Contents
Editor’s Column
Dear Friends.
Long
overdue maybe, but here it is – our newsletter is back!
As the executive board has changed, this issue presents a few words
from both Leo Montada (the former President) and Faye Crosby (the
current President).
Most of this issue is dedicated to introducing the current research and
justice-related activities of many
of our members. Knowing what others are doing may lead to some
interesting collaborations. In any case, it seems that shared interests
may increase familiarity and our ability to contribute to each other’s
work.
The newsletter was meant to include additional segments as well: A
paper by Louise H. Kidder of Temple University, which I hope will begin
a debate/discussion, and information
about relevant and recent books and publications. The list was
prepared by Ron Cohen. However, the remarkable response rate from
our members seems to indicate a clear interest in describing members
research and learning about what others are doing.
Including all the information would have led to a sizable (probably
oversized) newsletter. Therefore, the next issue (hopefully, May 2003)
will include the omitted segments as well as information about our 2004
conference in Canada.
We will be happy to include your comments,
suggestions and replies in the next issue of the newsletter.
Please let me know if there is any other segment/topic/issue you
would like to see included in our newsletter.
Please
send all suggestions, comments or material you want to include to dmoore@colman.ac.il and we’ll
do our best to include it.
Dahlia Moore
Back
President’s Column
Dear Colleagues.
Those of us who have spent time around young children have probably all
noticed an interesting phenomenon: the growth spurt. Some
mornings the child appears to be 500 –600 millimeters taller than the
night before. Oddly, according to medical experts, the apparent
leap in size is real and not an illusion.
For the International Society for Justice Research (ISJR), too, growth
contains many small discontinuities. With ISJR there are moments
when we accomplish the analogue of
gaining a half an inch overnight. One could think of our
growth as a step-function rather than a smooth curve.
Right now, we are experiencing a little leap. In a matter of
months, we hope to make the beginning of a shift into a more
bureaucratized or automatic way of doing business than has been true of
our society in the past. In quite short order, we are attempting
to stabilize our continuing membership, to add
new members, and to regularize the journal subscriptions. Once we
have achieved these goals, we hope to bring some changes to the
journal. Specifically, we are dedicated to getting Social
Justice Research (SJR) into the ISI databases for the social sciences
so that our research may have the appropriate impact on scholars in
many different disciplines who are not (yet) members of ISJR.
To motivate our publisher, Kluwer, in investing the energy and
resources necessary for our listing in ISI databases, we need to take
several steps. First, we need to have a stable membership of
about 125 to 150 members. Second, we need to keep to a strict
production schedule, making sure that each issue of the journal is
ready on time. We are hard at work
on the first task and we are beginning our work on the second
task.
For both tasks, we need your help. When you receive the request
from Sibylle Clausen or Karen Hegtvedt to pay the annual membership
fee, we hope you will send your fees as soon as convenient.
Concerning the journal, we hope that you will consider Social Justice
Research as an outlet for your work, will ask your libraries to order
it, and will tell your colleagues about it. If anyone has in mind
to edit a special issue, please get in touch with Leo Montada or with
me.
As President of ISJR, I find that this is an extremely exciting time
for the society. About ten years ago Mel Lerner had the vision to
start a society of justice researchers and to sign the contract for SJR
with Plenum Press. In
collaboration with several colleagues like Riel Vermunt and Ron
Cohen, Mel also inaugurated the biennial conferences which have been
such a huge success. In recent years, other comrades-in-arms like
Ron Dillehay, Kjell Tornblom, and especially ISJR President Leo Montada
have taken up the baton and carried forward the inspirational work of
Mel. After pouring much of his courtly soul in ISJR,
Leo – with the blessings of his colleagues – arranged for ISJR to
achieve
existence as a formal not-for-profit organization, registered in
Germany,
complete with a set of by-laws. Leo also created a website
( http://www.isjr.org ); established
the mechanism for us to collect dues via credit card payment; and
arranged for the first formal vote for the President of the
organization.
It was through the vote that, to my great delight and deep honor, I
became the current President of ISJR. At the excellent meetings
last summer in Skovde, Sweden, Leo and I asked various members to run
for the offices of Secretary and Treasurer. Several people
volunteered to have their names put forward. In written ballots in
Skovde, Kees van den Bos was elected Secretary and Karen Hegtvedt was
elected Treasurer.
