Just-world Hypothesis - Additional Evidence

Additional Evidence

Following Lerner's first studies, other researchers replicated these findings in other settings in which individuals are victimized. This work, which began in the 1970s and continues today, has investigated how observers react to victims of random calamities, like traffic accidents, as well as rape and domestic violence, illnesses, and poverty. Generally, researchers have found that observers of the suffering of innocent victims tend to both derogate victims and blame victims for their suffering. Thus, observers maintain their belief in a just world by changing their cognitions about the character of victims.

In the early 1970s, social psychologists Zick Rubin and Letitia Anne Peplau developed a measure of belief in a just world. This measure and its revised form published in 1975 allowed for the study of individual differences in just world beliefs. Much of the subsequent research on the just world hypothesis utilized these measurement scales.