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The Lottery
An annual village gathering turns familiar civic routines into a disturbing question: when does keeping a tradition become a way to stop questioning it?
- Author and origin
- Shirley Jackson (United States)Original language: English. First published in The New Yorker in 1948.
- Genre and form
- Fiction (Short story)Novels, novellas, short stories, and drama read through an interpretive psychological lens, never as clinical cases.
- Pairing and evidence
- Interpretive readingAn editorial psychological reading of fiction or memoir. A paper is paired only where the connection is substantive; the narrative is not empirical evidence.
- Sources inspected
- 2 text/abstract inspected, 0 metadata checked (of 2)1 with the primary text or archive/edition record checked, 1 with an indexed abstract read, 0 with bibliographic metadata checked, 0 not verified.
Interpretive thematic pairingPaired academic work
Source independence: Independent of the book’s author.
How it connects: Provides an interpretive social-cognitive framework for discussing how justification, diffusion of responsibility and victim blame can enable ordinary community members to take part in collective harm; the paper does not study Jackson's story.
Exact claim scope: Scoped to the Crossref and Europe PMC indexed abstract (PMID 15661671) on psychosocial mechanisms of moral disengagement.
The work and edition history
Shirley Jackson published this short story in The New Yorker in 1948. An ordinary village gathering provides a compact setting for examining social participation and inherited rules.
Psychological reading
Watch how procedural details make participation seem routine. The black box persists even as parts of the ritual have been forgotten, and one resident dismisses news that other villages are abandoning the practice. A useful reading question is whether a person can follow every local rule while avoiding responsibility for what those rules accomplish.
Why it earns inclusion
A short entry into conformity and collective harm. Compare the pressure to join a group with the explanations people offer for its conduct: these are related questions, but they require different psychological concepts.
Academic pairing and claim scope
This profile pairs Jackson's story interpretively with Albert Bandura's 1999 article "Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities" (inspected via its Crossref and Europe PMC indexed abstract). Bandura outlines how moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged through moral justification, advantageous comparison, diffusion or displacement of responsibility, and victim blame, offering a theoretical vocabulary for how ordinary villagers participate in a lethal custom.
Limits and controversies
The ending contains collective violence. This is a literary interpretation, not an observation of an actual community. Bandura’s article does not analyze Jackson’s story; it supplies a later theoretical vocabulary.
Evidence behind the claims
Villagers assemble around a deteriorating black box for an annual drawing whose procedure is managed by local officials.
Bandura (1999) describes how moral self-sanctions can be selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct through cognitive restructuring, diffusion or displacement of responsibility, minimizing injurious effects, and victim blame.
Authors and researchers
- Shirley Jackson. American author of "The Lottery" (1948).
- Albert Bandura. Psychologist who formulated the social-cognitive theory of moral agency and moral disengagement (1999).
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 12.4: Conformity, Compliance, and ObedienceChapter 12, Social Psychology. Concept. Suggested conceptual background; a mention of this work in the section has not been verified.Connects the village's adherence to an inherited annual drawing to conformity, social norms, and compliance.
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 12.6: AggressionChapter 12, Social Psychology. Concept. Suggested conceptual background; a mention of this work in the section has not been verified.Links the collective stoning of a selected neighbor to social determinants of aggression and diffusion of responsibility.
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 11.4: Learning ApproachesChapter 11, Personality. Concept. Suggested conceptual background; a mention of this work in the section has not been verified.Relates Bandura's social-cognitive perspective on self-regulation and moral agency to how ordinary people rationalize harmful conduct.
Educational reading guide only, not clinical diagnosis or treatment guidance. This course map indicates introductory curriculum relevance rather than clinical proof.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
Of 2 cited sources, 1 had primary text or archive/edition records checked, 1 had an indexed abstract read, and 0 had bibliographic metadata checked (0 unverified). Literary works and memoirs are distinguished from empirical research studies.
- [2]Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_3Journal article. Paired academic research.Indexed abstract readInspected the Crossref and Europe PMC indexed abstract (PMID 15661671) for Bandura (1999); full article text behind publisher paywall was not accessed.
- [1]Jackson, S. (1948, June 18). “the lottery,” by shirley jackson. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lotteryPrimary literary or historical text. Work, edition, or catalog record.Primary text or passage readSelected opening, procedural, tradition-related and closing passages inspected in the primary archive text. Publication year 1948 retained; the web header and print-issue note use different June dates.