This study delves into the enduring influence of egocentric bias within negotiation contexts despite fair settings. We investigate how individuals navigate the interplay between egocentric bias, justice mechanisms (i.e., procedural and retributive justice), and their impact on zero-sum thinking. Across three studies encompassing 947 participants from Japan and the UK, we explored these dynamics through simulated negotiation scenarios like car-trade deals and international environmental negotiations. Our findings reveal a robust egocentric bias, dominating judgments even when justice mechanisms are introduced. Negotiators tend to view personal gains as independent of losses incurred by others, hindering collaborative outcomes. Procedural fairness demonstrates a moderating effect, fostering perceptions of fairness and reducing zero-sum thinking in specific scenarios (car-trade). However, its influence diminishes in complex international contexts. Interestingly, retributive justice, intended to discourage non-cooperative behavior, backfires by intensifying punitive sentiments. Thus, it might have a non-desirable effect in some situations. This research offers valuable insights for academics and practitioners alike. It underscores the pervasiveness of egocentric bias in zero-sum thinking despite the presence of justice mechanisms. By highlighting these dynamics, the study paves the way for developing more effective negotiation strategies that promote cooperation and foster successful conflict resolution in real-world settings.
Using the pandemic as a natural laboratory for exploring edtech, this study is concerned with the changes in parental involvement that the demands of remote-learning elicited and implications for educational justice across classes. Interviews with 25 middle-class and low-income parents revealed classed practices of parental involvement in remote-learning: middle-class parents espouse a digital well-being approach while low-income parents espouse a superdigital citizenship approach. The former is concerned with maintaining what parents see as a healthy balance between children’s digital activity and school learning; the latter with ensuring children have access to what parents see as varied resources and opportunities for learning and social connection available online and in face-to-face daily interaction, particularly in school. Classed practices of parental involvement reveal that parental involvement is a salient sphere of educational justice particularly in the context of educational technology implementation, and are implicated in issues of cultural and distributive justice.
Despite extensive scholarship on the impact of inequality on political trust, empirical evidence on the role of social mobility in shaping confidence in institutions remains scarce. This article contributes to the literature on political trust by analyzing how perceived social mobility influences trust in institutions across 18 Latin American countries using nine waves of the Latinobarometer survey (2004–2020). Our findings suggest that higher levels of perceived social mobility are positively associated with political trust. However, this relationship is moderated by economic inequality. Random Effects Within-Between models (REWB) reveal two different effects. Respondents who live in countries with higher levels of economic inequality exhibit lower levels of political trust compared to those living in countries with lower levels of economic inequality, regardless of their social mobility backgrounds. However, as economic inequality increases within countries over time, the political trust gap between mobility groups widens rather than narrows. Our results highlight the importance of considering inequality when evaluating the attitudinal consequences of mobility in socially fragmented societies.
Although relative deprivation theory argues that individual differences influence the degree to which people perceive themselves (IRD) or their group (GRD) as unfairly disadvantaged, few studies directly assess the psychological motivators underlying perceptions of injustice. We address this oversight by examining the relationships between psychological entitlement and relative deprivation using twelve annual waves of a nationwide random panel sample of adults (N = 71,587). Random intercept cross-lagged panel modelling revealed that within-person changes in psychological entitlement predicted subsequent changes in IRD and GRD. Within-person changes in IRD and GRD also predicted changes in psychological entitlement over time. These results replicated across structurally advantaged and disadvantaged groups based on ethnicity, gender, and immigrant status. We thus highlight how psychological entitlement shapes—and is shaped by—perceptions of injustice, irrespective of one’s objective societal position. We encourage future research to further explicate the role of individual differences in relative deprivation theory.