As soon as Kees and Karen were elected, the new Executive Committee
held meetings to decide on several matters. We asked Dahlia Moore
to serve as Newsletter editor, and she
accepted. We also decided where to hold the 2004 conference
– in Calgary. Canada. Jeff Pfeifer and his colleagues at
the University of Regina in Saskatchewan had presented plans for
the conference at the business meeting of the Society. Another
excellent plan had been presented for a conference in Banf. The
executive committee selected Regina over Banf because of our desire to
keep expenses low for attendees. The organizing committee for the
2004 conference includes: Romona Bobocel, John Ellard, Carolyn
Hafer, Murray
Knuttila, Ken Leyton-Brown. Jeff Pfeifer is conference chair and will
be in charge of the local arrangements.
If you have any suggestions for ISJR, please send them to me at fjcrosby@cats.ucsc.edu , and
I will bring them forward to the executive committee. If you
would like to nominate someone (including yourself) please tell us
about the nominee, mentioning his or her professional affiliation and
some of his or her publications. As of last June, we have a new
category of membership – the student member. Student membership costs
$30 (US) per year and brings with it a subscription to SJR,
whereas full membership costs $60 (US), also including a subscription.
In closing, let me say again how honored I
am to serve as your President. I hope to help the Society take
steps towards regularization of function and also hope to help
keep alive the spirit of the founders. It would be vainglorious
to imagine that our small International Society can do much to help
promote justice in the world; but it is not too much to expect that we
can do a little. We scholars must keep open the lines of communication
among ourselves, and we must continue to work hard to understand the
complexities of how people think, feel, and act with regard to
social justice.
Faye
Crosby
Back
Former-President’s
summation:
(1)
ISJR- Its stepwise development
It has been at the Biannual Meeting in Potsdam 1997 when a couple of
people thought about the idea to transform the loose network of justice
researchers – knitted mainly by Melvin Lerner in the nineteen-eighties
– to a regular scientific society.
Soon after the registration of ISJR some of the founding members have
plead for a moratorium to reflect whether a legal organization would
really have advantages compared to
an informal network. Therefore, ISJR had not more than nine members
between 1997 and 1999. During this time, we explored the opinions
within the broader network, and we got a lot of encouragement to start
an expansion.
This was realized early in 2000 with a good resonance: The first
hundred scholars joined ISJR. The bylaws have been revised and adapted
to international standards at the Meeting in Israel. With Plenum Press,
thereafter Kluwer Academic /
Plenum, a special subscription rate of Social Justice Research was
negotiated for ISJR members. Ron Cohen, to whom we are indebted for
this service, started to edit an electronic Newsletter. A homepage of
ISJR was established. The first presidential elections by mail ballot
were carried out in 2001. Faye Crosby received the majority of votes.
At the General Meeting in Skoevde / Schweden 2002 – by this occation:
we are greatful to Kjell Törnblom, Riel Vermunt and Invar Karlsson
who have been great hosts – Karen Hegdvedt and Kees van den Bos were
elected as treasurer and secretary, Dahlia Moore was co-opted to the
Executive Board as editor of the Newsletter, and
some amendments to the bylaws were decided. So, the main structural
advantages of a legal society are now introduced: the allocation of
responsibilities and duties.
This does, of course, not yet guarantee that the members form an active
network with lively exchanges of
information and news, with fruitful cooperation, with fertilization
across disciplines. The officers can provide some facilities, organize
meetings, promote some ideas but it is only the enthusiasm
of the members, which makes a community alive.
The members shall learn more about each other – links to the individual
homepages are available, short descriptions of current research and
recent publications should be made available. The membership list can
be used to spread questions and information. The communication platform
of the ISJR homepage can be used, for scientific debates, for a quick
exchange of opinions about various topics,
e.g., for comments of current political problems and events from
various
perspectives based on justice theory and research. Calls for
international
cooperation can be spread. Much more can be done.
Please send news and information, e.g., about relevant conferences –
calls for contributions, programs, etc. to our Webmaster:
Anette Weidler is ready to serve as such ( weidler@uni-trier.de ).
