As viewers we're immediately struck by these polar extremes of fortune. Father and son embody a perverse contrast if ever there was one, a contrast that makes us seek an explanation, some way to make sense of the appalling incongruity. At one point Jack himself expresses a hazy conviction that some form of karma is at work with Roy (as well as his wife, who is recently deceased). He believes that cosmic reckoning must be to blame for the woeful suffering of his family, a counterbalancing effort courtesy of the universe.

It seems natural that Jack would try to rationalize his son's situation like this. On the other hand, he might have selected another, alternative explanation, popular among theists: divine retribution, where the causes of natural evil (tiger-attacks, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc.) are identified with the victims of that evil. God, or Allah, or some other higher power is punishing those who deserve it for being sinners. In this case all one has to do to avoid pernicious outcomes is stay good with his or her god, the best (or maybe only) god. For Jack to adopt this explanation, though, he would be forced to believe that his dead wife and dying son somehow merited their fate. Not an easy thing to do, so we can understand why he would rather put a karmic spin on things.

In choosing the most comforting account of disturbing events and circumstances, Jack is not alone. If you're like most people, you'd rather not think that you, YOU! could be the next to experience something dreadful due to causes that you can neither perceive nor control. Thoroughly absurd accounts like those just mentioned can actually help here. People like to invoke explanations that imply the world operates in predictable ways, according to laws they can comprehend. These lawful accounts are usually more reassuring than their most obvious rival, the explanation any reasonable person should find a lot more plausible prima facie: random causes.

This is generally not what people do. The natural human propensity to make sense of outcomes, both good and bad, in terms of something other than randomness is measured scientifically via a personality variable called Belief in a Just World (BJW; Lerner, 1982). Roughly, this is the degree to which someone exhibits a tendency to explain life outcomes according to the dictum "S/He got what s/he deserved." People vary along this dimension: some have a stronger need to perceive the world as just than others.

If you want to know how you rate here, consider your response to the following question: What ultimately causes wealth and poverty? Is it effort? Or is it more the result of luck: the conditions under which one was born and over which one has no control? Your answer will likely correspond to your political ideology, liberal or conservative, with conservatives more likely to endorse BJW (Jost & Hunyady, 2002). It will also be fixed to some extent by your geographical location. Cultural ideologies make a big difference here: Americans demonstrate an almost cult-like commitment to the ideal of self-reliance, and are thus more likely than Europeans to believe in a just world (Benabou & Tirole, 2005). But back to our question: If you said "effort," you're high in BJW; "luck," and you're low on this dimension. Naturally.

It seems evident to the majority of psychologists (though apparently less so to the average lay person) that BJW is a bias, a fundamental delusion, deployed defensively for the purposes of effective coping. People who become materially successful, for example, often downplay the supportive influence of external factors, the people and circumstances that enabled their success, and without which their success would have been impossible. Often, when these successful people consider the plight of others who are less successful, they underscore dispositional causes such as laziness to explain the disparity. It's a matter of virtue or good character they tell themselves: "I have it, they don't." This interpretation serves several useful purposes for those who happen to have it good: it compliments their character, justifies their privileged position in the social and economic hierarchy, and makes the world seem predictable, a resounding win, win, win.

House is not himself very politically oriented, but, as the opening quotation shows, he nevertheless seems to clearly perceive the specious nature of BJW. A fully rational account of the winners and losers in life should heed House's intuitions and accord a great deal of respect to random, arbitrary factors. To do otherwise is to ignore reality and simply believe what one wants to believe, which does a great disservice to unlucky people (like Roy), however flattering it might be to those who are more fortunate (like Jack).

Ted Cascio is co-editor of House & Psychology (John Wiley & Sons).

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