Belief in a just world (BJW) is well established as a coping resource, particularly for those times when the world is experienced as uncertain, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was such a time, and therefore provided an opportunity to test the boundary conditions of BJW theorizing. Here, we make a new methodological contribution, testing (a) cross-lagged panel effects of BJW on mental health and well-being variables and (b) whether these effects generalized cross-nationally. Drawing from data collected in early-mid 2020 by the PsyCorona Project (N = 2574 from 30 countries), BJW-self and BJW-other longitudinally predicted positive social/mental health, well-being, and hope, and these findings generalized across countries. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of BJW as a coping resource in a time of crisis.
Potential whistleblowers, that is, people contemplating revealing potentially damaging information about unethical or unlawful behavior to a third party, are often described as facing a conflict between loyalty and fairness. Yet, whistleblowers often may feel a sense of conflicting loyalties: loyalty towards the party (e.g., a colleague) that may be damaged by their blowing the whistle and loyalty towards the party (e.g., society at large) that may benefit. Understanding how people deal with such conflict of loyalties is critical for increasing whistleblowing and reducing unethical behavior. In three studies (total N = 929), we draw on construal level theory to demonstrate that, when loyalty motives are salient, the level of abstractness at which people construe a whistleblower dilemma affects whistleblowing behavior. Because the party that stands to benefit from whistleblowing is typically more global than the party that will be damaged, cognitive abstraction increases whistleblowing behavior relative to concreteness, particularly when loyalty (vs. fairness) is a salient motive. Moreover, Study 3 findings reveal that cognitive abstraction predicts whistleblowing through increased identification with global entities among people for whom loyalty is more salient. Hence, we demonstrate that whistleblowing decisions are influenced not only by the salience of certain moral motives, but also the way that people construe whistleblower dilemmas, namely, relatively abstractly or concretely. Altogether, our research offers a novel understanding of whistleblowing behavior—as a conflict between loyalties—and identifies a cognitive mechanism for promoting whistleblowing and reducing unethical behavior.
Just-world research frequently indicates a relatively strong and positive relation between belief in a just world (BJW) and subjective well-being (SWB). Researchers argue that BJW provides people with beneficial, adaptive functions allowing them to sustain mental health and well-being. Furthermore, BJW is often divided into two dimensions (personal and general BJW) which are usually positively related to each other but also differently to SBW. Hafer et al., Social Justice Research proposed a latent factor approach to investigate the extent to which a common latent factor ‘BJW’ relates stronger to well-being than personal or general BJW. Building upon the approach of Hafer et al., Social Justice Research we propose a second-order-factor approach including first-order factors measured at the latent level using structural equation modeling. We analyzed this approach with two culturally different samples consisting of N = 482 German participants and N = 569 Iranian participants. Our results indicated strong positive relations between the latent second-order factors BJW and SWB and conceptually replicated the results of Hafer et al., Social Justice Research by using an approach that accounts for the measurement errors in the first- and second-order factors. Our findings support the assumptions of Hafer et al., Social Justice Research and the measurement of first- and second-order factors at the latent level and provide possible implications for just-world research.
We examine the dark side of organizational justice by linking it to earnings management, a form of unethical pro-organizational behavior. Earnings management activities can undermine stakeholders’ organizational trust, increase regulatory scrutiny, and impair future operating performance. Whereas prior research tends to focus on incentive-based compensation and supervisor pressure as explanations for earnings manipulation, we take a social identity perspective. Drawing from conceptual frameworks of unethical pro-organizational behavior and the group engagement model, we theorize that when employees are treated fairly by their organization, they will increase their level of identification with the organization and thus be more likely to engage in unethical behaviors intended to help the organization, namely earnings management. Furthermore, we investigate the moderating role of moral identity in influencing our proposed effects. Results from two studies employing both survey and experimental designs provide convergent support for our hypothesized model. We find that organizational identification mediates the positive relationship between organizational justice and unethical pro-organizational behavior in the form of earnings management, and that moral identity weakens this relationship. We conclude by discussing several key theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
The reason why people endorse belief in a just world (BJW), in which each person gets what he deserves and deserves what he gets, is mainly attributed to motivational processes. BJW is also an inter-individual difference, and cognitive preference for less reflective and more intuitive thinking may be a complementary explanation of why people endorse this explicit version of BJW. In a preregistered and highly powered study (N = 46,815), we investigated and showed for the first time a relationship between individuals’ scores on a cognitive performance task and BJW, when controlling for relevant demographics. Our result showed that individuals with a less reflective orientation were more likely to endorse explicit just world beliefs. This is consistent with previous studies based on cognitive reflection test showing that individuals with a lower preference for logical rationality endorsed simplifying worldviews. Our results illustrate that individual differences in cognitive style may produce preferences for specific justice beliefs.
