Melvin Lerner
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Melvin J. Lerner, Professor of
Social Psychology Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field ...
at the
University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...
between 1970 and 1994 and now a visiting scholar at
Florida Atlantic University Florida Atlantic University (Florida Atlantic or FAU) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus in Boca Raton, Florida, United States. The university is a member of the State University System of Florida and has s ...
, has been called "a pioneer in the psychological study of justice."


Education

Lerner received his Ph.D. in
Social Psychology Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field ...
in 1957 at
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
.


Career

After his Ph.D., he was a Post-Doc in Clinical Psychology at
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
. Lerner has been associated with
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
,
Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...
, Universities of
Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...
and
Leiden Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...
in the Netherlands, and other institutions. He was the founding editor of the journal Social Justice Research and the "Critical Issues in Social Justice" series published by
Plenum Press Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...
. In 1994, he was awarded Distinguished Professor Emeritus at
University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...
. He received the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis together with Leo Montada in 1993 and the Quinquennial Award in 1986. In 2008, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Society for Justice Research.


Belief in a just world

Lerner is most recognized for the Just-world phenomenon, published in "The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion" (1980), and for being co-editor of the first volume devoted to the "Justice Motive" in 1981. He began studying
justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...
beliefs and the just world fallacy while exploring the mechanisms behind negative social and societal interactions.Montada, L. & Lerner, M.J. (1998). Preface, in Leo Montada & M.J. Lerner (Eds.). ''Responses to Victimizations and Belief in a Just World'' (pp. vii–viii). Plenum Press: New York. Lerner saw his work as extending
Stanley Milgram Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social psychologist known for his controversial Milgram experiment, experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale University, Yale.Blass, T ...
's work on
obedience Obedience, in human behavior, is a form of "social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure". Obedience is generally distinguished from compliance, which some authors define as behavior infl ...
. He wanted to understand how regimes that cause cruelty and suffering maintain popular support, and how people come to accept
social norms A social norm is a shared standard of acceptance, acceptable behavior by a group. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into wikt:rule, rules and laws. Social norma ...
and laws that produce misery and suffering.Lerner, M. J., & Simmons, C. H. (1966). Observer’s reaction to the "innocent victim": Compassion or rejection? ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 4(2), 203–210. Lerner's research was influenced by repeatedly witnessing the tendency of observers to blame victims for their suffering. During his clinical training as a psychologist, he observed the treatment of mentally ill persons by the health care practitioners with whom he worked. Though he knew the clinicians to be kindhearted, educated people, he observed that they blamed patients for their own suffering.Lerner (1980). ''The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion''. Plenum: New York. He was also surprised at hearing his students derogate the poor, seemingly oblivious to the structural forces that contribute to poverty. In one of his studies on rewards, he observed that when one of two men was chosen at random to receive a reward for a task, observers felt more praise toward the man who had been randomly rewarded than toward the man who did not receive a reward.Lerner, M. J., & Miller, D. T. (1978). Just world research and the attribution process: Looking back and ahead. ''Psychological Bulletin'', 85(5), 1030–1051 Existing social psychological theories, including
cognitive dissonance In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that challenge this dissonance may ultimately result in some ...
, could not fully explain these phenomena.Maes, J. (1998) Eight Stages in the Development of Research on the Construct of BJW?, in Leo Montada & M.J. Lerner (Eds.). ''Responses to Victimizations and Belief in a Just World'' (pp. 163–185). Plenum Press: New York. His desire to understand the processes that caused these phenomena led Lerner to conduct his first experiments on what is now called the just world fallacy.


See also

*
Moralistic fallacy The moralistic fallacy is the informal fallacy of assuming that an aspect of nature which has socially unpleasant consequences cannot exist. Its typical form is "if ''X'' were true, then ''Z'' would happen! Thus, ''X'' is false", where ''Z'' is a m ...
*
List of University of Waterloo people The University of Waterloo, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is a comprehensive public university that was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles. It has grown into an institution of more than 42,000 students, faculty, and st ...
*
Victim blaming Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as ...


References


Further reading

* Lerner, M. & Simmons, C. H. (1966). Observer’s Reaction to the "Innocent Victim": Compassion or Rejection? ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', 4, v. 2. * Lerner, Melvin J. ''The Belief in a Just World : A Fundamental Delusion'' (Perspectives in Social Psychology) (1980) * Lerner, Melvin J. & Lerner, Sally C. ''The Justice Motive in Social Behavior: Adapting to Times of Scarcity and Change'', (New York: Plenum Press, 1981). * Montada, Leo & Lerner, Melvin J. Responses to Victimization and Belief in a Just World (Critical Issues in Social Justice) (1998) {{DEFAULTSORT:Lerner, Melvin American social psychologists American moral psychologists Jewish American social scientists New York University alumni Academic staff of the University of Waterloo Living people 1929 births 21st-century American Jews Florida Atlantic University faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty Washington University in St. Louis faculty Academic staff of Utrecht University Academic staff of Leiden University