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.
Read more about this topic: Just-world Hypothesis
Famous quotes containing the words additional and/or evidence:
“Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“There is evidence that all too many people are approaching parenthood with a dangerous lack of knowledge and skill. The result is that many children are losing out on what ought to be an undeniable right—the right to have parents who know how to be good parents, parents skilled in the art of “parenting.””
—T. H. Bell (20th century)