Newsletter

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News from the President

Dear ISJR members,

There are several items to report on in this newsletter. First, the 13^th biennial ISJR Conference is getting closer and the Organizing Committee is working hard on the finishing touches to the program and other details. This promises to be a very exciting and diverse meeting in an inspiring location! Further details are given by the Conference Organizing Committee later in this newsletter.

A new Executive Board will be in place beginning at the conference in August. Clara Sabbagh, who has served as President-Elect since last August, will take over as President at our General Business Meeting. Clara brings a wealth of enthusiasm, great ideas, and administrative talent to the job. She has already been tremendously helpful in several of our Executive Board discussions, and in organizing the nominations for secretary and treasurer. Clara is also working with a potential conference host, who will present a conference proposal at the General Business Meeting. Our society will be in very capable hands under Clara’s direction! At the General Business Meeting, the membership will also be electing a new treasurer and secretary. There is one very worthy candidate for each of these positions. See later in this newsletter for details. Manfred Schmitt has agreed to continue in his role as editor of the ISJR newsletter (thank you, Manfred!). Finally, Curtis Hardin will be stepping down as editor of Social Justice Research at the end of this year. The Executive Committee and Springer is currently in the process of selecting the new editor. More news will be available soon.

As this is the last newsletter before my term as ISJR President ends, I would like to take the opportunity to thank several people who have done such a great job running our organization over the past two years. Linda Skitka served as Past-President from August 2008 to August 2009, and has very patiently answered my countless questions about the presidency and the workings of ISJR. Although her official term ended last year, she has continued to provide me and the rest of the executive with institutional information and great advice from her invaluable past experience. Thank-you Linda for your kindness, generosity, and administrative know-how!

Larry Heuer is completing his second term as treasurer of ISJR. The treasurer was a huge job this year, as we made the move to using 123Signup for our membership management. With this system now in place, the next treasurer will enjoy a much reduced workload. Larry also spent a significant amount of time researching the issue of tax-exempt status in the US, as well as guiding ISJR through an official audit of its books from 2008 and 2009. The audit, which we needed this year for conference-funding purposes, should be helpful to next year’s conference organizing team, as well as to our new treasurer, as a legal record that ISJR is in good financial standing. All of these activities Larry conducted over and above his usual tasks of organizing the dues payments, handling electronic and hard-copy journal delivery to members, and managing all of our financial transactions and records. Thanks Larry for your tireless efforts on behalf of ISJR! The new treasurer will surely benefit from all of your work.

Isabel Correia has been our Secretary since August, 2008. Her primary role has been to work with Anette Weidler, our webmaster, to keep the website updated, and deal with general inquiries to ISJR. In addition, Isabel took on the role of organizing the nomination and voting process for the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award committee, for which she did a fantastic job! I would also like to thank Anette Weidler for her great work on the regular website updates, and for the extra work she did this year to give the ISJR website a newer and brighter look. We have had several positive comments on her efforts!

As mentioned, Manfred Schmitt will continue in his role of Editor of this newsletter. We thank Manfred for the many years he has devoted to creating a newsletter that does such a good job of keeping us all connected and informed! Not only is Manfred the Newsletter Editor, but perhaps his largest role with ISJR is acting as unofficial liaison with the German legal system and as translator of documents. Manfred has spent many, many hours talking to the legal authorities, answering my legal questions, explaining the nuances of the German language to me and others, etc. His dedication to ISJR in this regard is truly unprecedented, and I can’t thank him enough!

The 2008-2010 Executive also includes the conference host, John Ellard. John and other members of the Organizing Committee – including Ramona Bobocel, Leanne Gosse, and Mitchell Callan – have been devoting an enormous amount of time over the past 2 years to organizing the Banff conference. Due to their great enthusiasm and hard work, the conference attracted a record number of submissions from a record number of countries and disciplines. This year’s conference should therefore give even greater exposure to our organization and attract several new members. Thanks to everyone who helped make ISJR-2010 a reality. We are very much looking forward to the fruits of your labours! 

