Personal Belief in a Just World Scale: Adaptation and Evidence of Validity

Abstract Belief in a just world (BJW) has allowed for the comprehension of a series of social phenomena, which has lead to the development of measures for its measurement. The present article has the aim to present evidence of validity for a Portuguese version of Personal BJW Scale (BJW-P). 146 participants, most of them women (69%), with ages varying from 17 to 66 years (M = 27.79, DP = 13.67) answered PBJWP scale, four other scales (BJW-global, self-esteem, well-being, religiosity) for the convergent validity test and informed socio-demographic data. As in the original study, a uni-factorial solution and satisfactory internal consistency (α = 0.83) were found. Additionally, as expected, positive relations were found between PBJW and GBJW, self-esteem, and well-being, but only marginally significant with religiosity. Furthermore, positive relations of PBJW with income, as well as education, were found. The adapted version seems useful for research purposes.