For Whom is this World Just?: Sexual Orientation and AIDS

The “just world” hypothesis has been used to explain victim blaming, or the attributions that people have for why a person has been victimized. Based on some of the premises of the just world hypothesis it was predicted that people would be more likely to attribute blame to a gay man with AIDS than they would to a heterosexual man with AIDS. From a sample of 79 undergraduate students it was found that a gay man was given more personal blame for contracting AIDS than a heterosexual man. Furthermore, the more intolerant people were towards gay men and the more fearful they were of contact with AIDS, the more likely they were to blame the gay man for contracting AIDS. Although preliminary, these results indicate the usefulness of the just world hypothesis for understanding the stigmatization of people with AIDS.