infection rate, and risk perception in the survey, as we assumed that if respondents perceived infection as a common event, it would influence their belief that infected individuals deserve to be infected. As discussed, the BIJ is the tendency to believe that certain events (particularly negative outcomes) are the result of past behavior (negative inputs) (Maes, 1998). At the time of the survey (August 7, 2020), the number of infections in Japan was low and the infections were rare events (see ‘COVID-19 status in Japan up until the time of the survey’ for details). We assumed a negative relationship between the BJD and infection-related items, because infection would be a criterion for how “unjust” a world would be. Furthermore, risk perception of COVID-19 is associated with infection prevention behavior (Dryhurst et al., 2020). It is possible that those who have higher demands for infection prevention behaviors toward others believe that individuals infected with COVID-19 get what they deserve.

We included human rights restrictions in our study because extremely strict social norms (or a low level of tolerance) (Gelfand et al., 2011) are likely to be associated with the BJD. The BIJ is formed and reinforced by punishment experiences (Bennett, 2008), and it tends to take the form of punishment on the perpetrator (Murayama & Miura, 2015). A strong regulatory or punitive orientation toward others is often observed during the COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting behavioral restrictions. This punitive orientation is assumed to be positively associated with the BJD. Indeed, in countries such as Japan and the United States, networks of citizens called “self-restraint police” or “groups of local vigilantes” have sought or enforced strict restrictions on other citizens’ behavior such as to the opening of restaurants and entertainment establishments and long-distance travel (Denyer & Kashiwagi, 2020; Ortiz, 2020; Wright, 2021). Furthermore, authoritative individuals have an increased likelihood of making punitive judgments (Lerner, Goldberg & Tetlock, 1998); therefore, we hypothesized that people who support strict human rights restrictions are more likely to exhibit authoritarian tendencies and attribute the cause of the infection to the infected individuals themselves.

Methods

Results

The arithmetic means (standard deviation; SD) of the single-question items, “I think anyone who gets infected with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) got what they deserved” and “If anyone had been infected with the Coronavirus (COVID-19), I think it was their fault” were 2.46 (1.19) and 2.54 (1.20), respectively. The average value and SD of the two items (BJD) was 2.50 (95% CI [2.44–2.57]) and 1.14, respectively (Table 1).

Univariate analysis showed that among demographic factors, the BJD was significantly lower among women than among men (Table 1). Further, it was lower among married individuals than among unmarried individuals and among those with children than among those without children. It also decreased with increasing age. However, no significant association existed between the region of residence, population density, educational background, or occupation and the BJD. Among infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics, the BJD was negatively associated with risk perception and positively associated with human rights restrictions. Regarding the effect size criteria (—d—>0.20, η² >0.01, and —r—>0.1), these values had the same effect size level despite the differences in their types (Cohen, 1988). The effect size was relatively large for human rights restrictions (r = 0.329 (95% CI [0.278–0.379])) among demographic factors and infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics.

Partial correlation analysis with gender and age as control variables revealed that —r— was highest for human rights restrictions, followed by risk perception (Fig. 1).

Discussion

In this study, we examined the BJD among individuals in Japan and investigated its associations with demographic factors and infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics. To this end, we conducted an online survey in August 2020. We identified the items that demonstrated the strongest association.

The BJD’s arithmetic mean was higher than the lowest value on the scale (1) and lower than the theoretical median (3.5). This was consistent with the finding that the score of immanent justice reasoning is lower than the theoretical median (e.g., Callan et al., 2013). The fact that the BJD in this study was higher than the lowest value on the scale indicated that individuals believed that COVID-19 infected individuals deserved what they got to a small extent.

Among demographic factors and infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics, the item most strongly associated with the BJD was human rights restrictions. This item is assessed based on the degree of agreement with government restrictions on individuals’ behavior during emergencies and indicates the level of adherence to strict social norms. A strong association between social norms and infection prevention measures, such as mask-wearing, was also reported among Japanese populations (Nakayachi et al., 2020).

Further, risk perception of COVID-19 infection was weakly and negatively associated with the BJD. However, no significant associations existed between the infection rate in the respondents’ residence or history of infection (i.e., the presence or absence of infection in respondents or respondents’ surroundings) and the BJD. This indicated that subjective perceptions of infection, rather than objective aspects such as infection rates in the residence or history of infection, were important factors in the association with BJD. One possible interpretation is that a higher risk perception of COVID-19 infection is associated with psychological closeness to the infected individuals, such as viewing the infection as normal. Further, there is a relationship between BJW and psychological distance from the victim (Hafer & Bègue, 2005). Risk perception of COVID-19 infection is reportedly associated with the willingness to be vaccinated (Nomura et al., 2021) and preventive health behaviors such as mask-wearing, hand washing, and physical distancing (Dryhurst et al., 2020). This study provides new insights into the association between risk perception and the BJD.