Don't hesitate to inform the membership about your forthcoming
publications which can be distributed electronically to those who are
requesting them. We shall provide a category in our homepage where new
publications are listed before they
are available in printed form.
Don't hesitate to communicate any idea and
measure, which could enhance the exchange within the network.
Good luck to all of you and good luck to ISJR!
(2) How to raise the impact of Social Justice
Research:
An appeal to the ISJR membership
The journal
Social Justice Research is a resource for ISJR. This resource needs
care. Quite sure, it can be improved. As the current editor of SJR let
me share how the ISJR membership can take care of its journal.
Currently, the ranking of journals is mainly defined by the
impact factors ascribed by the citation databases of ISI. How the
impact factor is calculated? The citations of every article during a
fixed period of time after the publication are counted. The impact
factor is the mean number of citations summed up for the articles of a
journal.
The fact whether a journal is recorded for
a citation database is most important. This raises its visibility
within the scientific community. The expected reception of an article
within the scientific community varies within the impact factor
of a journal. Of course, all authors are interested in publishing
their article in journals with high impact factors. Many institutions
use this criterion for rating the publication success of authors.
SJR is not yet recorded in Social Science Citation Index. ISJR has to
apply for that. The success of such an application will mainly depend
on the answers to two criteria: (1) Does
the journal appear regularly? (2) How frequent articles in SJR are
cited in those journals which are already recorded by ISI.
What can ISJR members do to improve the future status of SJR? They can
take care of their journal in two ways:
(1) More members should submit good manuscripts for publication in SJR.
(2) All members should cite every citable article published in SJR in
every manuscript wherever they publish it, especially when they publish
in journals, which are already recorded by ISI.
If all members follow these two requests, SJR will be recorded by ISI
within the near future and it will have an impact factor which will be
adequate for a small scientific community as we are. Of course, the
impact factor depends on the number of
readers who are also citing authors.
These two requests may mean a social dilemma for ISJR members. The
second one should, however, not pose
a justice problem because the quality of articles in SJR is equivalent
to that of articles in high-ranking journals.
Leo Montada
Back
Applications
Applications to join ISJR are very welcome and may be addressed by
e-mail to
Leo Montada (montada@uni-trier.de
) including your curriculum vitae and a list of publications.
Back
Members Research Interests
Anders Biel and Daniel Eek ( Anders.Biel@psy.gu.se )
Our work has been an attempt to integrate research on social dilemmas
and distributive justice. In particular,
we studied how perceived fairness of resource distribution affects
cooperation in public-goods dilemmas. In a survey of the general
public, as well as in experimental studies employing students,
a positive effect of perceived fairness of the distribution of the
good on willingness to contribute to the public good was established.
These studies were confined to situations where equality was perceived
as the fairest principle for distribution. Later experiments extended
this finding to situations where equity was perceived as a fair
principle for distribution. Our present line of research includes how
concern for efficient resource use can counteract greed and increase
cooperation rates, but also neutralizes effects of perceived fairness.
Günter Bierbrauer , Dan Bar-On, Cordula Henke, & Michael
Jaeger
Since 1989, more than 750,000 Russian Jews
(In the following, we use the simplifying term "Russian Jews" for
all Jewish people who live in or emigrated from one of the GUS-countries .) have emigrated from the
countries of the former Soviet Union to Israel. In the same period,
more than 100.000 Russian
Jews have emigrated from Israel to Germany. The immigrant’s adaptation
into the host societies is not without social and ethnic tensions. For
example, in the German host society the Jews are a minority group.
Moreover, because of historical background ambivalent relations between
immigrant Jews and the German host society emerge. Frequently,
therefore, conflicts arise both between the Russian-Jewish immigrants
and the indigenous people (e.g. within the Jewish communities in
Germany) and within the immigrant’s reference group (e.g. family
conflicts).
The main issue of the research project is to investigate how immigrants
handle these conflicts in different situations.
Interpersonal conflict handling depends (among other things) largely on
the cultural orientations of the opponents. The cultural orientations
of the immigrants are subject to changes and adaptation processes,
called acculturation. Hence, relationships between conflict
handling behavior of immigrants and acculturation processes can
be expected. Thus, this study additionally examines to what extent
the conflict behavior of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Germany and
Israel differs depending on their cultural orientations and
the acculturation processes they experience.