See you in Banff!

Sincerely,
Carolyn Hafer
President ISJR

News from the Treasurer - Renew now for reduced conference registration fees

Dear current and former ISJR members,

I am writing again to invite you to renew your membership with the International Society for Justice Research for 2010. Note that there are reduced registration fees for the 2010 ISJR conference in Banff for all members of ISJR.

Your renewed membership (annual dues are currently $75 US for members with permanent positions, or $45 US for members without permanent positions) includes a subscription to the journal Social Justice Research. Your subscription to SJR also includes a code for electronic access which I send out before the first issue of each SJR volume is published. Importantly, your membership dues also assist with covering the modest expenses of maintaining our Society and providing annual awards. Associate Memberships are also available for students (dues for Associate Members are currently $10 US per year without subscription to Social Justice Research and $40 US per year, with a subscription of SJR included).

Also as a reminder, the ISJR Executive Committee has made a change in the service provider that will manage our Society's membership and event functions. The committee has enlisted the services of 123signup.com. Many of you might be familiar with this service from your memberships in other organizations. We prefer it to PayPal in part because of its facility for assisting us with additional functions not offered by PayPal that we think will serve our Society well in the future, including the potential for event management. 123signup comes highly recommended and promises to be as safe and secure for your financial transactions as PayPal was.

You can renew your membership by going to the membership page of the ISJR website at:

 http://www.isjr.org/Members.html

If you experience any problems with this website (or with receipt of your journals), please let me know in order that I might try to assist. Thank you for your continuing support of the ISJR. I look forward to seeing your memberships renewed very soon.

Sincerely,

Larry Heuer

LBH3@Columbia.edu

Nominees for Secretary and Treasurer

At the General Business Meeting in Banff, ISJR members will be voting on the Executive Committee positions of Secretary and Treasurer. Only Full Members of ISJR (not Associate Members) are eligible to vote in elections. The General Business Meeting will be held at the end of the day on Monday, August 23, 2010.

Candidate for Secretary SUSAN V. OPOTOW John Jay College of Criminal Justice City University of New York E-mail: sopotow@jjay.cuny.edu

A social and organizational psychologist by training, Susan Opotow is Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City of New York. She also lectures at the Doctoral Programs in Criminal Justice and Social and Personality at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Susan has published many articles on social injustice, moral inclusion and exclusion, conflict resolution and environmental justice which have been published in journals such as Social Justice Research, Peace and Conflict and Theory into Practice. Recently, she has been awarded with the John Jay College Faculty Scholarly Excellence Award, American Psychological Foundation 2008 Raymond A. and Rosalee G. Weiss Innovative Research and Program Grant and the Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award for “outstanding contributions as a scholar, teacher, and mentor". Susan has served in leading senior positions including (to mention just a few), Interim Deputy Chair of the Department of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and Editor of the Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.

Candidate for Treasurer STEVEN BLADER Leonard N. Stern School of Business, NYU E-mail: sblader@stern.nyu.edu

A social psychologist by training, Steven Blader is now Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University. He has published numerous justice articles on different aspects of justice (procedures, outcomes and organizations), social identity and social emotions which have been published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and Organization Science. Steven is also a member of the Editorial Board of Organization Science, Journal of Management and British Journal of Management. He serves as member of the Program Committee of the coming ISJR conference in Banff.

13th Biennial ISJR Conference, Banff, Canada, August 21-24, 2010

    We are happy to report that the program for our 13^th Biennial Conference in Banff, Alberta, Canada, 21-24 August, is coming together. A total of 260 abstracts were submitted, including 140 individual paper submissions, 20 symposium proposals, and 37 poster submissions. This marks a 16% increase in submissions over the 2008 meeting, and a new record high! Many thanks to the members of the program committee for their invaluable assistance in reviewing these submissions: Steve Blader, Karen Hegtvedt, Dahlia Moore, Katherine Starzyck, and Kees van den Bos. Thanks also to Leo Montada for his special assistance in the review process.

Topically, we had submissions from a diversity of relevant academic disciplines including philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, political science, law, management/business, criminology, and education; thus, we were able to put together a truly interdisciplinary program. In the submissions, 36 countries were represented, from 6 continents (still no submissions from Antarctica).

From these submissions, the conference program will include 100 individual paper presentations (grouped into 25 thematic four-paper sessions), 20 symposia, and 40 posters. Thanks to those ISJR members who organized high-quality symposia on a number of important topics such as intergroup conflict and reconciliation, just world processes, moral attributions, forgiveness, and others. The organizing committee was able to group the individual paper presentations along a number of timely and interesting themes, covering issues of inequity, procedural justice, political philosophy and global justice, justice in the developing world, justice and economic issues, domestic violence, among others. This year’s conference also includes a dedicated poster session that all delegates can attend, combined with a cocktail reception. Despite the variety and number of submissions, we have restricted the program to have only 5 concurrent sessions at a time.

Conference attendees will also have the opportunity to meet before the conference (Saturday) by participating in one of the optional pre-conference tours, either a guided sightseeing tour of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, or, for those who would like something slightly more vigorous, a guided hike up the Johnson Canyon. You will witness spectacular views on both tours. That evening we will host the opening reception from 5-8 p.m. In addition, the Gala Dinner on Monday night will be well-attended, and delegates will enjoy great food and amazing views of the surrounding mountain peaks.

Finally, we can also look forward to provocative keynote addresses on topics of human rights and equality by Professor Kathleen Mahoney, an expert in constitutional law and human rights, and Professor Fathali Moghaddam, an expert on terrorism and human rights, as well as the presidential address by Professor Carolyn Hafer. The program also includes addresses from our 2008 Young Researcher Award winner, Dr. David De Cremer, our 2010 Young Researcher Award winner, Dr. Aaron Kay, and our 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award winner Professor Dr. Leo Montada.

Continue to follow the ‘Program’ links on the ISJR 2010 conference website to preview more conference details in the coming weeks. We have also put together information on the town of Banff, and the province, with suggestions for tourism. http://wcmprod2.ucalgary.ca/isjr2010/.

See you in the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, just two months away!

2010 Organizing Committee: Ramona Bobocel, Mitch Callan, John Ellard, Leanne Gosse,

Morton Deutsch Award for best paper in Social Justice Research - 2009

Special Section of the British Journal of Social Psychology: Innovation in Theory and Research on Collective Action and Social Change

Guest editors

Martijn van Zomeren (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) and Bert Klandermans (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Deadline for submissions

1st September 2010

Issue Scope

This Special Section of the British Journal of Social Psychology seeks to bring together exciting and new research on collective action and social change that represents significant steps towards innovation. The leading questions in this literature are which social-psychological factors motivate individuals to engage in collective action to achieve social change (e.g., petitions, demonstrations, boycotts), and which social-psychological processes can explain these effects.

We specifically seek contributions that incorporate new insights from psychological theory and research (e.g., cognitive factors such as regulatory focus and self-regulation; emotional factors such as the motivational effects of different group-based emotions on collective action, and the ommunicative functions of such emotions in the context of social change), and from sociological theory and research (e.g., the impact of contextual variation on collective action participation such as variation in resource and opportunities, network size, and the use of new media/technology to instigate collective action and social change).

Indeed, whereas the social-psychological literature has recently moved through a phase of integration (e.g., Van Zomeren, Postmes & Spears, 2008), it is clear that there is a growing need to theorize and study novel psychological variables and processes to better explain the occurrence or absence of collective action and social change. Although much is known about factors such as social identity and the experience of group-based injustice and group efficacy, we welcome contributions that theorize and document the influence of other important factors (as well as their relationship with these classic factors).

At the same time, it is clear that the social psychology of collective action and social change offers important psychological mechanisms that may (or may not) be able to explain the influence of sociological factors (Klandermans, 1997; Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2007). Therefore, we welcome contributions that explicitly link sociological theory and research on collective action and social change with social-psychological process variables to test their complementary value.

Articles should not be longer than 7,000 words and are expected to follow the standard guidelines of the British Journal of Social Psychology (BJSP). Manuscripts, which should be clearly labeled as submissions intended for this Special Section, must be submitted through BJSP's online review system, Editorial Manager.

Please direct enquiries to the guest editors: Martijn van Zomeren (m.van.zomeren@rug.nl), or Bert Klandermans (PG.Klandermans@fsw.vu.nl).

References

Klandermans, B. (1997). The social psychology of protest. Oxford: Basic Blackwell.

Van Stekelenburg, J. & Klandermans, B. (2007). Individuals in movements: A social psychology of contention. In B. Klandermans & C. Roggeband (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Movements across Disciplines (pp. 157-204).

Psychologists for Social Responsibility Conference

Psychologists for Social Responsibility have a conference, July 14-17, in Boston. See:
http://www.psysr.org/conference2010/

Sessions include:

• New Directions for the Anti-Torture Movement
• Disaster, Community Readiness, and Recovery: Contributions from Community Psychology
• Saving the Planet and Us: The Psychology of Climate Change and Sustainability
• What Helps and Hurts Military Veterans: The Need to Transform "Treatment"
• “I Don’t Really Follow Politics”: The Challenge of Welcoming Students to The Commons
• Researching Schizophrenia and Psychosis: A Social Justice and Human Rights Orientation
• The Restorative Circle: An Alternative to Traditional Justice and Conflict Resolution
• U.S. Militarism and Exceptionalism: Transforming Beliefs about War
• New Social Roles: Engaging Social Responsibility in A Mental Health Framework
• Tolerance for Torture and War: Understanding and Resistance
• Reconciliation and Its Alternatives
• Applying Social Justice Principles to Community Development Efforts
• Communities in Dialogue
• Social Health: Its Nature and Dynamics
• Creating Curriculum for Critical Community, Eco-, and Liberation Psychology for the 21st Century
• Civic Engagement As Critical Pedagogy: Challenging the Boundaries in Higher Education
• Human Rights, Peer Support and Ethical Codes in Mental Health
• Maintaining Ethical Accountability in the Face of Moral Drift in Professional and Religious Institutions
• Toward a Psychology of Social Responsibility: Can We Develop It, Speak It Loud, and Speak It Proud?
• Troubleshooting the PsySR Psychology and Military/Intelligence Casebook
• Earth Circles: Facing Climate Crisis in Community

Justice and Morality Preconferences at the SPSP Meetings

    Chris Bauman and Kees van den Bos are currently organizing the annual Justice and Morality Preconferences at the Meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. They are both very excited about having finalized the speakers at the justice and morality preconference at SPSP 2011. In alphabetical order: Naomi Ellemers, Francesca Gino, Jon Haidt, Benoît Monin, Kimberly Wade-Benzoni, Chenbo Zhong. Please mark the preconference in your agendas: January 27, 2011, San Antonio, TX! A call for poster presentations and paper swaps will be send out later via the SPSP listserv.

Recent Publications of ISJR Members

Bodi, O., Mikula, G, & Riederer, B. (2010). Long-term effects between perceived justice in the division of domestic work and women's relationship satisfaction: Testing for moderation effects. Social Psychology, 41, 57-65.

Greifeneder, R., Müller, P. A., Stahlberg, D., Van den Bos, K., & Bless, H. (in press). Guiding trustful behavior: The role of accessible content and accessibility experiences. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.

