Just World Belief

The article looks at how different cultures view various situations, such as killers killing. Two graduate students, Michael Morris and Kaiping Peng, looked at how Americans and Chinese view and mention killers in newspapers. Morris and Peng found that Americans tend to view the killer’s behaviors as dispositional, or internal to the person’s personality traits. Whereas the Chinese, tend to describe the killer’s behaviors as being situational, or external forces causing the person to act that way. Upon continuing further with their study, Morris and Peng were able to discover that there was also a difference between how each culture describes the physical causality. This was illustrated through their study on a ball in liquid and the movement of the ball. Americans

The article “Revenge: will you feel better,” author Karyn Hall (2013) claims that while the temptation of revenge may be convincing, acting upon these urges is not always worth the consequences after. Hall contemplates the idea of revenge being “self destructive” and being harmful to both those giving and receiving revenge. Furthermore the article states People who have been hurt seem to believe that if the other party suffers, then they will feel better and that their emotional pain will lessen. This idea is later touch on towards the end of the article when author explains the idea of the “understanding hypothesis”, which is when the offender knows the connection between the original insult and the retaliation. In contrast, the author also

Theories of victimization essentially does something morally unpopular, by discussing how the victim caused their own victimization. Identified below are four theories of victimizations and examples of both strength and weakness of each. The goal for this paper is to briefly define at the four theories in order to grasp a better understanding of how individuals can lessen the opportunity to become a victim of a crime.

The idea of blame, defined as, “A particular kind of response (e.g. emotion), to a person, at fault, for a wrongful action,” plays a significant role in the study of crime, with respect to degrees of “fault.” In most modern societies, “criminal culpability,” or degrees of wrongdoing, makes a difference between the kinds of punishment one receives for his action(s). To be culpable for a crime, there must be a guilty act (Actus Rea), and a guilty mind (Mens Rea). Degrees of culpability often depends on the kind of mental state, (Mens Rea), one brings to the act in which he engaged. How much one is blameworthy for wrongful conduct depends in part on the state of mind in relation to the wrongful conduct. One’s mental state while engaging in wrongful conduct, which in a legal sense is determined by legislators, is characterized by the following terms: purposely, knowingly, recklessly and negligence.

The environment you grow up in and people you find yourself surrounded by as your make your way through the maze of life has a profound impact on a person 's worldviews. I am no exception to this rule, and to illustrate this point I will detail how I was raised, what I believed, and how I came to start examining those beliefs a little closer. This critical examination of my own beliefs has led to change how I think about the world in an enormous way, and has had a massive impact on how I relate to and understand other people.

There are many theories of crime, with criminologists, psychologist and sociologists, debating whether criminality is an an outcome of nature, as in genetically inherited, or produced by nurture (Brinkerhoff, White and Ortega, 2011). Even though the debate is ongoing, most criminologists, sociologists and psychologists agree that cases in which criminality is linked to nature, are extremely rare. Instead, they emphasise, criminality as a product of nurture (Brinkerhoff, White and Ortega, 2011). This means that people who commit heinous hate crimes were presumably raised in an environment which expressed extreme prejudice towards a certain racial, ethnic or religious group and truly believed that the world would be a better place without them in it, or, at least, without them living in the United States (Brinkerhoff, White and Ortega, 2011).

Victimization is a consequence of the weak terrorizing the weaker. Individuals that commit acts of discrimination, bias or other kinds of isolated mischief bear some form of deficiency. It has been explained that victims can originate from crime attributed with society, families and peers. They can usually be identified from the Victimology theory profile. Surroundings, environment and opportunity are only some of many components that provoke people to victimize others. September 11, 2001 was a black day that America will not easily forget; however, it certainly not licenses Americans to abuse Arab Americans.

Defining evil is something we all want to do. We search for the answers to why people do sinister things. As young kids, we grow up watching horror films and wondering what motivates the killer. As young adults, we watch documentaries on serial killers and shows on Investigation Discovery that give us glimpses into the minds of killers. Where are their morals? Why is vengeance wrong? We ask ourselves. In Stephen De Wijze text, “Defining Evil” Wijze core thought is the moral effect evil acts have upon us.