Acculturation doesn’t proceed at random but reflects individual
evaluations of behavioral goals, normative beliefs and perceived
acculturation barriers. The relative importance of these determinants
must be
seen relative to the host society’s context, which consists of
historical and social determinants, e.g. the immigration policies of
the host societies. In order to investigate the influence of these
determinants on the acculturation processes of Russian-Jewish
immigrants, a second immigration country besides Germany will be
considered in the research project which differs clearly from Germany
with regard to the historical framework and its immigration policy.
Since Israel meets these conditions particularly well and is one of the
main immigration countries for Russian Jews as well, a comparative
study in Germany and Israel will be conducted.
Taken
together, the research project addresses three issues:
- Which
conflict styles and conflict regulation procedures do Russian-Jewish
immigrants in Germany and Israel prefer in different conflict
situations?
- To what
extent is the immigrants’ conflict behavior related to their cultural
orientations and how does it change during the integration process?
- Which
context factors result in different acculturation processes? Do the
acculturation processes of Russian-Jews immigrating to Germany and
Israel show systematic dissimilarities? Which indirect relations do
exist between the context determinants of the
host society and the conflict behavior of the Russian-Jewish immigrants?
Hilde Bojer ( hilde.bojer@econ.uio.no )
My position is associate professor at the
Department of Economics, University of Oslo. I have just finished a
book called "Distributional Justice: Theory and Measurement" to be
published by Routledge in the course of 2003. It
is an introduction to theories of justice and to methods of
measurement, particularly the measurement of income and wealth, and
inequality measures, and is aimed at social scientists in general, not
only economists. In the future, I aim to work on 1. The capability
approach to measuring income, and 2. Family policies in the welfare
state. I also wonder if you know about the egalitarian web site
organized by
marc.fleurbaey@univ-pau.fr . The web address is
aran.univ-pau.fr/ee/page6.asp . It lists new papers in the
field of social justice, and its members may well be interested in
joining our society.
Serge Desmarais ( sdesmara@uoguelph.ca
)
In my current research, I continue to examine the variables that
contribute to women’s reported perceptions of lower entitlement to pay
than their male counterparts. I have argued that women’s own lower pay
history places them in a disadvantaged position when they assess their
pay entitlement. My studies have considered these issues in the
laboratory and in samples of workers, with similar results. Overall,
women report lower pay and pay entitlement than men but the gender
difference in pay entitlement is most often
eliminated when the effects of earned pay are covaried. I am currently
expanding this program of research in several ways. For instance,
I am comparing directly the effects of an internal source social
comparison
(i.e., task relevant pay history) to that of an external social
comparison
standard (i.e., pay received by similar others). Another avenue of
research
considers what variables influence people’s perception of how much
they deserve above and beyond their current income. My research
indicates
that roughly 50% of participants perceive what they earn as what they
deserve whereas the other 50% feels entitled to more money. I am
assessing what variables predict these two different perspectives. Of
the fifteen
variables considered so far in my models, none have been good
predictors
of who feels they deserve the same, or more, than they earn. Finally,
my other studies examine the ethical ramifications of asking people to
indicate their expected salary when they apply for a new job. My
argument
is that doing so is a direct form of wage discrimination against women
because we know, on the basis of past research, that women are more
likely
to ask for a lower wage. These issues will be investigated in work
organizations.
Daniel Eek ( daniel.eek@psy.gu.se )
I’m currently working on two projects. The
first project studies Deutsch’s (1975) proposals on the effects
of distribution goal on choices of fair distributive principles.
For various resources, I try to manipulate the goal of the distribution
to see whether choices of distributive principles vary accordingly.
When there is uncertainty about the goal and goal, therefore, cannot
serve as the basis for choices of a distributive principle, the
hypothesis is that people instead will use information about the
positions of others as the basis for their choices. This project also
aims at extending our previous research combining distributive justice
and social dilemmas research by studying the effects of people’s
perceptions
of fairness on their willingness to cooperate.
