Just-world hypothesis
Etymology
Named and studied by social psychologist Melvin Lerner beginning in the 1960s, culminating in his 1980 book The Belief in a Just World. Lerner argued the belief is a comforting defense: if the world is fair, then we are safe as long as we behave well — which is why watching an innocent person suffer often pushes observers to decide the victim must have deserved it.
noun · /JUST-WURLD hy-POTH-uh-sis/
The largely unconscious belief that the world is fundamentally fair, so people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
What it names
It explains the impulse to blame victims — to assume that those who suffer must have done something to invite it — as a way of protecting our sense of a predictable world.
Example
His reaction to the layoffs — "they probably weren’t pulling their weight" — was the just-world hypothesis shielding him from the thought that it could happen to anyone.
Related idea
Victim blaming is the visible behavior; the just-world hypothesis is the underlying belief that makes that behavior feel reasonable.