These were questions explored by a social psychologist named Milton Lerner in a series of experiments he and others conducted during the 1960s and early 1970s. His premise was that in order to function, human beings need to view their world as not only manageable and predictable, but just. We live in a just world in which people get what they deserve. Injustice is the exception, not the rule. Such a belief, he argued, is irrational.
People often fail to get what they deserve.
Lerner concluded that there are basically five ways people avoid the reality of injustice. We stay away from situations that might confront us with injustice or unwarranted suffering. So we do not go to hospital emergency rooms or drive through ghettos. We do not visit prisons or willingly talk with people who have been victims of crime. Out of sight, out of mind.