The second project aims at studying the (causal) relationship between
people’s vertical trust (trust in authorities etc.) and their
horizontal trust (trust in others). Previous
research has found high and positive correlations between these
two forms of trust, and there is a debate of whether it is a causal
relationship, and, if so, in what direction it goes. However, no
attempt has yet been made in order to experimentally test the causal
relationship. The project aims at doing this.
Niklas Fransson ( niklas.fransson@psy.gu.se
)
Traditionally, the majority of moral theories have assumed that the
evaluation of potentially immoral events relies on elaborate reasoning,
and that people consciously refer to values in order to justify the
selected judgment or course of action. In collaboration with Karl Ask
my present and planned future research tries to place the moral
judgment process in a dual-process context. More specifically, we
suggest that an alternative, direct route to moral reactions may
develop, disengaged from extensive reasoning, accounting for intuitive
moral reactions. In two experiments, using a recent model of
moral-value representation (Biel, Fransson, & Dahlstrand, 1997) as
a theoretical framework, this notion has been tested. In the first
experiment, the idea that intuitive moral reactions are mediated by the
activation of prototypical representations of immoral events was
evaluated using reaction-time measures (Ask & Fransson, 2001). A
second experiment tested the idea that events violating the same
moral value are coherently organized in memory, thus forming distinct
categories of events. Results from the two experiments support the
assumptions that moral judgments do not rely exclusively on extensive
elaboration, and that immoral events pertinent to the same moral value
are organized within the same superordinate category.
Carolyn Hafer ( Carolyn.Lee.Hafer@brocku.ca
)
Currently, I am involved in a number of research projects related to
the justice motive. First, I am studying reactions to victims
whose situation threatens the belief in a just world in an attempt to
expand the array of just-world maintenance strategies that have been
empirically studied, as well as to look at predictors of these various
strategies and the implications of these strategies for how victims of
injustice are ultimately treated. Along with Laurent Begue, I am
working on a comprehensive review
of the just world literature since 1980. Mel Lerner and I are
also working on an updated version of his 1980 book, "The Belief in a
Just World: A Fundamental Delusion". Finally, Jim Olson and I are
investigating the conceptualization of the "scope of justice", as well
as conducting experiments designed to test some alternative
explanations for past findings in this area.
Karen Hegtvedt
( khegtve@emory.edu )
Karen A. Hegtvedt is Associate Professor at Emory University. She
and her collaborator, Cathryn Johnson, are currently developing a
series of experiments to test their predictions regarding the impact of
collective sources of legitimacy on perceptions of and reactions to
distributive injustice. Recent work
published in Social Psychology Quarterly (63:298-311, 2000) provides
the theoretical argument for the first experiment, which moves justice
analysis beyond the individual level. That work focuses on
how support by subordinates and support by superiors for an unfair
distribution, under varying conditions of group identity,
differentially
affects emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to
injustice.
And, in a paper presented at the International Sociological Association
this past summer, Hegtvedt, Johnson, and Clay-Warner extend their
argument
to analyze the effects of collective sources of the legitimacy of the
allocator and his or her use of fair/unfair procedures on reactions to
distributive injustice. In addition to the justice/legitimacy
project, Hegtvedt and Clay-Warner are working on a series of papers
examining various issues about procedural and distributive justice in
the workplace. The first paper (Social Psychology Quarterly
65:386-400, 2002), examines resentment toward work-family policies as a
question of injustice. The other two papers (both in progress)
look at the relative importance of procedural and distributive justice
on organizational commitment and
on job satisfaction, respectively, among workers differentially
affected
by downsizing (survivors, victims, and unaffected workers).
Finally,
Hegtvedt is preparing a review piece on the multifaceted roles of
justice
in-group processes and in other areas of Sociology.
