Understanding Judgments of Fairness in a Real-World Political Context: A Test of the Value Protection Model of Justice Reasoning

Abstract

Current theories of justice emphasize social identity reasons for why people care about justice to the relative neglect of personal identity concerns, that is, people's need to express, defend, and live up to personal moral standards. The authors present a value protection model that predicts that self-expressive moral positions or stands ("moral mandates") are important determinants of how people reason about fairness. Hypotheses were tested and supported in the context of a natural experiment: reactions of a national random sample of adults to the Elián González case pre-raid, post-raid, and then post-resolution of the case. Models that included strength of moral mandates, but not pre-raid judgments of procedural fairness, best predicted reactions to the raid and post-resolution judgments of both procedural and outcome fairness and were associated with expressions of moral outrage and attempts to morally cleanse.

Perspectives on organizational justice: Concept clarification, social context integration, time and links with morality

“…Skitka and Mullen argue that moral positions or stands (moral mandates) are important determinants of how people think about fairness. Both in a real life case (Elian Gonzalez case, Skitka and Mullen 2002) and with regards to a number of political issues (Skitka 2002), the model was supported. Skitka found that having a moral mandate on abortion, civil rights or immigration was not linked to procedural justice judgments of the political institutions concerned with these topics, as long as those institutions posed no concrete moral value threat to these concerns.…”

“…In the value protection of justice model (Skitka and Mullen 2002), personal identity concerns are an important antecedent to justice motives and judgments (while most at the literature looks at social identity reasons). Skitka and Mullen argue that moral positions or stands (moral mandates) are important determinants of how people think about fairness.…”

Self-Focus and Procedural Fairness: The Role of Self-Rumination and Self-Reflection

“…Only recently has this research started to identify (self-related) boundary conditions to the effects of procedural fairness. This empirical wave indicates that the impact of procedural fairness is reduced when decision outcomes violate central aspect of one's identity or strong moral convictions (Mayer et al, 2009;Skitka & Mullen, 2002). Yet, other work suggests that procedural fairness matters even when decision outcomes go against strongly held convictions (Napier & Tyler, 2008).…”

Measuring cultural values at the individual-level: considering morality in cross-cultural value research

“…Research on moral mandates may corroborate this assumption showing that personal moral values have a high action potential (SKITKA, 2002;SKITKA;HOUSTON, 2001;SKITKA;MULLEN, 2002). Skitka and colleagues showed that the value-behaviour link is especially strong for individuals with moral mandates which are selective expressions of values and central to people's sense of personal identity.…”

“…People who develop moral mandates are highly motivated to express and protect them. Skitka and Mullen's (2002) examined reactions of US-American adults to the Elian Gonzales case who became the centre of a heated public controversy and custody battle between his father in Cuba and his extended family in the USA. People in both the USA and Cuba engaged in demonstrations to defend their divergent position and values on the same issue.…”