An affective-experiential perspective on reactions to fair and unfair events: individual differences in affect intensity moderated by experiential mindsets

The present paper focuses on what psychological processes are driving people's reactions to fair and unfair events. Specifically, by extending on ideas that people's reactions to fair and unfair events consist at least partly of affect-related responses, and by adopting the assumption made in cognitive-experiential self-theory that the operation of experiential mindsets is intimately associated with affect-related experiences, we formulate the hypothesis that individual differences in affect intensity will moderate reactions to fair and unfair events. Introducing a novel manipulation of experiential and rationalistic mindsets to the research literature, the findings of two studies indeed reveal that especially for people in experiential (vs. rationalistic) mindsets negative affective reactions to fair and unfair events increase with high (vs. low) scores on affect intensity. Implications for the literature on social justice, experiential mindsets, and affect intensity are discussed

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

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

On Mimicry and the Psychology of the Belief in a Just World:Imitating the Behaviors of Others Reduces the Blaming of Innocent Victims

Innocent victims of crime are often blamed for what happened to them. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that victim blaming can be significantly reduced when people mimic the behavior of the victim or even a person unrelated to the crime. Participants watched a person on a video after which we assessed the extent of their spontaneous mimicry reactions (Study 1) or participants were instructed to mimic or not to mimic the movements of this person (Study 2). Then, they were informed about a rape and criminal assault and judged the degree to which they thought the victims were responsible for the crime. One of the crimes happened to the same person as the person they previously did or did not mimic. The other crime happened to a person unrelated to the mimicry situation. Results of both studies revealed that previously mimicking the victim or an unrelated person reduced the degree to which victims were being blamed

Editorial: Radicalization and deradicalization: Processes and contexts

© 2022 Winter, Morrison and van den Bos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Peer reviewe

Helping to overcome intervention inertia in Bystander’s dilemmas: behavioral disinhibition can improve the greater good

Conventional wisdom holds that behavioral disinhibition has negative effects on what humans do. Behavioral disinhibition may indeed frequently have negative effects, but in the present paper we reveal some positive consequences as well: The disinhibition hypothesis proposed here states that people may feel inhibited to intervene in situations in which non-intervening bystanders are present and that, therefore, behavioral disinhibition may help to overcome the bystander effect. Findings presented here provide evidence supporting this prediction both inside and outside the psychology laboratory: In both real-life and controlled bystander situations, people were more likely and faster to provide help when (unrelated to the bystander situations) they had (vs. had not) been reminded about having acted with no inhibitions. These findings suggest that, in contrast with what various theories and worldviews dictate, behavioral disinhibition may have positive effects on helping behavior and hence can be conducive for the greater good

Beyond procedure's content: Cognitive subjective experiences in procedural justice judgments

Procedural justice concerns play a critical role in economic settings, politics, and other domains of human life. Despite the vast evidence corroborating their relevance, considerably less is known about how procedural justice judgments are formed. Whereas earlier theorizing focused on the systematic integration of content information, the present contribution provides a new perspective on the formation of justice judgments by examining the influence of accessibility experiences. Specifically, we hypothesize that procedural justice judgments may be formed based on the ease or difficulty with which justice-relevant information comes to mind. Three experiments corroborate this prediction in that procedures were evaluated less positively when the retrieval of associated unfair aspects was easy compared to difficult. Presumably this is because when it feels easy (difficult) to retrieve unfair aspects, these are perceived as frequent (infrequent), and hence the procedure as unjust (just). In addition to demonstrating that ease-of-retrieval may influence justice judgments, the studies further revealed that reliance on accessibility experiences is high in conditions of personal certainty. We suggest that this is because personal uncertainty fosters systematic processing of content information, whereas personal certainty may invite less taxing judgmental strategies such as reliance on ease-of-retrieval

Experimental insight into the fair process effect and its boundary conditions: External attributions may moderate reactions to procedural justice in legal contexts

The perception of being treated fairly during decision-making processes is an important topic in the research literature on law and society. Many studies have indeed found that perceived procedural justice affects people’s reactions, for instance, by increasing their trust in legal authorities and lowering their intentions to protest against these authorities’ decisions. Here, we reveal support for this fair process effect and point to some of its potential boundary conditions. In our experimental study, 239 participants imagined being the defendant during a single-judge criminal court hearing that used either a fair or an unfair procedure. Following the experience of a fair as opposed to an unfair procedure, participants showed more trust in judges and were less inclined to protest against the judicial ruling. Interestingly, the effect of the procedure manipulation on trust in judges was moderated by the extent to which participants attributed their case outcomes to external causes. We found a fair process effect among participants with relatively low external attribution ratings, while this effect attenuated and was not statistically significant among participants whose external attribution ratings were relatively high. These findings point to the possibility that attributional processes can moderate people’s responses to procedural justice in legally relevant contexts

Shaping Cooperation Behavior: The Role of Accessibility Experiences

The present research investigates the influence on cooperative behavior of accessibility experiences associated with the retrieval of fairness-relevant information from memory. We argue that the decision whether to cooperate in negotiations depends not only on information about the appropriateness of the negotiation procedure, but also on the experience of how difficult or easy it is to come up with this information. Supporting this hypothesis, it is shown that in the context of a bargaining experiment, participants' experiences of ease or difficulty in retrieving unfair aspects of the respective negotiation procedure strongly influence their cooperation behavior. In addition, we hypothesize and empirically substantiate that the influence of accessibility experiences on cooperation behavior occurs particularly in situations of certainty salience. Implications for future research on cooperation and on accessibility experiences are discussed