Elisabeth Kals (kals@uni-trier.de
)
Intercultural justice project on local environmental conflicts - The
intercultural research project is aiming at the inquiry of concurrent
viewpoints and attitudes concerning
the willingness to act in local environmental conflicts. On the base of
this inquiry, it should be possible to deduce and evaluate
community measures for mediation. The model contrasts distributive,
procedural and interactional justice - as universal as well as
contextual justice appraisals - with generalized and contextual
variables of
interest to explain (A) the overall fairness of the concurring
political
decisions and measures, (B) the willingness to promote these measures,
and (C) the willingness to promote a constructive solution of the
conflict. The central hypothesis says that - inconsistent with the
declaration of the rational-choice-models - acting in local
environmental conflicts is not only motivated by self-interest but also
by justice motives. It is assumed that feedback to the community on
these expected results within an experimental design (written feedback
by a brochure versus workshops) will evoke a change in justice
perceptions, it will minimize self-interest, and it will promote the
willingness to support a constructive solution of the conflict. A
comparison of this study’s results with
those of a parallel Australian study by Dr. Geoff Syme and Blair
Nancarrow (CSIRO, Perth) is aiming at the discovery of cultural
similarities as
well as the differences. (See also the contribution of Dr. G. Syme and
B. Nancarrow in this newsletter). The study is supported by the German
Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn). The
project
is in cooperation with Dr. Geoff Syme and Blair Nancarrow, CSIRO Perth,
Australia. Staff members: Dr. Heidi Ittner, Markus Müller.
Cooperation partners: Prof. Dr. Leo Montada, Dr. Jürgen Maes
Jane Mansbridge ( jane_mansbridge@Harvard.edu
)
Jane Mansbridge recently edited, with Aldon Morris, a volume of
empirical studies entitled Oppositional Consciousness (University of
Chicago Press, 2001, paperback). The volume contains her own
dissection of the concept of oppositional consciousness (that is, the
generic form of race consciousness, class consciousness, gender
consciousness, etc.) in a chapter called “Complicating Oppositional
Consciousness," a chapter by Aldon Morris situating
the concept in social movement theory, and highly readable empirical
chapters that open up previously unexplored angles on Black
consciousness
based in the Black church; disability consciousness based in both
segregated schools for deaf and blind people and "borrowed"
consciousness among the mobility-impaired; gender consciousness based
in the plaintiffs and lawyers in the earliest American sexual
harassment suits; Chicano consciousness based in migrant patterns from
Texas to Wisconsin and Minnesota; divided consciousness based in
struggles among African Americans during the Reverend Martin Luther
King Jr.'s 1966 Chicago Freedom
Movement; and multidimensional oppositional consciousness based
in AIDS activism.
She has
also produced two analyses in the normative theory
of democratic representation: "Should Women Represent Women and
Blacks Represent Blacks? A Contingent `Yes,'" Journal of
Politics, vol. 61:3, August l999, and "The Many Faces of
Representation," on the website
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/prg/mansb/faces.htm .
Currently
she
is working on Everyday Feminism, a study of the way ordinary people,
not active in politics, play significant roles in shaping and
furthering some social movements. The book is based on in-depth
interviews with about fifty low-income women (approximately one-third
Black, two-thirds White), supplemented by survey data. A key
chapter explores how the widespread practice of calling someone a
"male chauvinist" helped change conceptions of gender justice.
Gerold
Mikula ( gerold.mikula@uni-graz.at
)
(1) Testing an attribution-of-blame model of judgments
of injustice
The attribution-of-blame model of judgments of injustice (Mikula, 1993,
in press) depicts judgments of injustice as blaming of an actor who is
seen as responsible for the violation of entitlement of somebody else
without sufficient justifications. A recent series of correlational and
experimental studies (Mikula, in press) lend support to most of the
propositions of the model and show that attributions of responsibility
and blame, and the respective constituent components (attributions of
causality and intention, and perceived lack of justification),
contribute to perceptions
of injustice beyond violation of entitlement. Studies in progress
and planning analyze the conditions under which judgments of injustice
do and do not correspond to the model. Similar to recent
dual-process-theories of information processing, I assume that
situational and individual difference variables moderate the way in
which judgments of injustice are made.
(2) Division of household
labor and evaluations of (in)justice
Division of family work,
and household labor in particular, has become a popular topic
of research in social sciences. However, perceptions and evaluation of
the division, and the consequences resulting thereof, received much
less attention (Mikula, 1998; Kluwer & Mikula, in press). Our
studies analyze variables which contribute to the evaluation of
(in)justice. Results show that cognitions about the household labor and
its division, and social comparisons in particular, account for
the largest amount of variance of justice evaluations (Mikula &
Freudenthaler, 2002). More detailed analyses reveal that it is the
outcomes of social comparisons which directly affect the justice
evaluations. The extent or frequency of making different kinds of
comparisons operates as a moderator that determines the weight of the
various comparison outcomes for the evaluations of justice. Women
differ in their predominant kinds of social comparison and,
consequently, also differ in their
judgments of justice. The topic of evaluations of justice of the
division
of household labor will be further pursued in 2003 –2005 as part of
an international EC-project on “Family life and professional work:
Conflict and synergy”.
