JUSTICE AND POWER - WHEN WILL JUSTICE CONCERNS ENCOURAGE THE ADVANTAGED TO SUPPORT POLICIES WHICH REDISTRIBUTE ECONOMIC-RESOURCES AND THE DISADVANTAGED TO WILLINGLY OBEY THE LAW

Two studies are presented which test whether justice can motivate supp ort for government policies and authorities even when such support is not in people's obvious personal or group interest. In the first study , White San Francisco Bay area residents' attitudes toward Congression ally-authored affirmative action policies and antidiscrimination laws were investigated. In the second study, African-American San Francisco Bay area residents' feelings of obligation to obey the law were inves tigated. The results from both studies show a significant relationship between evaluations of social justice and respondents' political atti tudes. More importantly, a significant relationship between relational evaluations of Congress and political attitudes is found in both stud ies. This relationship suggests how justice can motivate policy and go vernment support even if such support does not yield direct personal o r group benefits. Finally, the results from both studies indicate when instrumental and relational concerns will be related to political att itudes. If people identified with their particular advantaged or disad vantaged group, instrumental concerns were more strongly related to th eir political attitudes, but if people identified with a superordinate category that included both potential outgroup members and relevant s uperordinate authorities, relational concerns were more strongly relat ed to their political attitudes.