In 14th century mythological creatures like werewolves and vampires were blamed for violent crimes and the cause of the crime was seen as supernatural, beyond human control. In today 's society criminals are still labeled as monsters, little effort is made to understand what influences their actions. However criminals are too average human beings and examining why crimes are committed can help law enforcement better handled and prevented future acts of crimes. Why do we label criminals instead of understanding their behavior? What factors influence people to commit crimes? By understanding the factors influencing the crime can future crimes be prevented? In an article by O’Toole called, “Words Matter and Labels Make a Difference”, she discusses how labels such as monster limit the public from understanding why the crimes were committed. In the article, “An Act of Evil? When Monsters Kill”, O’Toole explains the reasoning behind a father killing himself and his two sons. Janet Reitman discusses the life of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing in the Rolling Stone article, “Jahar’s World”. She interviews people close to Jahar to gain an understanding of what made him execute the bombing.

This course has impacted me tremendously. Many pre-conceived notions of missions and methodology of fulfilling the Great commission have changed. The Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:16-20 contain Jesus’ final words to His disciples. He told them, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Before taking this course, I never understood the concept of the “nations” being people groups. I always thought of them as geo-political divisions. I can actually perceive many different people groups in my neighborhood, and now understand that even though they live in America, they do not relate the same way as other Americans. This is due to their cultural and ethnical background among other

Based on his findings, Zimbardo explains,“There are times when external circumstances can overwhelm us, and we do things we never thought. If you’re not aware that this can happen, you can be seduced by evil. We need inoculations against our own potential for evil. We have to acknowledge it. Then we can change it” (Dreifus 1). It is important to understand the factors that may lead a person to commit acts of evil, but still hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. Because of the lack of individuality among prisoners and absence of supervision of the guards, ordinary men became perpetrators of evil in the Holocaust and Stanford Prison Experiment.

Dr. Glenn Marin’s, Prevailing Worldviews of Western Society since 1500, contains principle views that have existed within the Western world since the sixteenth century and are explored throughout the text. This work was written as a way to perform sufficient research of the various worldviews by taking into account the various individual worldview’s particular answer to some of the most basic philosophical questions. In order to understand the text and the opinions offered, a worldview should be defined. According to the Oxford dictionary, a worldview is defined as a “particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.” Christians and non-Christians alike lack the ability to explain their beliefs in reference to the most basic philosophical

We are surrounded by unexplainable horrors: gang violence and murder; hurricanes and other natural disasters cause hundreds of casualties; giant passenger planes crash into the ocean and hundreds die terrifying deaths. Justice and our search for moral peace seemingly require us to find an answer for these tragedies even though we subconsciously know that conclusive answers may not exist. Nonetheless, we need to blame someone. The courts often cannot decisively resolve who is to blame and even when there is closure, we generally have no cure other than imprisonment or compensation to make things right again. Efforts to assign blame often lead to suffering while the failure to make the effort leads to some lasting damage to the soul, both

If I were to put two people in front of you and inform you that one of them was a shoplifter, and the other was a serial rapist, who would believe is a worse person. More than likely, you’re thinking that the serial rapist is the viler of the two. The choice is rather black and white. Now to make it more complex, let’s say that the crimes were similar but only slightly different. One man is a rapist of women, while the other rapes adolescent girls. Once again you are likely to gravitate toward the worse of the two, the child molester. Once again, the choice is black and white, but the shades are shifting. Now, let’s say that two men stand in front of you. One being an arrogant man who has murdered simply to prove to himself that he was entitled

Throughout history, there have been many human beings whom have been seen as either a hero or a villain. In their childhood, these people must had obstacles that were in their way, causing each individual to either work harder or give up. People, however; must understand that each individual has a potential in achieving their goals, but if one is mistreated or deceived due to jealousy, resentment, hatred, or ambition, it can lead to many catastrophic events. People who have pride and arrogance do not want to have equals, rather they want to see their victims suffer. These people have no difficulty in achieving their goals due to the fact that their victims have too innocent a nature to suspect the nefarious motives of their enemies. In