(3) Justice and the distribution of tasks and duties
Social psychological research on distributive
justice has focused on the distribution of positively valued goods,
outcomes and conditions, and largely neglected
the distribution of tasks, duties and responsibilities. We study the
arrangements and rules of task distribution and factors that determine
their choice and evaluation. The theoretical framework underlying this
line of research (Mikula, 2002) considers three sets of variables: the
arrangements and rules, the nature of tasks to
be distributed, and the nature of the respective social system.
(4) Justice and social conflict
Together with Michael Wenzel (Mikula &
Wenzel, 2000), I analyze possible effects of ideas of justice,
perceptions of injustice, and the use of justice arguments in
the emergence, course and resolution of social conflicts. We argue that
justice plays multiple roles in the dynamic of social
conflicts: a trigger that elicits conflict, an argument in the course
and resolution of conflicts, and a basis for commitment to the
resolution. In our most recent analysis (Wenzel and Mikula, under
review) social
identity theory and self categorization theory serve as the background
to discuss these functions with respect to three key areas of diplomacy
of prevention of international conflicts: early warning and early
action,
mediation, and reconciliation.
James M. Olson, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Dahlia Moore ( msdmoore@huji.ac.il )
My main current project is writing a book with a Palestinian partner,
Salem Aweiss, of Bir Zeit University
in the Palestinian Authority. The book tells the story of Jews,
Arabs and Palestinians. It looks at the life experiences of the
three social categories, their beliefs, attitudes, and interactions,
and their views of the future. Many and diverse voices within each
group are represented, showing how the conflict between the groups
tears
at the societies themselves. Our intense collaboration reveals that
truth, fact, and righteousness are relative. Moreover, each fact has
many facets and interpretations. Thus, building bridges among the three
groups will necessitate increasing their understanding of the different
meanings each group attaches to each issue. The book's unconventional
approach
to the Arab-Israeli conflict is its relation to the three distinct
societies. Previous research focused either on the conflict within
Israeli society (i.e., Jews versus Arabs, dissociating it from the
broader conflict and excluding the Palestinians) or on the conflict
between Israeli and Palestinian societies (excluding or ignoring the
Arab citizens of Israel). Perceptions of justice, relative deprivation,
and discrimination are discussed, as are their implications for
intolerance of others and willingness to
assume social responsibility.
My other project is creating an apolitical Social Justice Center
In Israel. The Mission
of the center is to expand the knowledge of civic society and the
relations among social categories in Israel in order to: (1)
Increase understanding between the diverse segments of Israeli society.
(2) Provide tools that will enable the creation of just
social policy that will strengthen social integration. The Center's
activities will focus on research, dissemination of knowledge,
development of academic programs, and contribution to the community.
The Center's goals are to reduce injustice and inequality in order
to minimize hostility, alienation, and fragmentation that have been
strengthening in Israeli society as in many other societies. The Social
Justice Center, which is an interdisciplinary endeavor, brings together
people from diverse disciplines (Economics, Sociology, Psychology,
Education, Communication, Business and Law) to create innovative
approaches to both analyzing and managing justice problems.
Jim Olson ( jolson@julian.uwo.ca )
My longest-standing interest in justice research has been relative
deprivation (the feeling that one has been treated unfairly). I
have been interested in the determinants of relative deprivation, as
well as the issue of why people who
are deprived often tolerate their situation quietly rather than
protesting. I am also interested in the role of self-presentation
processes in reports of negative emotions including relative
deprivation: people sometimes exaggerate their discontent and
sometimes understate their discontent for strategic reasons.
