Abstract
Although philosophers and social scientists offer equality as a central principle of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice, it is misleading to claim simply that equality is just and inequality is unjust. This chapter addresses the complex relationship between inequality and justice by responding to three questions: (1) When are inequalities perceived to be just or unjust? (2) How do people respond to unfair inequalities? and (3) Why do people fail to redress unfair inequalities? In so doing, we examine both sociological and psychological approaches. We conclude by emphasizing the myriad of factors and processes that contribute to how individuals assess equality and justice, especially in view of the uncertainty characterizing many contexts. Such micro-level assessments, in turn, have implications for macro-level issues focused on group differences and the maintenance of the status quo—existing outcome distributions, decision-making procedures, and interaction rules—or challenges to it.
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Notes
- 1.
See Baby Blues at http://www.babyblues.com/. “Cake” strip published 7-20-2007 and “shopping” strip 1-27-2011.
- 2.
Although, in sections on empirical work, we circumscribe our review to studies pertaining to the relationship between equality and justice, there is a great deal of additional work on justice. We use some of these studies to support theoretical tenets described in the sections on sociological and psychological approaches. Existing overviews of the justice literature include: Colquitt et al. 2000; Cook and Hegtvedt 1983; Fischer and Skitka 2006; Hegtvedt 2006; Hegtvedt and Cook 2001; Jost and Kay 2010; Tornblöm 1992; Tyler et al. 1997.
- 3.
While Blau and Homan focus largely on direct exchange, Molm (2006) outlines other forms of exchange. She contrasts direct negotiated and reciprocal exchanges as well as indirect forms of generalized and productive exchanges. Most of the work on justice, however, focuses on negotiated or reciprocal exchange.
- 4.
Jost and Kay (2010) discuss the debate regarding distinctions between the interpersonal elements of procedural and interactional justice. As these authors note: “…meta-analytic evidence reveals that procedural and interactional justice concerns are indeed correlated and partially overlapping, but they do predict somewhat different behavioral responses” (p. 1144).
- 5.
In addition to reviews of justice work noted in footnote 2, other summaries address underlying justice processes: motivations (e.g., Gillespie and Greenberg 2005), social comparisons (e.g., Greenberg et al. 2007; Markovsky 1985; Riederer et al. 2009), and cognitive processing (e.g., Gilliland and Paddock 2005; Janssen et al. 2011; van den Bos et al. 1999).
- 6.
Osberg and Smeeding (2006) provide a discussion of different interpretations of aggregate income inequalities and ways to measure it. Their detailed analysis, comparing American attitudes toward economic inequality to those prevalent in other countries, suggests that Americans largely are not “exceptional” in their evaluations of inequality.
- 7.
For example, the fight for racial integration of schools (Brown v. The Board of Education) entailed efforts by lawyers and the Supreme Court—those who were advantaged by inequality in the distribution of educational resources and opportunities—who acted or exerted decision-making power to ameliorate a situation that sorely disadvantaged others.
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Hegtvedt, K., Isom, D. (2014). Inequality: A Matter of Justice?. In: McLeod, J., Lawler, E., Schwalbe, M. (eds) Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9002-4_4
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