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?

Abstract

Two studies are presented which test whether justice can motivate support 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 Congressionally-authored affirmative action policies and anti-discrimination laws were investigated. In the second study, African-American San Francisco Bay area residents'feelings of obligation to obey the law were investigated. The results from both studies show a significant relationship between evaluations of social justice and respondents' political attitudes. More importantly, a significant relationship between relational evaluations of Congress and political attitudes is found in both studies. This relationship suggests how justice can motivate policy and government support even i f such support does not yield direct personal or group benefits. Finally, the results from both studies indicate when instrumental and relational concerns will be related to political attitudes. If people identified with their particular advantaged or disadvantaged group, instrumental concerns were more strongly related to their political attitudes, but if people identi3ed with a superordinate category that included both potential outgroup members and relevant superordinate authorities, relational concerns were more strongly related to their political attitudes.

Majority Member’s Recognition and Protest Against Discrimination of Immigrants: The Role of Power Threat, Deprovincialization and Common National Identity

“…Further, survey research among majority members in the USA demonstrated that stronger national identification predicts stronger support for policies to reduce inequities between ethnic minority and majority groups (Smith & Tyler, 1996), and greater sensitivity to just treatment (Huo, 2003). Yet, these studies did not investigate the endorsement of common identity and did not consider factors that can weaken or strengthen this endorsement.…”

Seeing Through Their Eyes: When Majority Group Members Take Collective Action on Behalf of an Outgroup

“…First, the majority group member presence can be helpful because members of the majority often have more power than members of a disadvantaged minority (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; H. J. Smith & Tyler, 1996). Second, collective action by majority group members may be more persuasive than collective action by minority group members.…”

Constructs of Justice: Beyond Civil Litigation

“…There is much to know. Whether the matter is as potentially mundane as teenager compliance with school rules, as nationally imperative as health care or economic reforms (e.g., Smith & Tyler, 1996), or as wrenching as the debate about the appropriate forums to resolve claims and the compensation amounts to be paid to the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks (e.g., Bornstein & Poser, in press;Tyler & Thorisdottir, 2003), justice constructs can assist in social scientific understanding of the vast array of differences that arise in modern-day, diverse civil society (e.g., Tyler, 1994aTyler, , 2000Tyler, Lind, & Huo, 2000).…”