This paper highlights the idea that people who have experienced unfair treatment tend to develop anticipatory injustice (i.e., expectations of unfairness in a new context). Specifically, it argues that citizens who have experienced unfair treatment in education are more likely to have a sense of powerlessness toward their own political abilities (internal political efficacy) and toward the political system (external political efficacy). Using data from the European Social Survey 2018, the paper shows that citizens who have not had a fair chance of achieving their desired educational goals express a weaker sense of political efficacy and that the negative effect of unfair treatment in education on external political efficacy (i.e., attitude toward the system) is more pronounced in countries with more responsive political systems. These findings suggest that previous unfair treatment in education can make citizens more cynical and frustrated about the responsiveness of their government, particularly in countries with higher levels of political responsiveness, where citizens with unfair educational opportunities perceive that they are unfairly disadvantaged and under-resourced (in terms of knowledge, skills, and dispositions) compared to their advantaged counterparts with whom they compete for government attention and responsiveness.
Working toward social justice is an urgent, cross-disciplinary endeavor requiring a range of invested actors. Research has demonstrated, however, that motivating people to work toward social justice is quite complicated, and there often exists a gap between possessing social justice values and engaging in social justice action. As a result, many scholars have called for increased research to better understand individual engagement in social justice action. Thus, the aim of this scoping review was to investigate the factors and processes that contribute to social justice action and how they have been studied in the empirical literature. Selection criteria limited articles to empirical studies on the influences, factors, or processes contributing to or interfering with social justice action. The search strategy yielded 70 articles from 2000–2023 to be included in the study. Findings indicated that studies largely employed survey designs, with some qualitative work. Social justice action was inconsistently defined and measured between studies, and, at times, there was conflation between the value specificity of social justice action and the value unspecified way it was measured. Studies found many factors influential in the development of social justice action, but none appeared both necessary and sufficient for engagement to occur. Findings suggested that the development of social justice action is likely the result of an interactive process between multiple intrapersonal and environmental factors. Further qualitative and longitudinal research can help parse out the action development process and explore personal and environmental barriers to engagement. Validation and standardization of measures is also recommended.
Despite the challenge of income and wealth inequality around the world, people tend to underestimate the degree of inequality in their societies. In this research, we examine how people estimate inequality at subnational scales by focusing on urban‒rural income inequality in China, a society characterized by a unique dual urban‒rural social structure but that is also facing a steep increase in income inequality. Using a nationwide sample of Chinese adults (N = 953), we found that Chinese participants tend to underestimate the level of urban‒rural income inequality while overestimating the progress made toward its reduction. System-justifying ideologies were found to be negatively associated with support for redistributive policies, with the underestimation of the level of urban‒rural income inequality mediating this association. These findings highlight that Chinese people vastly underestimate the actual levels of urban‒rural income inequality, which shapes their attitudes toward redistributive policies.
