The just world hypothesis is an attributional bias in which people often attribute fortune or misfortune to the person experiencing it, and believe that the world is inherently fair – that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. The just world hypothesis was first studied by the Canadian psychologist Melvin Lerner in the 1960s. The phenomenon is also known as the just-world theory, the just-world fallacy, and the just-world effect.