Melvin Lerner (1980) noted that... disparaging of hapless victims results from the need of each of us to believe, "I am a just person living in a just world, a world where people get what they deserve." From early childhood, he argues, we are taught that good is rewarded and evil punished. Hard work and virtue pay dividends; laziness and immorality do not. From this is but a short leap to assuming that those who flourish must be good and those who suffer must deserve their fate. The classic illustration is the Old Testament story of Job, a good person who suffers a terrible misfortune. Job's friends surmise that, this being a just world, Job must have done something wicked to elicit such terrible suffering.
....Research suggests that people are indifferent to social injustice not because they have no concern for justice but because they see no injustice. Those who assume a just world believe that rape victims must have behaved seductively (Borgida & Brekke, 1985), that battered spouses must have provoked their beatings (Summers & Feldman, 1984), that poor people don't deserve better (Furnham & Gunter, 1984), and that sick people are responsible for their illnesses (Gruman & Sloan, 1983). ....
People loathe a loser even when the loser's misfortune quite obviously stems from mere bad luck. People know that gambling outcomes are just good or bad luck and should not affect their evaluations of the gambler. Still, they can't resist playing Monday-morning quarterback--judging people by their results. Ignoring the fact that reasonable decisions can bring bad results, they judge losers as less competent (Baron & Hershey, 1988). Lawyers and stock market speculators may similarly judge themselves by their outcomes, becoming smug after successes and self-reproachful after failures. Talent and initiative are not unrelated to success. But the just-world assumption discounts the uncontrollable factors that can derail one's best efforts.
--David G. Myers, Social Psychology: 7th Edition, pp. 366-367
References:
Baron, J., & Hershey, J. C. (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 569-579.
Borgida, E., & Brekke, N. (1985). Psycholegal research on rape trials. In A. W. Burgess (Ed.), Rape and sexual assault: A research handbook. New York: Garland.
Furnham, A. & Gunter. B. (1984). Just world beliefs and attitudes towards the poor. British Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 265-269.
Gruman, J. C. & Sloan, R. P. (1983). Disease as justice: Perceptions of the victims of physical illness. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 4, 39-46.
Lerner, M.J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum.
Summers, G., & Feldman, N. S. (1984). Blaming the victim versus blaming the perpetrator: An attributional analysis of spouse abuse. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2, 339-347.

Yep, it's finals week. My psychology exam is Thursday morning; after that I head home. I really like my social psychology class, because the professors crafted the syllabus with a strong emphasis on the importance of empirical research and the fallibility of truisms and "common sense" in the development of psychology as a legitimate science. The text supports this so well, I think I will keep my copy around after I finish the class. The reader will likely be hearing more from Dr. Myers in the future; I hope the reader does not mind this too very much.

Random media of the update: Butasan! If you want proof that the Japanese culture is a little over the edge with its crazy, cute fixation for all things animated, you need only look only to the arcade game featuring a pig in white heart-covered boxers and a Godzilla suit throwing bombs at other pigs. It is fun, admittedly, and relaxing after a hard day on the books... but still very odd.