Another, more recent interest is the psychology of dehumanisation,
exclusion, or demonizing. I am working with Carolyn Hafer to try
to understand the psychological mechanisms that can produce extremely
negative treatment of an individual or group. I have also
collaborated with John Ellard on this topic, focussing specifically on
the relation between Beliefs in a Just World and reactions to
perpetrators of evil acts.
Finally, I have been doing some research with Kimberly Quinn on the
relation between regulatory focus (promotion focus versus prevention
focus) and people’s willingness to engage in collective action.
We have found that a prevention focus is associated with greater
willingness to protest or perform assertive actions, perhaps because
collective behavior is designed to remove a negative state (e.g.,
unfair treatment, poverty, discrimination).
Linda J. Skitka ( lskitka@uic.edu )
A considerable amount of my current research is focused on the role
that moral values and convictions play in how people think about
fairness. Although many justice researchers and theorists argue
that people care about fairness primarily because being fair maximizes
their long term self-interests (the material self-interest, or
instrumental, perspective), or
because fair procedural treatment communicates important information
about the individual's standing within important groups (the social
identity perspective), some of my recent research has explored a third
possibility, specifically, that people sometimes care about justice
because
of a need to express and defend deeply held moral values and
convictions. In support of the notion that moral values can be an
important foundation of justice reasoning, my recent work indicates
that procedural fairness becomes a less relevant concern if people have
a moral investment in
an outcome (e.g., policy outcomes like legal abortion, or a specific
verdict in a trial because of moral certainty about a defendant's guilt
or innocence). When outcomes are morally mandated, people see even
egregious violations of procedural fairness (e.g., vigilantism) as
nonetheless just, so long as the morally mandated outcome is achieved.
My most recent efforts in this area have been directed toward (a)
demonstrating that moral mandates-- i.e., strong attitudes that have
the added component of moral conviction--have qualities that
distinguish them from other kinds of strong attitudes (i.e., extreme,
important, and certain attitudes, that are not held with moral
conviction), (b) exploring the underlying cognitive processes that lead
people to disregard procedural information when they have a moral
mandate about outcomes (do actively revise their appraisal of
procedural fairness when procedures fail to produce the mandated
outcome, or do they simply attend less to procedural information in
morally-loaded contexts?), (c) testing whether people have more
difficulty deciding on procedures to resolve conflict about morally
vested as compared to
non-morally vested issues, and (d) developing a more comprehensive
theory of justice that can account for when people's justice reasoning
will be
primarily shaped or defined by material, social, or personal/moral
needs
and goals. This comprehensive model is premised on the notion
that
how people define fairness depends on which aspect of identity (and
thus
which values and goals) currently dominates their working self-concept.
Geoffrey J. Syme , Blair
E. Nancarrow
Justice in Water Allocation Decision Making
Australian Research Centre for Water in
Society (ARCWIS), CSIRO Land and Water, Australia
ARCWIS is a
team of social scientists within CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organization for Australia) with a community
psychology and natural resources planning background. Research
activities are mainly focused on the community’s viewpoints of water
resource management and allocation of water.
Since the late eighties, this research program has applied social
psychological theories of equity, justice and fairness to the
implementation and evaluation of water allocation decisions in real
situations. Qualitative and quantitative research of the
past twelve years in diverse application and government policy
contexts showed that justice concerns are highly salient in
decision-making processes in the allocation of water and that decision
making is not
only motivated by self-interest but also by justice motives.
Initial studies in the context of water allocation revealed universal
fairness principles as key variables in people’s perceptions in
decision-making
processes. These principles were derived from a range of theoretical
bases including Virtue Theory; Libertarianism; philosophies of human,
animal & environmental rights; Cost Benefit philosophies as well
as Procedural and Distributive Justice. Following studies, when
irrigation
communities were faced with possible decreased allocations to provide
for environmental sustainability, showed the significance of
situational fairness perceptions besides universal fairness
principles. The impact of both universal and situational fairness
principles could be confirmed in three most recent studies in the
context of groundwater re-allocation for environmental
sustainability. The latest social justice research project is a
cross-cultural, collaborative study with the University of Trier in
Germany that aimed to examine a cross-cultural model on community
perceptions of fairness and justice in environmental management (see
the contribution of
PD Dr. E. Kals in this newsletter).
New Books about and around Justice
will be published in the next Newsletter in June
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