just world hypothesis

n. The observation that most people in Western cultures believe or make judgments suggesting that they believe that there is a power at work in the world creating justice so that if a person commits an evil act, he/she is ultimately punished, and if he/she does good things, he/she is eventually rewarded. It is embodied in phrases like "What goes around, comes around." This has been used to explain other phenomena such as blaming the victim, in which it is supposed that if something bad happens to a person, he/she must have done something to deserve it. Also called the just world phenomenon.