The Just-World Hypothesis: Understanding Victim Blame

What has been corrected on this page?

Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

1. 11 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

   4 corrections applied: Lerner was a faculty member (PhD 1957), not a grad student, and the foundational study was conducted at the University of Kentucky, not Waterloo; the precise 1965 date is also wrong. | Lerner & Simmons was published in 1966, not 1965 (the article's own reference list dates it 1966). | Same date error: Lerner & Simmons was published in 1966, not 1965. | First author of the 1973 rape-victim study was Cathaleene Jones (cited 'C.

   Jones' in references), not 'Elaine Jones'.

   What the page claimed

   FAQ question title read "What did Lerner's 1965 experiment find?" (stale year, inconsistent with the body text's corrected 'mid-1960s at University of Kentucky' framing and the bibliography's 'Lerner and Simmons (1966)'). Excerpt read "In 1965, Melvin Lerner showed subjects an innocent woman receiving electric shocks..."

   What was corrected

   FAQ question retitled to "What did Lerner's 1966 experiment find?" to match the corrected body/bibliography. Excerpt corrected to "In the mid-1960s, Melvin Lerner showed subjects an innocent woman receiving electric shocks..." matching the body's softened date language.

   Why: Body text and bibliography were already correctly fixed (University of Kentucky, faculty member, Lerner and Simmons 1966, Cathaleene Jones), but the FAQ JSON-LD block still had a question titled with the stale 1965 date, and the post excerpt also independently asserted the stale 1965 date.

   Both fixed to be consistent with the corrected body content and re-verified live after PUT. A separate, legitimate 1998 Lerner & Lerner cancer-patients study at University of Waterloo elsewhere in the body was correctly left untouched as it is a different, real citation.

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