Research in psychology, sociology, economics, and other disciplines investigating social justice has identified associations between fair treatment and human well-being. However, the lack of a practical and valid instrument for measuring individual experiences of fair treatment in multiple areas of life has limited the ability to understand the relationship between fairness and wellness. The purpose of these studies was to develop and establish the initial psychometric properties and convergent validity of a scale measuring personal experiences of fairness across various life domains. Development and validation occurred across three studies. Scale development in Study 1 included the generation of items, item revision, and analysis of content validity. A review of existing literature and qualitative data derived from focus group discussions informed the initial pool of items. Cognitive interviews and expert input aided in analysis of content validity and revision of items. Study 2 consisted of confirmatory factor analyses to evaluate the performance of items and determine the underlying factor structure of the scale. In Study 3, factor analyses were used to evaluate convergent validity with other fairness-related instruments. Results of the first study supported the conceptualization of fairness along a social-ecological spectrum: experiences of fairness existed in multiple distinct life domains (e.g., interpersonal, occupational, community). Results from the second study revealed a bifactor model with one general Fairness factor and four Interpersonal, Occupational, Community, and Societal ecological group factors. Results from the third study suggested acceptable convergent validity among some subscales and other established instruments, while also suggesting that refinements to the Community fairness subscale might improve the scale. The final 12-item scale demonstrated good reliability. Results of this study produced an instrument able to measure individual experiences of fair treatment across four life domains.
How individuals perceive the fairness of their pay carries profound implications for individuals and society. Perceptions of pay injustice are linked to a spectrum of negative outcomes, including diminished well-being, poor health, increased stress, and depressive symptoms, alongside various detrimental effects in the work domain. Despite the far-reaching impact of these justice evaluations, validity evidence on their measurement in survey research is missing. Two measurement strategies dominate applied justice research with surveys: Asking for evaluations using a response scale or relying on measures of the just reward to capture fairness. It remains an unresolved question which of these two prevailing approaches—corresponding to the concepts of expressed justice and experienced justice, respectively—yields more robust and high-quality assessments, especially in cross-country research contexts where measurement consistency is critical. This study evaluates the measurement quality of these two approaches using the European Social Survey, which encompasses 29 countries. Our comparative analysis of experienced and expressed justice for gross and net earnings offers comprehensive insights into measurement choices in cross-national surveys. We find that nonresponse to income questions significantly undermines the measurement quality of experienced justice due to its dependence on actual earnings data. Moreover, while both experienced and expressed justice correlate with related concepts as anticipated, the patterns are more consistently observed in expressed justice. These findings suggest that survey practitioners aiming to measure distributive justice of earnings may favor expressed justice instruments, particularly those utilizing rating scales, for efficient and rigorous evaluation.
Based on nationally representative data from the 2019 and 2021 Chinese Social Survey, this study examined the relationship between perceptions of upward and downward social mobility (PUSM/PDSM) and political trust by using the diagonal reference model and ordinary least squares model. We found that PUSM was positively related to political trust, while PDSM was negatively related to it after excluding the influence of social positions of origin and destination. We also provided evidence that perceived fairness mediated the nexus between PUSM/PDSM and political trust. Our findings underscored the pivotal role of perceived social mobility in shaping the political trust of Chinese citizens and elucidate the micro-level psychological mechanisms underlying this relationship. Hence, we advocate for the implementation of policies geared towards fostering upward mobility and alleviating inequality, aimed at addressing potential crises in political trust. Considering the decline in overall social mobility and the exacerbation of inequality following the COVID-19 epidemic, this research holds heightened contemporary significance.
