Not fair for me! The influence of personal relevance on social justice inferences

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2007.04.009

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 44, Issue 3, May 2008, Pages 699-705

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2007.04.009 Get rights and content

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the personal relevance of a situation primarily influences spontaneous inferences about social justice, and not necessarily affects explicit justice judgments. To test this hypothesis, two studies manipulated personal relevance and assessed justice inferences and judgments: Participants read descriptions of fair or unfair events happening to stimulus persons referred to with first-person versus third-person pronouns (Experiment 1) or as “a friend” versus “a stranger” (Experiment 2). We then measured spontaneous justice inferences (using the probe recognition paradigm) and explicit justice judgments (using rating scales). As predicted, both studies showed stronger spontaneous justice inferences for high personal relevance descriptions, of unjust events specifically, whereas explicit justice judgments were not significantly influenced by our personal relevance manipulations. These findings suggest that especially the spontaneous component of the justice judgment process is sensitive to personal relevance.

Section snippets

Overview

We performed two studies to investigate the influence of personal relevance on spontaneous justice inferences and on explicit justice judgments. In both studies, we assessed spontaneous justice inferences and explicit justice judgments that people made about justice-relevant descriptions of different levels of personal relevance. When assessing spontaneous justice inferences and making explicit justice judgments, participants saw the same short situation descriptions in which a stimulus person

Participants and design

Participants were 154 students (48 men and 106 women)¹ at Utrecht University. For their participation of 20 min they received 2 Euros. The design of Experiment 1 was a 2 (trial type: experimental vs. control) × 2 (description type: just-implying vs. unjust-implying) × 2 (stimulus person: first vs. third-person pronouns) within-subjects design.

The probe recognition paradigm

Participants read a short description of a situation after which a probe

Participants

Participants were 113 students (45 men and 68 women) at Utrecht University. For their participation of 20 min they received 2 Euros.

Stimulus materials, design, and procedure

Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, except for three changes. First, in the high personal relevance trials the stimulus person was now referred to as “a friend” and in the low personal relevance trials as “a stranger”. Second, we included a just vs. unjust probe type manipulation in our probe recognition task. To this end, Experiment 2 used 16 critical

General discussion

The results of both experiments presented here show an influence of personal relevance on spontaneous justice inferences, and less so (in fact in both our experiments not significantly) on explicit justice judgments. The current results indicate that people draw stronger spontaneous justice inferences (indicated by greater interference effects in a probe recognition paradigm) when confronted with situation descriptions of justice-implying events happening to themselves than to somebody else

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^☆: This research was supported by a VICI Grant (NWO-453.03.603).

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Not fair for me! The influence of personal relevance on social justice inferences☆

Abstract

Section snippets

Overview

Participants and design

The probe recognition paradigm

Participants

Stimulus materials, design, and procedure

General discussion

NeuroImage

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, efficiency, intention, and control in social cognition

How to define and examine the implicitness of implicit measures

On wildebeests and humans: The preferential detection of negative stimuli

Psychological Science

Egocentric ethics

Social Justice Research

Feeling “houlier than thou”: Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self- or social prediction?

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Not fair! The typology of commonsense unfairness

The momentary realist

Psychological Science

The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency: Egocentric assessments of how we’re seen by others

Current Directions in Psychological Science