Melvin Lerner > Quotes

“However if the costs for "direct help" are high, then "indirect help," and "justification for not helping and running away," are to be expected. It is only if the person anticipates great cost in terms of social sanctions, anticipated feelings of guilt (Rawlings, 1970) for not directly helping, and low cost in the perspective helping act, that people can be expected to actually intervene in a given situation.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“Dissonance theory cannot, nor was it intended to, enable us to understand why people are strongly committed to cognitions like the belief in a just world. The belief that one lives in a just world, just as the belief that one is a decent, worthwhile person, seems to play a central role in the organization of the persons' life. The clear implication here is that what is at stake for the individual when these cognitions are threatened is not only the negative drive state generated out of holding dissonant cognitions, but the very integrity of their conceptions of themselves and the nature of their world.
This is easier possibly to recognize with reference to the belief that one is a worthy human being. The evidence suggests that, if and when that cognition is altered significantly, then there are widespread and dramatic effects on people's lives. They are not for all intents and purposes the same people with different cognitions about themselves. The range of affect they experience, ways of relating to others, kinds of thought processes they engage in, ability to mobilize themselves, are radically altered if their sense of self-worth is reduced. If our understanding of the belief in a just world is correct, then we would expect that the effects would be equally dramatic if that belief is shattered, or diminished to any important degree. The emotional consequences associated with the loss of this confidence in one's environment, the attempt to find alternative ways of coping with one's needs, fears and the threats from the environment, would product "deviant" behaviors in the pejorative sense.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“Obviously, in the final calculations there are "costs" and "benefits" which are associated with the various alternatives the person perceives possible in the situation. The final act or sequence of acts reflects what Hatfield (1980) considers the first principle of human social behavior.
Proposition 1. Individuals will try to maximize their outcomes (where outcomes equal rewards minus costs.) (p. 2)”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“Most of us realize that things happen in our world as a result of biological, social, and physical processes which follow understandable if not understood natural laws.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“If these analysts are right, then the way people actually function is at odds with the myth of the "good citizen." People are motivated essentially by the attempt to "maximize their outcomes." In social situations involving the fate of other people, this involves the reduction of "social and self distress" at minimum cost to other desired resources (Walster et al., 1976). When the costs are high, the "Rational Man" myth is threatened by the person's use of the "justification" mode of restoring "psychological equity" (Walster & Piliavin, 1972); or, as Schwartz (1975) describes, the "reassessment and redefinition of the situation." These reactions are essentially the irrational defenses based upon "denial of the victim's state of need," "denial of the suitability of norms" which define the victim as someone truly innocent and in a state of "genuine need." *Readers may be more familiar with comparable versions of this material that appeared in Walster, Berscheid and Walster, 1976. 30 CHAPTER 1 What some of our best known theorists have described is that we do not act as "good citizens." On the contrary, we are always trying to make the best deal for ourselves. And when it is the most profitable way to respond, we are not very "rational" in the way we justify our self-interested acts. If they are correct, then it is quite obvious that we must go to great lengths to maintain the belief that we live in a just world. But do we?”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“However if the costs for "direct help" are high, then "indirect help," and "justification for not helping and running away," are to be expected. It is only if the person anticipates great cost in terms of social sanctions, anticipated feelings of guilt (Rawlings, 1970) for not directly helping, and low cost in the perspective helping act, that people can be expected to actually intervene in a given situation.
If these analysts are right, then the way people actually function is at odds with the myth of the "good citizen." People are motivated essentially by the attempt to "maximize their outcomes.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“Why no guilt? These people were given the opportunity to act on the basis of their feelings of concern and compassion. The amount of money required from them.each month was selected because it did not exceed what they, given their incomes and style of life, would typically spend on entertainment. Ii was a very safe bet that they each spent at least the equivalent of a hundred dollars a month on dinners out, movies, martinis or wine with dinner, summer vacation:Certainly there would be no threat at all to their economic security or that of their children were they to divert that portion of their income to rescue the miserable family from the most primitive form of deprivation and suffering. Is itpossible for these decent, concerned people to choose their own liquor and entertainment over the chance to eliminate the terrible suffering of an innocentchild? And then, after having made that choice, not be consumed with guilt?”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“These and many other experiences of the common injustices in the child's world provide sufficient evidence, along with the lessons of chemistry, automotive mechanics, and arithmetic, that we all live in a world where things happen because of natural "forces" for reasons that have nothing to do with who has been good or bad. (...) Certainly by adulthood, although there may be some "simple souls" who think that "people's actions are the object of equitable rewards and punishments", the belief in a world of "immanent justice" has been relinquished.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“The publicity that follows the apprehension and prosecution of a "criminal", the remarkable strides which medical sicence has made in elimintating the dangers of disease , can als ohelp engender the feeling that there is a good chance, that "by and large, it will turn out right in the end." And each of us is provided with a version of the history of man, civilization, our country, that provides the most eloquent and persuasive testimony for the assumption that "every day, in every way, we are getting better and better.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“This is easier possibly to recognize with reference to the belief that one is a worthy human being. The evidence suggests that, if and when that cognition is altered significantly, then there are widespread and dramatic effects on people's lives. They are not for all intents and purposes the same people with
different cognitions about themselves. The range of affect they experience, ways of relating to others, kinds of thought processes thy engage in, ability to mobilize themselves, are radically altered if their sense of self-worth is reduced. If our understanding of the belief in a just world is correct, then we would expect that the effects would be equally dramatic if that belief is shattered, or diminished to any imponant degree. The emotional consequences associated with the loss of this confidence in one's environment, the attempt to find alternative ways of coping with one's needs, fears, and the threats from the environment, would produce "deviant" behaviors in the pejorative sense (Chein et aI., 1964; Jessor et aI., 1968; Menon, 1957). Although our research will not attempt to test this hypothesis by creating such an extreme event in people's lives, we do expect to be able to show the kind of motivational committment to this central belief that would fit this degree of imponance to the person.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion

“Denial-Withdrawal. This is a primitive devide, but it works. All it requires is an intelligent selection of the information to which one is exposed. And it had the added advantage of requiring no direct distortion of reality. If you have any sense, you arrange not to see what is happening in the ghettoes, in the poverty-stricken areas of the country or the world. You don't make a practice of hanging around emergency rooms, mental hospitals, or homes for the mentally "disadvantages". (...) This mechanism played a central part in a set of experiments that will be discussed later.”
― Melvin Lerner, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion