ISJR - Newsletter

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13th Issue - Fall 2006 , edited by Manfred Schmitt

1st Issue; June 2001, edited by Ron Cohen
2nd Issue; November 2001, edited by Ron Cohen
3rd Issue; February 2003, edited by Dahlia Moore
4th Issue; July 2003, edited by Dahlia Moore
5th Issue; November 2003, edited by Dahlia Moore
6th Issue; March 2004, edited by Dahlia Morre
7th Issue; December 2004, edited by Sampson Lee Blair
8th Issue; March 2005, edited by Sampson Lee Blair
9th Issue; June 2005, edited by Sampson Lee Blair
10th Issue; September 2005, edited by Sampson Lee Blair
11th Issue; February 2006, edited by Sampson Lee Blair
12th Issue; May 2006, edited by Sampson Lee Blair
13th Issue; Winter 2006, edited by Manfred Schmitt

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Contents

• Presidential Address of Past President
  
• New Executive Board is Elected
• The 2006 ISJR Conference

• First-hand impressions of the 11th ISJR conference
  
• The 2008 ISJR Conference
• Want to Host the 2010 ISJR Conference?
• New ISJR Listserv
• Dues
• Procedures for Joining ISJR
• Moving toward a More Electronic Interface
• Recent Publications of ISJR Members

• PDF-Version of Newsletter
  

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     President’s Address

Dear friends and members of ISJR!
 

This is my last presidential column for our newsletter, which I write in fact as past president. In the last two years, the executive board continued the policy of strengthening the visibility of ISJR and the importance of ISJR for its members.
 

I am happy to finish my presidential term with the certainty that we have established several means to acknowledge our members' contributions to justice research and for outstanding merits in support of ISJR. In 2004, we honored the founder of ISJR, Levin J. Lerner and Leo Montada, with the honorary lifetime membership of ISJR. At the 11^th International Social Justice Conference in August in Berlin, Jan-Willem van Prooijen was awarded with the ISJR Early Career Contribution Award 2006. With this award, the society recognizes excellent young justice scholars. This year, this award was presented for the first time and the society will present this award bi-annually. In 2008, the society will for the first time present the Life-Time Achievement Award to honor members for outstanding life-time contributions to the field of justice research. In addition, likewise in conjunction with the 12^th International Social Justice Conference, the society will honor a selected group of PhD students engaged in justice research with an invitation to a Presidential Dinner. Finally, thanks to the dedication of the Editor of our journal Social Justice Research, John Jost, the Morton Deutsch award for the best paper published in each year in Social Justice Research was established in 2004 and was bestowed  for 2004 to Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta for her paper “Implicit Ingroup Favoritism, Outgroup Favoritism, and Their Behavioral Manifestations”  (Social Justice Research, 17, 143-169) for 2005 to Laurie T. O’Brien for her paper (with Christian S. Crandall) “Perceiving Self-Interest: Power, Ideology, and Maintenance of the Status Quo” (Social Justice Research, 18, 1-24).
 

In close cooperation with our webmaster Anette Weidler, we re-launched the ISJR homepage. We aimed at not only revising the appearance of the homepage, but to include new sections including the history of ISJR, membership benefits, and award information and as a new feature a news window on the front page.
 

There were additional activities which increased the visibility of ISJR and the benefits for our members. Bernd Wegener and his dedicated team organized the 11^th International Social Justice Conference with three exciting days with more than three dozen sessions, 7 key notes and one award winner presentation. Situated in the heart of Berlin and excellently organized, the conference was an intellectually inspiring and a personally enriching experience. The Newsletter Editor, Sampson Lee Blair, regularly informed the members about the newest development in the membership and about justice research around the globe. John Jost will inform in detail in his report about the terrific development of Social Justice Research under his editorship.

 

In close cooperation with our treasurer Karen Hegvedt and the German legal and tax authorities, I compiled a new bylaw that was unambiguously accepted by our members during our General Business Meeting in Berlin and which should satisfy the legal needs to get tax-exempt status in Germany.
 

The society has grown significantly over the past two years. In 2004, the society consisted of 94 members. In August 2006, ISJR had a total of 147 members, including 27 associate members and 120 full members, coming from 24 countries across the world (see Figure on previous page).
 

My research is closely connected with this society. Much of my work is inspired by vivid discussions at our conferences and many of my collaborators are part of this society. I am grateful that ISJR provides such a rich network. Therefore, I was delighted to be given the opportunity to serve the society for two years as president. It was a reinforcing experience. I want to take this opportunity to express my deep and sincere thanks to all members of the Executive Board and to John Jost as Editor of Social Justice research. You were a terrific team and it was fun working with you!

I look forward to meeting all of you in 2008 in Adelaide!

Claudia Dalbert

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New Executive Board is Elected

New executive officers were elected at the August general meeting of the society. In addition, the general membership approved a change to the by-laws that added the editor of Social Justice Research as a voting member of the executive committee.

The 2006 – 2008 ISJR Executive Board is as follows:

Linda J. Skitka, President, University of Illinois at Chicago, lskitka@uic.edu

Tom R. Tyler, Secretary, New York University, tom.tyler@nyu.edu

Joe Oppenheimer, Treasurer, University of Maryland, joppenheimer@gvpt.umd.edu

Manfred Schmitt, Newsletter Editor, Universität Landau, schmittm@uni-landau.de

Michael Wenzel, 2008 Conference Chair, Flinders University, michael.wenzel@flinders.edu.au

John J. Jost, Social Justice Research Editor, john.jost@nyu.edu

Congratulations to our new executive board members.  In addition, we wish to formally thank and acknowledge our outgoing executive board members, Karen Hegtvedt, Blair Sampson, Kees van den Bos, and Bernd Wegener for their years of service on the board.  Your contributions to the strength and continued growth of ISJR is deeply appreciated.

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The 2006 ISJR Conference

From August 2nd to August 5th 2006, the 11th International Social Justice Conference was held in Berlin, Germany. It was hosted by Humboldt University and the Institute of Social Sciences, where all sessions and presentations took place.

‘Social Justice in a World of Change: Interdisciplinary Approaches’ had been chosen as the conference motto, signaling that the conference would focus on global social and political change and on the approaches different scientific disciplines take in studying justice vis-à-vis these changes. According to ISJR’s interdisciplinary objectives, the conference aspired to release justice research from the narrow boundaries of specific scientific disciplines and stimulate interdisciplinary research. ‘Interdisciplinarity’ was the guideline therefore for selecting from the many submissions and for encouraging potential panel organizers.

Almost 300 papers were submitted, of which 214 made it into the program. They were organized into 53 panels; eight keynote lectures were given at the conference. Compared to other gatherings of our society this is twice, if not three times the number of papers that were presented. Moreover, speakers came from 35 different countries. The attention the conference received, also in terms of media coverage in the German press, indicates that justice research has found its place as an established field of international research.

It seems that the interdisciplinary focus of the conference was highly attractive. The program committee received submissions from a wide range of different scientific disciplines. The subjects of the presentations were thus treated not only from the viewpoints of psychology and sociology, which served as the main bases from which we set out to explore justice issues, but there were also quite a number of presentations and panel sessions in which philosophers, economists, political scientists and even spatial planning experts and biologists addressed matters of social justice. Evidently this year’s ISJR conference was a manifesto that our society is well on its way to becoming a society that can build bridges across the different justice sciences.

‘Bridging’ meant, among other things, that there were descriptive as well as normative contributions. We had sessions explicitly on norma­tive political theory in which philosophers and political scientists shared their views about justice. Also planning issues of environmental and spatial justice were discussed (e.g. the panel on ‘Spatial Justice: The European Dimension’ organized by Michael Wegener). Particularly worth mentioning was a series of three panels on ‘global justice’ that was considered by many as one of the highlights of the entire meeting. Part I dealt with ‘Justifying International Intervention,’ Part II with ‘International Legitimacy and Public International Law,’ and Part III with ‘Global Economic Justice.’ As invited panels, all three were prepared by Lukas Meyer from Bern, Switzerland.

Typically, reflections on these topics involve policy issues and prescriptive reasoning. To most of us however, justice research proper is descriptive and explanatory, not normative. Indeed, the majority of panel sessions at our conference addressed explanations of justice behavior and questions of how justice judgments come about, what they are and which contextual effects matter. But as was stressed by many speakers, we should not lose out of sight that explanations of justice behavior have normative consequences and implications; just as normative theories of justice will rely on what people actually and regularly perceive as just. John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice is an example of this - in the final version of his theory, Rawls relies on the assessment of the justice principles that members of a society actually prefer. This is not so much different from what George Homans taught us years ago: the ‘ought’ may well be based on the ‘is.’ If nothing else, it follows from this insight that justice research should enter into dialogue with basically normative disciplines.

Generally speaking, interdisciplinary research can mean that a common subject is looked at from different perspectives. One would probably call this the multi-disciplinary approach (or the ‘light’ version of interdisciplinarity). Quite a different level of interdisciplinary research is reached when researchers from different scientific disciplines share a common research program in the sense Imre Lakatós has used that concept. We would then say that such a research is truly trans-disciplinary.

By and large, the contributions to the 11th International Social Justice Conference were basically multi-disciplinary, advocating different approaches from different disciplines applied to questions of justice. Trans-disciplinarity is much harder to achieve. But still at the conference there were a number of contributions advancing trans-disciplinary efforts. The brilliant keynote lectures by Siegwart Lindenberg (Groningen), Herbert Gintis (Santa Fe), and Peter Hammerstein (Berlin) that approached justice from an evolutionary perspective were convincing examples of this. Lindenberg is a sociologist, Gintis an economist and Hammerstein a biologist, but all three reflected on how justice behavior can be ‘framed’ by either motivational, rational, or evolutionary constituent parts. Thus in spite of the fact that their respective home disciplines are typically biased towards one of these explanations, all three speakers contributed to what could prove to be a common research program in interdisciplinary justice research.

Other keynote addresses were given by the political scientist and president of the European University at Frankfurt (Oder) Gesine Schwan (‘Social Justice in a Globalized World’) and by sociologist Claus Offe (‘Arenas of the Politics of Justice: Economic, Political, Social’). Both lectures were part of the memorable opening ceremony at Humboldt’s Auditorium Maximum. At one of the other plenary sessions, Bo Rothstein from Göteborg University spoke about ‘Social Justice and Social Capital – the Missing Link.’ Claudia Dalbert delivered her presidential address on ‘The Justice Motive’ at the same plenum. Finally, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, who was awarded this year’s ISJR Early Career Contribution Award, gave his award lecture on ‘Underlying Motivational Principles of Procedural Justice Effects’ at the final plenum sessions, followed by Herbert Gintis on ‘The Science of Virtue: How Is Implies Ought’ bringing three days of scholarly discussions to an end.

While the size of the conference and the vast number of presentations and panels may have also been a source of frus­tration, because it was impossible for any single participant to attend all sessions, it was inspiring that there is this large interest in justice research and that it is so diversified. Following a completely subjective selection, here are some of the noteworthy panel sessions that contributed to an exceptionally versatile program:

Two invited panels, organized by Wulf Gaertner, covered the study of preferential choice axioms in explaining and aggregating social justice beliefs (‘Claims and Justice’ and ‘Fairness and Impartiality’). Particular attention was given to the paper by Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer in one of the sessions on measuring need satisfaction in order to deal with Arrow’s impossibility theorem on social welfare functions (‘Demystifying Social Welfare: Needs and Social Justice in the Evaluation of Democracies’).

System legitimacy was another focus of the conference with panels on ‘Justice in an Ideological Context: System Justification and Beyond’ (John Jost, organizer) and two panels set up by David Mason (who, unfortunately, was unable to attend in person) on ‘Social Justice and System Legitimacy in Changing Societies’ and ‘The Dynamics of Justice Sentiments in Comparative Perspective.’ Detlef Fetchenhauer and Stefan Liebig had a panel on ‘Social Justice and the Welfare State’ that addressed societal legitimation issues as well. Dahlia Moore, finally, put together a session on ‘Issues of Justice in Israel’ that was particularly timely and received accordant attention in the press.

The theme ‘Justice and Work’ was addressed by several contributions, from theoretical and philosophical perspectives (two panels organized by Anton Leist, a philosopher from Zürich) as well as empirically (e.g. Kathleen Otto and Claudia Dalbert’s panel on ‘Justice at the Workplace’ and ‘Justice, Cooperation at the Workplace, and Organizational Change’ chaired by Herman Steensma).

The Belief in a Just World Theory was given extensive treatment. At least five panels as well as several individual contributions in other panels addressed the theory or made use of it in their respective arguments. Much of BJW research was then summarized in Claudia Dalbert’s keynote lecture in one of the plenary sessions.

Another topic that appeared repeatedly was ‘justice sensitivity’ (e.g. in a set of panels organized by Manfred Schmitt and Mario Gollwitzer), as was the general realm of retributive justice that was treated in four panels (e.g. two consecutive panels organized by Mario Gollwitzer and Ute Gabriel on ‘Retributive Justice and Punitive Reactions’ and Tyler Okimoto and Michael Wnzel’s ‘Understanding Preferences for Retributive versus Restorative Justice’).

Guillermina Jasso and Christopher Winship organized a roundtable discussion on why there is so little justice research in American sociology (‘Wherefore the American Sociology of Justice’). At this well attended session tentative answers were given by Karen Hegtvedt, Siegwart Lindenberg, Hans-Peter Müller, Christopher Winship, Bernd Wegener, and Guillermina Jasso. It was concluded that justice research that would go beyond the mere study of attitudes, should have a strong theoretical and interdisciplinary focus in order to find a place in sociology. The participants of this roundtable discussion are planning to continue with their work and present results at the next conference in Adelaide.

The complete ‘Program and Abstracts’ volume of the conference (146 pages) can now be downloaded from the conference web site (http://www.isjr2006.org/downloads/ProgramAbstracts.pdf).

 

Bernd Wegener

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First-hand impressions of the 11th ISJR conference

From August 2^nd to 5^th I attended the 11^th International Social Justice Conference which took place in Berlin under the topic “Social Justice in a World of Change: Interdisciplinary Approaches”. I was given the opportunity to write about my experiences from a first-hand perspective for which I am very grateful. I like to share some of my perceptions with you to remind those of you that were at this conference about how fantastic it was and to demonstrate to those of you who could not participate what you actually missed.

When Bernd Wegener introduced the Humboldt University of Berlin as the location for the next ISJR conference in Regina two years ago I knew that the conference would take place at an interesting location for the participants. Berlin itself is a great place and the Humboldt University is situated directly in its center what made it very easy to combine work and life. This was also supported by the organizers’ social program. I always enjoyed the coffee breaks between the sessions and the joint lunch times at the Italian restaurant were we all had delicious meals and a brilliant chance to get together and to discuss our research ideas. Overall and compared to other conferences, I perceived the ISJR conference as being very well organized. And this is surely not only my evaluation as all the people to whom I talked to at the conference were of the same view.

But clearly not only the location and the social program should be highlighted but of course also the conference itself. In my opinion this was a very stimulating conference with a lot of diverse and interdisciplinary topics shown in both the parallel and the plenum sessions. Concerning the plenum sessions I appreciated in particular that the invited speakers came from different domains and from different points in their scientific career as both well-known researchers like Claudia Dalbert and Peter Hammerstein but also a young researcher like Jan-Willem van Prooijen were invited to give plenum talks. Besides the plenum sessions, I attended several parallel sessions especially in the field of organizational justice but I also listened to interesting talks related to more basic social psychology approaches like justice sensitivity or belief in a just world. Sometimes I found it really difficult to decide to which session I should go because with seven parallel sessions nearly every time several appealing topics were presented simultaneously.

Still today, I am already looking forward to meeting my friends and colleagues again at the next ISJR conference in Adelaide 2008.

Kathleen Otto, University of Leipzig, Germany

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The 2008 ISJR Conference

The executive committee of ISJR is pleased to announce that the 2008 ISJR conference will be hosted by Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, August 14 – 17, 2008.  The Australian group put together a very strong proposal to host ISJR. Michael Wenzel (conference chair) and his colleagues have already done an enormous amount of up-front planning to ensure that the 2008 meeting will be a great success.  Save the date, and look for additional information on the ISJR website as planning proceeds!

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Want to Host the 2010 ISJR Conference?

If any member is interested in possibly hosting the 2010 ISJR conference, please contact Linda Skitka (lskitka@uic.edu).

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New ISJR Listserv

The executive committee is also pleased to announce the creation of an official International Society for Justice Research (ISJR) discussion listserv.  The ISJR listserv is a moderated list: Messages will be screened by a list moderator for appropriateness before posts are distributed to the list to ensure that posts do not include SPAM, etc. Posts appropriate for the list include content that fosters productive discussion of new ideas, research, and theories relating to justice; posts that encourage and facilitate international an interdisciplinary cooperation on justice research; announcements of job and grant opportunities that would be of interest to justice researchers; calls for papers; announcements of conferences that may be of interest to the membership; etc.  Each of you should have received an announcement of the listserv in late August. Members of ISJR were automatically included as subscribers to this listserv.  If you would like to opt-out of your subscription, please send a note to isjr_list@uic.edu with the subject heading "opt-out" and your address will be removed from the list.

To post a message on the listserv, send a message to isjr_list@uic.edu; if you have questions, suggestions or concerns about the list, you can send a message to the same address or contact Linda Skitka at lskitka@uic.edu.

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Dues

A dues increase was approved at the ISJR general business meeting in Berlin.  At the time, there was some confusion about whether dues could be increased without a change in the by-laws because the by-laws mention a specific dollar amount. However, careful review of the by-laws indicated that changing dues does not require a by-law change, given that the by-laws clearly state in § 4 Membership Dues that “changes in dues regulations are to be decided by the members at a General Business Meeting of the Society” (and do not state that changes in dues requires a by-law change).  Therefore, given that the members approved an increase in dues to $75 for full members, $45 for members without permanent positions (e.g., post-docs), dues for 2007 will be increased to these levels.  Student dues remain fixed at the cost of the journal should they decide to receive it ($38), and remain at $10 if they decide not to take the journal. [A by-law change that strikes explicit mention of dollar amounts for dues to avoid future confusion will be proposed at least six months in advance of the next business meeting, and will be voted on in Adelaide.]

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Procedures for Joining ISJR

The new executive board also decided at its meeting in Berlin to change the application for membership procedures.  Historically, potential new members were asked to send a copy of their vita and evidence of their scholarship in justice research for executive committee review and approval before they could join ISJR.  It was decided that our by-laws do not require us to maintain these screening and approval procedures, and that they may pose unnecessary barriers or disincentives for people to join the organization.  New procedures will simply require prospective members to complete a form with contact information etc., and to submit their dues, and will no longer require a membership review and evaluation process. The new membership procedures and application form are posted on the ISJR website. The executive committee will still provide oversight of membership, and our by-laws provide protection against any potential abuse of making our procedures for joining ISJR more open [“membership may be terminated by the Executive Board in instances of weighty reasons”]. Please encourage interested colleagues and students to join the organization and enjoy the benefits of a subscription to Social Justice Research, membership on the ISJR listserv, reduced conference registration fees, etc.

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Moving toward a More Electronic Interface

Finally, we are taking steps to try to make ISJR membership and dues payments easier for both members and officers to manage and track.  We hope to be able to announce on-line payment options for dues, updating your contact information, and so forth within the next few months. Stay posted for additional announcements as we work to make progress on this front.

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Recent Publications of ISJR Members

Bauman, C. W. & Skitka, L. J. (2006). Ethnic group differences in lay philosophies of behavior in the United States. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 37, 438 - 445.

Chiaburu, D. S., & Marinova, S. V. (2006). Employee role enlargement: Interaction of trust and organizational fairness. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 27, 3, 168-182.

Kazemi, A. (forthcoming). Distributive and procedural fairness promote cooperative conflict management. In K. Törnblom & R. Vermunt (Eds.), Distributive and procedural justice: Research and social applications. Ashgate Publishing Company. (This chapter provides an extensive overview of the literature on how justice may contribute to fostering cooperation in interpersonal conflicts. Kazemi argues and demonstrates that fairness enhances cooperative conflict resolution via endorsement of cooperative conflict management strategies. Unfairness, on the other hand, increases the chances that competitive management strategies are endorsed.)

Mullen, E. & Skitka, L. J. (2006). Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, identification, or affect? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 629 - 643.

Mullen, E. & Skitka, L. J. (2006). When outcomes prompt criticism of procedures: An archival analysis of the Rodney King case. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 6, 1 - 14.

Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., Aramovich, N. P., & Morgan, G. C. (in press). Confrontational and preventative policy responses to terrorism: Anger wants a fight and fear wants "them" to go away. Basic and Applied Social Psychology: Special September 11 Issue.

Törnblom, K., & Kazemi, A. (forthcoming). Toward a resource production theory of distributive justice. In K. Törnblom & R. Vermunt (Eds.), Distributive and procedural justice: Research and social applications. Ashgate Publishing Company. (Törnblom and Kazemi propose that the ways various kinds of social resources are produced or acquired will affect people’s affective orientations toward the resource and their distributive justice conceptions. A typology of mode of production is presented and a set of propositions are advanced.)

Törnblom, K., & Vermunt, R. (forthcoming). Distributive and procedural justice: Research and social applications. Ashgate Publishing Company. (This interdisciplinary and cross-national volume brings together theory and research by prominent scholars within the areas of distributive and procedural justice in the allocation of social resources, not only featuring work within each area separately but also showing how combinations of the two justice orientations sometimes operate together to affect justice judgments and behavior.)

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Manfred Schmitt (schmittm@uni-landau.de)

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