The Belief in a Just World by Melvin J Lerner

The Belief in a Just World by Melvin J Lerner

The "belief in a just world" is an attempt to capmre in a phrase one of the ways, if not the way, that people come to terms with-make sense out of-find meaning in, their experiences. We do not believe that things just happen in our world; there is a pattern to events which conveys not only a sense of orderli­ ness or predictability, but also the compelling experience of appropriateness ex­ pressed in the typically implicit judgment, "Yes, that is the way it should be." There are probably many reasons why people discover or develop a view of their environment in which events occur for good, understandable reasons. One explanation is simply that this view of reality is a direct reflection of the way both the human mind and the environment are constructed. Constancies, patterns which actually do exist in the environment-out there-are perceived, represented symbolically, and retained in the mind. This approach cenainly has some validity, and would probably suffice, if it were not for thatsense of "appropriateness," the pervasive affective com­ ponent in human experience. People have emotions and feelings, and these are especially apparent in their expectations about their world: their hopes, fears, disappointments, disillusionment, surprise, confidence, trust, despondency, anticipation-and certainly their sense of right, wrong, good, bad, ought, en­ titled, fair, deserving, just.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780306404955
ISBN 10	0306404958
Title	The Belief in a Just World
Author	Melvin J Lerner
Series	Critical Issues In Social Justice
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Springer Science+Business Media
Year published	1980-09-30
Number of pages	210
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable