TYPES OF INJUSTICE

In the scholarly literature on injustice, there are several foci of attention:

• Distributive injustice, which is concerned with the criteria that lead you to feel you receive a fair outcome.

• Procedural injustice, concerned with fair treatment in making and imple­menting the decisions that determine the outcome. (Is the politician being treated with dignity and respect? Has he lost the election fairly?)

• The sense of injustice, centering on what factors determine whether an injustice is experienced as such. (If the wife does more than her fair share of the household chores, what will determine whether or not she feels it is unjust?)

• Retributive and reparative injustice, concerned with how to respond to the violation of moral norms and how to repair the moral community that has been violated (for example, in the case of job discrimination against an applicant because of race).

• Moral exclusion or the scope of injustice, is concerned with who is included in the moral community and who is thought to be entitled to fair outcomes and fair treatments. Generally, you don’t include such creatures as ticks and roaches in your moral community—and some people think of other ethnic groups, heretics, or those with differing sexual orientation as “vermin” who are not entitled to justice.

• Cultural imperialism occurs when a dominant group imposes its values, norms, and customs upon subordinated groups so that members of these subordinated groups find themselves defined by the dominant others. To the extent that women, Africans, Jews, Muslims, homosexu­als, the elderly, and so on must interact with the dominant group whose culture mainly provides stereotyped images of them, they are often under pressure to conform to and internalize the dominant group images of their group.

I discuss each focus separately in this chapter. Recognize, though, that there is considerable overlap among them.

Distributive Justice

Issues of distributive justice pervade social life. They occur not only at the soci­etal level, but also in intimate social relations. They arise when something of value is scarce and not everyone can have what they want or when something of negative value (a cost, a harm) cannot be avoided by all. In the schools, such questions arise in connection with who gets the teacher’s attention, who gets what marks, and how much of a school’s resources are to be allocated for stu­dents who are physically handicapped or socioeconomically disadvantaged. Similarly, distribution of pay, promotion, benefits, equipment, space, and so forth are common problems in work settings. Also, issues of distributive justice are involved in health care and medical practice: how is a scarce or expensive medical resource, such as a mechanical heart, to be allocated?

Scholars have identified a large number of principles that could be used in distributing grades, pay, scarce medical resources, and the like. Discussions focus on three key principles—equity, equality, and need—and their variants. The equity principle asserts that people should receive benefits in proportion to their contribution; those who contribute more should receive more than those who contribute less. The equality principle states that all members of a group should share its benefits equally. The need principle indicates that those who need more of a benefit should get more than those who need it less.

In any particular allocation situation, the three principles may be in conflict. Thus, paying the members of a workgroup according to their individual pro­ductivity may conflict with paying all the members of a work group equally, and these two principles may conflict with paying them according to their need (such as giving higher pay to those with more dependents). Only if all are equally productive and equally needy is there no conflict among the principles.

The principles of distributive justice may be favored differently among indi­viduals, groups, social classes, ideologies, and so forth. For example, in a collectivist community such as an Israeli kibbutz, the members have essentially the same pay and standard of living no matter how much they differ in their individual work productivity. In contrast, in an individualistic society such as the United States, the CEO of a profit-making firm may get paid more than a thousand times what an individual worker makes. Conflict within the kibbutz arises if individuals feel that their standard of living does not adequately reflect their unusually valuable contribution to the community; conflict within the American firm is likely if workers feel that they are not getting a fair share of the profits.

Theory and research (Deutsch, 1985) suggest that the principles are usually salient in different social contexts. Equity is most prominent in situations in which economic productivity is the primary goal; equality is dominant when social harmony, cohesiveness, or fostering enjoyable social relations is the primary emphasis; and need is most salient in situations where encouraging personal development and personal welfare is the major goal.

Many times, all three goals are important. In such situations, the three prin­ciples can be applied in a manner that is either mutually supportive or mutu­ally contradictory. In a mutually supportive application, the equity principle leads to recognizing individual differences in contribution and honoring those who make uniquely important contributions. In a socially harmonious honor­ing, no invidious distinctions are drawn between those who are honored and those who are not; the equal divine or moral value of everyone in the coop­erative community is affirmed as the community honors those who give so much to it. Similarly, the equal moral worth of every individual leads to special help for those who are especially needy.

Thus, if a football player helps his team win by an unusually skillful or coura­geous feat, he is honored by his teammates and others in such a way that they feel good rather than demeaned by his being honored.

The judgment that you have received a fair outcome is determined not only by whether the appropriate distributive principles are employed but also by whether your outcome is in comparative balance with the outcomes received by people like you in similar situations. If you and a coworker are equally pro­ductive, do you each receive the same pay raise? Are all members of a club invited to a party given by the club leader? If it’s my turn to receive a heart transplant, is someone else—maybe a wealthy benefactor of the hospital—given higher priority?

The theory of relative deprivation indicates that the sense of deprivation or injustice arises if there is comparative imbalance: egoistical deprivation occurs if an individual feels disadvantaged relative to other individuals, and fraternal deprivation occurs if a person feels her group is disadvantaged relative to other groups. The sense of being deprived occurs if there is a perceived discrepancy between what a person obtains, of what she wants, and what she believes she is entitled to obtain. The deprivation is relative because one’s sense of depri­vation is largely determined by past and current comparisons with others as well as by future expectations.

There is an extensive literature on the determinants of the choice of other individuals or groups with whom one chooses to compare oneself. This litera­ture is too extensive to summarize here, but it clearly demonstrates that people’s feelings of deprivation are not simply a function of their objective circumstances; they are affected by a number of psychological variables.

Procedural Justice

In addition to assessing the fairness of outcomes, individuals judge the fairness of the procedures that determine the outcomes. Research evidence indicates that fair treatment and procedures are a more pervasive concern to most people than fair outcomes. (See Lind and Tyler, 1988, for a comprehensive discussion of procedural justice.) Fair procedures are psychologically important for several reasons, first in encouraging the assumption that they give rise to fair outcomes in the present and also in the future. In some situations, where it is not clear what fair outcomes should be, fair procedures are the best guarantee that the decision about outcomes is made fairly. Research indicates that one is less apt to feel committed to authorities, organizations, social policies, and governmental rules and regulations if the procedures associated with them are considered unfair. Also, people feel affirmed if the procedures to which they are subjected treat them with the respect and dignity they feel is their due; if so treated, it is easier for them to accept a disappointing outcome.

Questions with regard to the justice of procedures can arise in various ways. Let us consider, for example, evaluation of teacher performance in a school. Some questions immediately come to mind. Who has “voice” or representation in determining whether such evaluation is necessary? How are the evaluations to be conducted? Who conducts them? What is to be evaluated? What kind of information is collected? How is its accuracy and validity ascertained? How are its consistency and reliability determined? What methods of preventing incom­petence or bias in collecting and processing information are employed? Who constitutes the groups that organize the evaluations, draw conclusions, make recommendations, and make decisions? What roles do teachers, administrators, parents, students, and outside experts have in the procedures? How are the eth- icality, considerateness, and dignity of the process protected?

Implicit in these questions are some values with regard to procedural justice. One wants procedures that generate relevant, unbiased, accurate, consistent, reliable, competent, and valid information and decisions as well as polite, dig­nified, and respectful behavior in carrying out the procedures. Also, voice and representation in the processes and decisions related to the evaluation are con­sidered desirable by those directly affected by the decisions. In effect, fair pro­cedures yield good information for use in the decision-making processes as well as voice in the processes for those affected by them, and considerate treatment as the procedures are being implemented.

The Sense of Injustice

Whether an injustice takes the form of physical abuse, discrimination in employ­ment, sexual harassment, or disrespectful treatment, there will always be some people who are insensitive to the injustice and hence seemingly unaware of it. In what follows, we discuss factors that influence the sense of injustice.

Victims and Victimizers. Distributive as well as procedural injustice can advantage some people and groups and disadvantage others. Those who bene­fit from injustice are, wittingly or unwittingly, often its perpetrators or perpetu- ators, and they are usually not fully aware of their complicity. Awareness brings with it such unpleasant emotions as guilt, fear of revenge, and sometimes feel­ings of helplessness with regard to their ability to bring about the social changes necessary to eliminate the injustice. As one might expect, the disadvantaged are more apt to be aware of the injustice. Associated with this awareness are feel­ings such as anger (outrage, indignation), resentment, humiliation, depression, and a sense of helplessness. Positive emotions related to self-esteem, sense of power, and pride are experienced by those who are engaged in effective actions to eliminate injustice, whether they are advantaged or disadvantaged.

There seems to be a straightforward explanation for the asymmetry in sensi­tivity to the injustice of the disadvantaged (the victims) and the advantaged (the victimizers). The victims usually have relatively little power compared to the victimizers; the latter are more likely to set the terms of their relationship and, through their control of the state and other social institutions, to establish the legal and other reigning definitions of justice.

Thus, the victimizers—in addition to gains from their exploitative actions— commonly find reassurance in official definitions of justice and the support of such major social institutions as the church, the media, and the schools, to deaden their sensitivity to the injustices inherent in their relations with the vic­tim. The victim may, of course, be taken in by the official definitions and the indoctrination emanating from social institutions and, as a result, lose sensitiv­ity to her situation of injustice. However, the victim is less likely than the victimizer to lose sensitivity to injustice because she is the one who is experi­encing its negative consequences. She is also less likely to feel committed to the official definitions and indoctrinations because of her lack of participation in creating them.

This explanation of differential sensitivity in terms of differential gains and differential power is not the complete story. There are, of course, relations in which the victimizer is not of superior power; even so, he avoids experiencing guilt for his actions. Consider a traffic accident in which a car hits a pedestrian. The driver of the car usually perceives the accident so as to place responsibil­ity for it on the victim. Seeing the victim as responsible enables the driver to maintain a positive image of himself. Projecting the blame onto the victim enables the victimizer to feel blameless.

If we accept the notion that most people try to maintain a positive concep­tion of themselves, we can expect differential sensitivity to injustice in those who experience pain, harm, and misfortune and those who cause it. If I try to think well of myself, I shall minimize my responsibility for any injustice that is connected with me or minimize the extent of injustice that has occurred if I can­not minimize my responsibility. On the other hand, if I am the victim of pain or harm, to think well of myself I have to believe that it was not my due; it is not just desserts for a person of my good character. Thus, the need to maintain positive self-esteem leads to opposite reactions in those who cause an injustice and those who suffer from it. There is, of course, also the possibility that a vic­tim may seek to maintain her self-esteem by denying or minimizing the injus­tice she is suffering; denial may not be completely conscious. Resort to denial is less apt to occur if there are other similar victims who are prepared to acknowledge and protest their own victimization.

Although the need to maintain positive self-regard is common, it is not uni­versal. If she views herself favorably, the victim of injustice may be outraged by her experience and attempt to undo it; in so doing, she may have to challenge the victimizer. If the victimizer is more powerful than she and has the support of legal and other social institutions, she will realize that it is dangerous to act on her outrage—or even to express it. Under such circumstances, in a process that Anna Freud (1937) labeled “identification with the aggressor,” the victim may control her dangerous feelings of injustice and outrage by denying them and by internalizing the derogatory attitudes of the victimizer toward herself as well as toward others who are similar to her (other women, other disadvantaged groups). Paradoxically, by identifying with the aggressor you feel more power­ful as you attack or aggress against others on whom you project the “bad” characteristics in yourself that you have suppressed because of your fear of being attacked by someone with the power to harm you. We can see this phe­nomenon in parents who were abused as children going on to abuse their own children and in traditionally submissive women derogating independent, assertive women.

From this discussion, it is evident that for numerous reasons victims as well as their victimizers may be insensitive to injustices that are occurring. I turn now to a brief discussion of how the sense of injustice may be activated in the victim and the victimizer. (See Deutsch and Steil, 1988, for an extended discussion.)

Activating the Sense of Injustice. The process entails falsifying and delegiti­mating officially sanctioned ideologies, myths, and prejudices that “justify” the injustices. I am referring to such myths as these:

• Women like men to make sexual passes at them, even at work, because it makes them feel attractive.

• African Americans are morally and intellectually inferior to European Americans.

• The poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy.

• Everyone in the United States has equal opportunity in the competition to achieve success.

The activation process also involves exposing the victims and victimizers to new ideologies, models, and reference groups that support realistic hope about the possibility that the injustice can be eliminated. Because of the anxieties they elicit, one can anticipate that the changes necessary to eliminate an injustice produce resistance from others—and sometimes in oneself. It is easier to man­age resistance and anxiety by becoming aware of the value systems that support the change and of models of successful change as well as of the social sup­port you can get from groups and individuals who support the change. You feel less vulnerable if you know that you are not alone, that others are with you.

Additionally, the process entails the work necessary to make oneself and one’s group effective forces for social change. There is internally directed work, aimed at enhancing cohesiveness, trust, and effective organization among those who favor change; and there is external work, involved in building up one’s political and economic strength as well as one’s bargaining power. Doing so enables effective action to increase the incentives for accepting change among the advantaged who are content with the status quo and among those who desire change but are fearful of the consequences of seeking change. However, some victims of injustice may have to free themselves from the seductive satisfaction of feeling morally superior to the victimizers before they can fully commit to and be effective in their struggle against injustice.

Retributive and Reparative Justice

In a study comparing responses to injustice and to frustration (reported in Deutsch, 1985), it was found that an injustice that is experienced, whether to oneself or to another, involves one not only personally but also as a member of a moral community whose moral norms are being violated; it evokes an oblig­ation to restore justice. The psychology of retributive and reparative justice is concerned with the attitudes and behavior of people in response to moral rule breaking. It is reasonable to expect a person’s response to be influenced by the nature of the transgression, the transgressor, the victim, and the amount of harm experienced by the victim, as well as by the person’s relations to the transgres­sor and victim. A transgression such as murder evokes a different response than violation of customary norms of courtesy and politeness. In the United States, a white murderer is less likely to be executed than a black one. Similarly, beat­ing and raping a black woman is less apt to result in widespread media atten­tion than in the case of a white victim. Burning a synagogue is considered a more serious offense than painting swastikas on its walls. An Israeli Jew is less apt to be concerned about Israeli discrimination against Palestinians than Arabs are, and Arabs are unlikely to be as concerned about discrimination against Jews in their countries as Israeli Jews are.

A number of means are employed to support and reestablish the validity of moral rules once they are violated. They generally call for one or a combination of these actions on the part of the violator: full confession, sincere apology con­trition, restitution, compensation, self-abasement, or self-reform. They also may involve various actions by the community addressed to the violator, such as humiliation, physical punishment, incarceration, or reeducation. These actions may be addressed not just to the violator but also to others related to the violator, such as his children, family, or ethnic group.

Retribution can serve a number of functions:

Violation of a moral code tends to weaken the code; one of the most important functions of retribution is to reassert the continuing strength and validity of the moral rule that has been violated. For example, many communities are experiencing a breakdown of the rules of courtesy and respect because children and adolescents are no longer taught these rules and there is no appropriate response when they are violated.

• Retribution can also serve a cathartic function for members of the moral community who have been affronted and angered by the transgression.

• Punishment of the violator may have a deterrent effect against future violation as well as a cathartic effect.

• Retribution may take the form of compulsory reeducation and reform of the transgressor so that he is no longer likely to engage in immoral behavior.

• Retribution in the form of restitution, in addition to its other functions, may serve to help the victim recover from the losses and damages that he or she has suffered.

There are considerable variations among cultures and subcultures with regard to both the nature of moral rules and how to respond to violations of them. Ignorance with regard to the moral rules of another culture as well as ethno­centrism are likely to give rise to misunderstanding as well as conflict if one violates the moral code of the other’s group.

The Scope of Justice

The scope of justice refers to who (and what) is included in one’s moral com­munity. Who is and is not entitled to fair outcomes and fair treatment by inclu­sion or lack of inclusion in one’s moral community? Albert Schweitzer included all living creatures in his moral community, and some Buddhists include all of nature. Most of us define a more limited moral community.

Individuals and groups who are outside the boundary in which considerations of fairness apply may be treated in ways that would be considered immoral if people within the boundary were so treated. Consider the situation in Bosnia. Prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbs, Muslims, and Croats in Bosnia were more or less part of one moral community and treated one another with some degree of civility. After the start of civil strife (initiated by power-hungry politi­cal leaders), vilification of other ethnic groups became a political tool, and it led to excluding others from one’s moral community. As a consequence, the various ethnic groups committed the most barbaric atrocities against one another. The same thing happened with the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi.

At various periods in history and in different societies, groups and individuals have been treated inhumanly by other humans: slaves by their masters, natives by colonialists, blacks by whites, Jews by Nazis, women by men, children by adults, the physically disabled by those who are not, homosexuals by hetero­sexuals, political dissidents by political authorities, and one ethnic or religious group by another.

Lesser forms of moral exclusions, marginalization, occur also against whole categories of people—women, the physically impaired, the elderly, and various ethnic, religious, and racial groups—in many societies where barriers prevent them from full participation in the political, economic, and social life of their societies. The results of these barriers are not only material deprivation but also disrespectful, demeaning, and arbitrary treatment as well as decreased oppor­tunity to develop and employ their individual talents. For extensive research and writing in this area, see the work of Susan Opotow (2001), a leading scholar in this area.

Three central psychological questions arise with regard to moral exclusion:

1. What social conditions lead an individual or group to exclude others from the individual or group’s moral community?

2. What psychological mechanisms enable otherwise moral human beings to commit atrocities against other human beings?

3. What determines which individuals or groups are likely to be excluded from the moral community?

Existing knowledge to answer these questions adequately is limited; their seriousness deserves fuller answers than space allows here.

Social Conditions. Studies of political, ethnic, and religious violence have iden­tified several social conditions that appear particularly conducive to developing or intensifying hatred and alienating emotions that permit otherwise nonviolent members of a society to dehumanize victims and kill (Gurr, 1970; Staub, 1989).

The first of these conditions is emergence of, or increase in, difficult life con­ditions, with a corresponding increase in the sense of relative deprivation. This may happen as a result of defeat in war, economic depression, rapid social change, or even physical calamity. The resulting decrease in living standards often leads to a sense of insecurity and a feeling of being threatened by potential rivals for scarce jobs, housing, and the like.

The second condition is an unstable political regime whose power may be under challenge. In such situations, scapegoating may be employed by those in power as a means of deflecting criticism and of attacking potential dissidents and rivals.

Third, there may be a claim for superiority—national, racial, gender, class, cultural, religious, genetic—that justifies treating the other as having inferior moral status.

The fourth condition is when violence is culturally salient and sanctioned as a result of past wars, attention in the media, or availability of weapons.

Fifth, there may be little sense of human relatedness or social bonding with the potential victims because there is little in the way of cooperative human contact with them.

The sixth condition consists of social institutions that are authoritarian; there, nonconformity and open dissent against violence sanctioned by authority are inhibited.

Finally, hatred and violence are intensified if there is no active group of observers of the violence, in or outside the society, who strongly object to it and serve as a constant reminder of its injustice and immorality.

Psychological Mechanisms. There are many mechanisms by which reprehen­sible behavior toward another can be justified. One can do so by appealing to a higher moral value (killing physicians who perform abortions to discourage abortion and “save unborn children”). Or one can rationalize by relabeling the behavior (calling physical abuse of a child “teaching him a lesson”). Or one can minimize the behavior by saying it is not so harmful (“it hurts me more than it does you”). Or one can deny personal responsibility for the behavior (your supe­rior has ordered you to torture the prisoner). Or one can blame the victim (it is because they are hiding the terrorists in their village that the village must be destroyed). Or one can isolate oneself emotionally or desensitize oneself to the human consequences of delegitimating the others (as many do in relation to beggars and homeless people in urban areas).

Selection of Targets for Exclusion. We are most likely to delegitimate others whom we sense as a threat—to anything that is important to us: our religious beliefs, economic well-being, public order, sense of reality, physical safety, rep­utation, ethnic group, family, moral values, institutions, and so on. If harm by the other was experienced in the past, we are apt to be increasingly ready to interpret ambiguous actions of the other as threats. A history of prior violent ethnic conflict predisposes a group to be suspicious of another’s intentions. We also delegitimate others whom we exploit, take advantage of, or otherwise treat unfairly because of their deviance from normative standards of appearance or behavior. However, as indicated earlier in this chapter, there is an asymmetry such that the ability to exclude the other is more available to the powerful as compared to the weak; the powerful can do this overtly, the weak only covertly. Thus, the targets for exclusion are likely to be those with relatively little power, such as minority groups, the poor, and “sexual deviants.”

Sometimes suppressed inner conflicts encourage individuals or groups to seek out external enemies. There are many kinds of internal needs for which a hostile external relationship can be an outlet:

• It may amount to an acceptable excuse for internal problems; the prob­lems can be held out as caused by the adversary or by the need to defend against the adversary.

• It may be a distraction so that internal problems appear less salient.

• It can provide an opportunity to express pent-up hostility arising from internal conflict through combat with the external adversary.

• It may enable one to project disapproved aspects of oneself (which are not consciously recognized) onto the adversary and to attack those aspects through assault on the adversary. The general tendency is to select for projection those who are weaker, those with whom there is a prior history of enmity, and those who symbolically represent the weaker side of the internal conflict. Thus, someone who has repressed his homosexual tendencies, fearing socially dangerous consequences for acting on them, may make homosexuals into an enemy group.

• Especially if it has dangerous undertones, conflict can serve to counter­act such personal feelings as aimlessness, boredom, lack of focus, lack of energy, and depression. It can give a sense of excitement, purpose, coherence, and unity as well as energize and mobilize oneself for strug­gle. It can be an addictive stimulant masking underlying depression.

• It may permit important parts of oneself—including attitudes, skills, and defenses developed during conflictual relations in one’s formative stages—to be expressed and valued because relations with the present adversary resemble earlier conflictual relations.

Cultural Imperialism

“Cultural imperialism involves the universalization of a dominant group’s expe­rience and culture and establishing it as the norm.” (Young, 1990, p. 59). Those living under cultural imperialism find themselves defined by the dominant others. As Young (op cit points out: “Consequently, the differences of women from men, American Indians or Africans from Europeans, Jews from Christians, becomes reconstructed as deviance and inferiority.” Culturally dominated groups often experience themselves as having a double identity, one defined by the dominant group and the other coming from membership in one’s own group. Thus, in my childhood, adult African American men were often called “boy” by members of the dominant white groups but within their own group, they might be respected ministers and wage earners. Culturally subordinated groups are often able to maintain their own culture because they are segregated from the dominant group and have many interactions within their own group, which are invisible to the dominant group. In such contexts, the subordinated culture commonly reacts to the dominant culture with mockery and hostility fueled by their sense of injustice and of victimization.