Research participants who were informed they had gotten an unlucky break and would have to forfeit £3, rather than win the same amount, subsequently viewed themselves significantly more negatively and believed they were more deserving of bad outcomes, showing that random misfortune damages people’s self-esteem, says a team led by Mitchell J. Callan of the University of Essex in the UK. This low self-esteem, which can lead to self-defeating beliefs and behaviors, stems from people’s need to believe that the world is just and predictable and that bad fortune is meted out to those who deserve it, the researchers say.
Source: Making Sense of Misfortune: Deservingness, Self-Esteem, and Patterns of Self-Defeat