Among demographic factors, the BJD was significantly associated with gender, age, marital status, and the presence of children in the univariate analysis, whereas its association with the region of residence, population density, educational background, and occupation was non-significant. In particular, the difference in the BJD by gender was relatively large among these items, although their effect sizes were small overall. This finding is consistent with that of a previous meta-analysis (O’Connor et al., 1996) where men had a slightly higher BJW than women (the weighted average effect size d was 0.12). The finding that men have slightly higher BJD than women is probably related to their attitudes toward different groups: a previous survey reported that Japanese men tended to show a higher degree of ethnocentrism than Japanese women after the COVID-19 outbreak (Yamagata, Teraguchi & Miura, 2021). In general, there are gender differences in perceptions of various risks, and cultural worldviews are known to be a mediating variable between the two variables (Kahan et al., 2007). Beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions may not be different specifically due to gender; rather, they can be acquired due to the formation of different roles and subsequent worldviews in society as a result of gender differences.

In this study, we focused on the BJD to better understand how discrimination, stigma, and prejudice related to COVID-19 infection can be addressed. We found that the BJD was most strongly associated with human rights restrictions, even after controlling for gender and age. Our study firstly provided insights on individual perceptions of justice related to COVID-19, as well as foundational knowledge to address COVID-19 infection-related discrimination, stigma, and prejudice in Japan. This finding has important implications during the COVID-19 pandemic for another issue apart from the infectious disease itself—improving people’s wellbeing and revisiting people’s sense of justice. The BJD is considered to create a punitive tendency for individuals infected with COVID-19 because the BIJ can bring severe punishment to the perpetrator by attributing the cause of the harm to the victim (Murayama & Miura, 2015). Thus, the mitigation of BJD is expected to play an important role in reducing the tendency to punish others and improving people’s wellbeing. However, it should be noted that the direction of causality between the BJD and human rights restriction or risk perception is unclear. Therefore, identifying the directionality among these variables through longitudinal or interventional studies will provide foundational knowledge for addressing discrimination and understanding individual perceptions of justice related to COVID-19. In particular, our study revealed a strong association between the BJD regarding infected individuals with COVID-19 and human rights restrictions; thus, it would be useful to examine the direction of causality using a cross lagged panel model in longitudinal studies or to investigate the effect of interventions that weaken the BJD regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 on subsequent human rights restrictions (and vice versa) in interventional studies.

Our study has several limitations. First, since it is a cross-sectional study, it does not allow for causal identification. In particular, it is important to note that reverse causality may exist in the associations between human rights restrictions or risk perception and the BJD. As described above, longitudinal or interventional studies are expected to identify the causality. Second, our study may have been subjected to a selection bias because we conducted an online survey. Although gender and age proportion in our survey was based on the actual distribution in Japan, respondents’ educational level (48.1% belonged to a university or a graduate school) was higher than that of the average Japanese individual (19.8% among 20–69 years old in 2010 (the most recent number available in the national census)) (Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2010). Nevertheless, we found no significant association between educational background and the BJD. Moreover, since we conducted an online survey, respondents had the advantage of receiving points in the form of incentives. This meant that participation was independent of respondents’ interest in the survey topic. Third, our study respondents were aged between 20 and 69 years and lived in Japan. This means that the findings may not apply to other age groups and especially other countries and should be interpreted with caution. Fourth, we obtained a low —r— value between 0.012 and 0.327 from the partial correlation analysis. The —r— value = 0.3 is judged as a medium effect size (Cohen, 1988). This indicates that further studies must be conducted to explore the association between the BJD and other factors that have not been investigated in this study (e.g., cultural worldviews; Kahan et al., 2007).

Conclusions

We investigated the association between the BJD and demographic factors and between the BJD and infection-related and socio-psychological characteristics related to COVID-19-infected individuals in Japan. Our findings were as follows:

• The BJD was higher than the lowest score on the scale, confirming that individuals in Japan believe that infected individuals deserve to be infected to a small extent.

• We found a strong association between human rights restrictions and the BJD, followed by risk perception of COVID-19 infection.

• Men had slightly higher BJD than women.

Our study is significant in that it provides insights on individual perceptions of justice related to COVID-19 and foundational information to help mitigate the social issues of discrimination, stigma, and prejudice related to COVID-19 infection.

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