Social Justice Research 

About: Social Justice Research is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Social policy & Procedural justice. It has an ISSN identifier of 0885-7466. Over the lifetime, 811 publications have been published receiving 30207 citations.

When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize

Abstract: Researchers in moral psychology and social justice have agreed that morality is about matters of harm, rights, and justice. On this definition of morality, conservative opposition to social justice programs appears to be immoral, and has been explained as a product of various non-moral processes such as system justification or social dominance orientation. In this article we argue that, from an anthropological perspective, the moral domain is usually much broader, encompassing many more aspects of social life and valuing institutions as much or more than individuals. We present theoretical and empirical reasons for believing that there are five psychological systems that provide the foundations for the worlds many moralities. The five foundations are psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Political liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five foundations.

The Role of Procedural and Distributive Justice in Organizational Behavior

Abstract: To investigate the relationship between fairness and organizational outcomes, the present study examined the survey responses of government employees at six Federal installations. Indices of procedural and distributive fairness were factor-analytically derived. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both the procedural measures and the distributive measures were significantly related to measures of job satisfaction, evaluation of supervisor, conflict/harmony, trust in management, and turnover intention. Procedural fairness accounted for significantly more variance than distributive fairness in each of these criterion measures, except for turnover intention. These findings are related to conceptual and methodological issues concerning procedural fairness and organizational behavior.

Interactional fairness judgments: The influence of causal accounts

Abstract: There has been an increasing amount of research conducted on issues of procedural justice. Although this research has demonstrated that the type of procedure used to allocate outcomes has an independent influence on people's judgments of the fairness of a decision, there is growing empirical evidence that such judgments are influenced by the enactment of the procedure as well. Fairness concerns raised about the propriety of a decision maker's behavior during the enactment of procedures are representative of a desire forinteractional justice. In this paper, we present three studies that examine the effects of giving acausal account, or a justification, versus not providing a justification, on judgments of interactional fairness and endorsement of a decision maker's actions. In Study I, a laboratory study, ratings of interactional fairness and support for a manager were higher when subjects received a causal account that claimed mitigating circumstances for a manager's improper action than when they did not receive such a causal account. A second laboratory study replicated the same pattern of findings in two different organizational contexts. In addition, it was found that the perceived adequacy of the causal account was a critical factor explaining its effect. In Study 3, a field setting, ratings of both interactional fairness and procedural fairness were higher when a manager provided anadequate causal account to justify the allocation of an unfavorable outcome. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for research on interactional and procedural justice.

Ethical Fading: The Role of Self-Deception in Unethical Behavior

Abstract: This paper examines the root of unethical dicisions by identifying the psychological forces that promote self-deception. Self-deception allows one to behave self-interestedly while, at the same time, falsely believing that one's moral principles were upheld. The end result of this internal con game is that the ethical aspects of the decision “fade” into the background, the moral implications obscured. In this paper we identify four enablers of self-deception, including language euphemisms, the slippery slope of decision-making, errors in perceptual causation, and constraints induced by representations of the self. We argue that current solutions to unethical behaviors in organizations, such as ethics training, do not consider the important role of these enablers and hence will be constrained in their potential, producing only limited effectiveness. Amendments to these solutions, which do consider the powerful role of self-deception in unethical decisions, are offered.

The World is More Just for Me than Generally: About the Personal Belief in a Just World Scale's Validity

Abstract: Differences between personal and general belief in a just world were studied in four questionnaire studies and one experiment. Personal just world belief could reliably be differentiated from general just world belief, and subjects endorsed more strongly the personal compared to the general just world belief. Moreover, personal belief in a just world predicted subjective well-being and self-esteem, and this positive impact was independent of general just world belief and favorable self-perceptions. Finally, the more subjects were aware of their own unfairness, the more the personal belief in a just world showed a negative impact on self-esteem. Results give evidence to the just world beliefs' character as world views and as indicators of a personal contract between individual and social world.