Place and the intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge are deeply intertwined among Indigenous groups due to the significance of the environment and land within Indigenous ideologies, and the legacies of displacement wrought by settler colonialism. Little research explores this topic among Indigenous tribes in the Gulf South, who face unique environmental challenges related to climate change, land loss, oil extraction, and who depend on the coastal environment for cultural and subsistence resources. Scholarship on this topic among tribes that are not federally recognized is similarly limited. Using semi-structured interviews among 31 self-identified women members of a U.S. Gulf South tribe, we show how gendered and place-based knowledges manifest within the embodied and material experiences of tribal members, as well as the ways that those experiences and the transmission of knowledge are mediated by political and environmental changes through the example of traditional health and healing practices and knowledges. Key findings that emerged include: (a) Place-Based Concerns about Environmental Change and Displacement; (b) Concerns about Future Generational Changes in Knowledge Transmission; (c) Loss of Indigenous Health Knowledge. We suggest that there are significant impediments to the sociocultural reproduction of traditional health and healing practices and knowledges within the tribe brought about by environmental changes (e.g. saltwater intrusion, land loss, etc.) and the continuing influx of Western medicinal knowledge and practices. In contextualizing these findings within the environmental reproductive justice framework, we echo extant intersectional environmental research suggesting that environmental degradation and legacies of settler colonialism, by virtue of place-based and gendered knowledges and labor, disproportionately burden women, especially Indigenous women. We also note that despite significant material and cultural threats, tribal members demonstrate resilience and resistance to the macro-scale forces obstructing Indigenous ways of life.
Which reference information do nurses select to evaluate pay and does their employment arrangement matter? To answer these questions, we investigated the role of three types of reference information (perceived responsibility, social appreciation from colleagues and patients) in pay unfairness evaluations of Swiss temporary and staff nurses. Since unfair pay signals a lack of worth, we examined the role of social appreciation from the two sources as boundary condition for the effects of pay unfairness on exhaustion and job satisfaction. We analyzed our time-lagged survey data from 262 staff nurses and 120 temporary nurses using a multi-group framework. The effect of pay unfairness on job satisfaction – but not on exhaustion – was stronger in temporary nurses than in staff nurses. Contrary to our hypotheses, we did not find evidence that social appreciation from colleagues or patients moderated the effects of pay unfairness on job satisfaction and exhaustion. Follow-up analyses showed, however, that staff nurses rely on perceived responsibility and colleagues’ appreciation to gauge pay unfairness. Temporary nurses, in contrast, considered social appreciation on the output side, consistently for both sources of appreciation. This pattern of findings suggests that the comparison processes underlying fairness evaluations are not uniform across different employment arrangements. From a practical perspective, the findings imply that appreciation will not do as compensation for pay staff nurses perceive as unfair.
Believing the world is more just for oneself than for others—referred to as personal justice ascendancy—can protect and enhance well-being. For African Americans, personal justice ascendancy may be multifaceted, encompassing comparisons not only to other African Americans but also to White Americans. The present research examined relationships between these two specific personal justice ascendancies and psychological well-being among African Americans. African American adults (N = 274) reported their beliefs about justice for self, for other African Americans, and for White Americans. We measured life satisfaction, perceived stress, and perceptions of healthcare systems as outcomes. Overall, participants believed the world to be more just for White Americans, but less just for other African Americans, than the self. Personal justice ascendancy over African Americans and White Americans both predicted greater life satisfaction and lower perceived stress. Personal justice ascendancy over African Americans predicted more negative perceptions of healthcare, whereas personal justice ascendancy over White Americans predicted more positive healthcare perceptions. Findings suggest effects of personal justice ascendancy on well-being and health-related attitudes are governed by multiple social comparisons for African Americans. Attending to and understanding nuances in these comparisons could further inform efforts to understand and address racial health disparities.
Perceived economic inequality is positively associated with public support for policies to reduce it. However, providing information about economic inequality does not necessarily motivate people to support redistributive policies. This inconsistency may be due to how people interpret the information about inequality. We argue that the interpretation of information about inequality differs between individuals as a function of the characteristics of the source and people’s ideologies. We conducted two experiments using an exploratory (N = 239) and confirmatory (N = 707) strategy. We found that attitudes toward redistribution increased when a seemingly neutral international institution (as opposed to a left-wing political party) provided information about economic inequality due to the credibility attributed to the source—but not due to power and familiarity. Moreover, the effect of providing information about inequality on support for redistribution (via source credibility) depended on people’s ideologies: it was positive and statistically significant for people who held more (vs. less) system-justifying beliefs. These findings contribute to understanding the interplay between social psychological processes, communication strategies, and attitudes toward redistribution.