Coping with Life Stress Injustice and the Question “Who Is Responsible?”

Abstract

(from the introduction) pays attention to the complex relationship between life stress and injustice; not every stressful life event is experienced as unjust by the victim; discusses several factors that may influence the experience of injustice; notes that two questions have guided most research: the aspect of blaming the victim and the aspect of (reduction of) self-blame (from the chapter) in many cases, it is open to question whether persons, after stressful events, perceive themselves as victims of blind fate, as victims of actions and decisions of others (persons or institutions), or as losers in a fair play or a risky enterprise; whether they feel victimized or not depends on their perceived entitlements, which are established with reference to various rules of justice; certainly, there are situational and individual differences in selecting and applying rules of justice when appraising a situation; the selection, in turn, depends on perceived responsibilities for the disadvantaged or for the victims... causality, responsibility, and liability to blame; paths to subjective justice (coping strategies of victims to avoid the perception of injustice, adaptive and nonadaptive aspects of self-blame, victimization after critical life events: coping strategy of observers to avoid the preception of injustice)