Trust has been identified as a key ingredient to the prosperity of close relationships, organizations, and societies. While research mainly focused on the antecedents and consequences of trust, much less is known about how individuals assess whether there are enough reasons to warrant trustful action. Two experiments explored the how and when of this assessment, suggesting that antecedents may not only be integrated as content information per se (as generally assumed), but in a feeling-based summary form. Specifically, our results show that the ease or difficulty associated with the identification of antecedents to trust may guide trustful behavior. Furthermore, it is shown that such a feeling-based influence is particularly likely to occur in conditions of personal certainty. Together these results extend prior research in the domains of trust and economic games, and further attest to the fundamental role cognitive feelings play in social life.

Mikula, G., Schoebi, D.,Jagoditsch, S., & Macher S. (2009). Roots and correlates of perceived injustice in the division of family work. Personal Relationships, 16, 553-574.

Okimoto, T. G. & Wenzel, M. (2010). The symbolic identity implications of inter and intra-group transgressions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(3), 552-562.

Van den Bos, K., Brockner, J., Stein, J. H., Steiner, D. D., Van Yperen, N. W., & Dekker, D. M. (in press). The psychology of voice and performance capabilities in masculine and feminine cultures and contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

This paper examines the hypothesis that in masculine cultures, or other contexts that emphasize competitive achievement, those with higher performance capabilities will feel empowered to have input into decisions and hence will desire opportunities to voice their opinions about decisions to be made. In contrast, in more feminine cultures, or other contexts that value the importance of nurturing people with lower capability, those with lower capabilities will feel valued as important group members, thus will feel worthy of receiving voice, and hence will appreciate voice opportunities. We provide evidence for these predictions in two studies, one conducted in the United States (a more masculine culture) and one in the Netherlands (a more feminine culture). Evidence also comes from experimental conditions in both studies, in which we made salient to participants "countercultural" norms and values, that is, nurturing the less capable in the United States and competitive achievement in the Netherlands. Implications for the psychology of voice and cross-cultural research are discussed.

Van den Bos, K., Martin, L. L., & Stapel, D. A. (in press). Meaning making in delayed-return cultures: The case of personal uncertainty. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.

The large majority of humans nowadays live in cultures in which there is often a delay between the efforts they exert and the feedback they receive regarding the outcome of their efforts. As a result, individuals may experience uncertainty between their efforts and outcomes, leading them to pay special attention to uncertainty information. In particular, we propose that when people feel uncertain about themselves this may be alarming to them as it may signal that their personal contract with their delayed-return culture may be in jeopardy. Therefore, under conditions of personal uncertainty people are looking forward to events that bolster their cultural worldviews and detest events that violate these worldviews. We review research findings that show that personal uncertainty indeed has a special role in the social psychology of meaning-making and worldview defense, sometimes even yielding a better explanation of worldview defense reactions than terror management theory.

Wenzel, M. & Okimoto, T. G. (2010). How acts of forgiveness restore a sense of justice: Addressing status/power and value concerns raised by transgressions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(3), 401-417.

Ybema, J. F., & Van den Bos, K. (2010). Effects of organizational justice on depressive symptoms and sickness absence: A longitudinal perspective. Social Science & Medicine, 70, 1609-1617.

A longitudinal three-wave study among a large representative sample of 1,519 employees in the Netherlands examined how organizational justice (as measured by distributive and procedural justice) was related to depressive symptoms and sickness absence. It was predicted that perceived justice would contribute to lower depressive symptoms and sickness absence, whereas depressive symptoms and absenteeism in turn would contribute to lower perceptions of organizational justice. In line with the predictions, both distributive and procedural justice contributed to lower depressive symptoms, and distributive justice contributed to lower sickness absence in the following year. With regard to reversed effects, sickness absence contributed to lower perceptions of distributive justice to some extent. Moreover, sickness absence was related to higher depressive symptoms a year later. This research shows the importance of justice in organizations as a means to enhance well-being of people at work and to prevent absenteeism.

Grants awarded to ISJR members

Kees van den Bos received a grant of 70 000 Euros from the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations to write an essay on the social psychology of trust and legitimacy.

Honors awarded to ISJR Members