THE SENSE OF INJUSTICE - THE EFFECTS OF SITUATION, BELIEFS, AND IDENTITY

Objective. There is growing and persuasive empirical evidence that con siderations of distributive and procedural justice are important compo nents of public opinion. In this paper the author tests a model that e xamines the impact of characteristics of the situation, beliefs about the situation, and identity on the sense of injustice. Methods. Survey data were gathered among college undergraduates. The effects of the s ituation were tested by the experimental manipulation of race, perform ance, class and scholarship funding in a vignette about going to colle ge. The survey also included measures of distributive beliefs related to education, attributions of causality, group affect, moral orientati on, community attachment, and political ideology. Results. Support is found for the contention that feelings of injustice are related not on ly to the circumstances of the situation and our beliefs about those c ircumstances, but also to who we are morally, politically, and sociall y. Conclusions. When assessing distributive fairness, people appear to strike a balance between the context of the situation and our social, moral, and political identity.