NCJ Number
126092
Journal
European Journal of Social Psychology Volume: 20 Pages: 1990,P 133-149
Date Published
1990
Length
17 pages
Annotation
The present research was designed to identify types of events in everyday life that people regard as unjust and to find a meaningful structural representation of these types of events.
Abstract
Two hundred and eighty descriptions of unjust events were collected from various student samples using different methodologies. A considerable proportion of the injustices which were reported referred to the manner in which people were treated in interpersonal interactions and encounters, rather than to distributional or procedural issues in the narrow sense. An intuitive classification of the descriptions led to 22 different types of unjust events. This classification system was subsequently validated. The grouping data were then subjected to cluster and multidimensional scaling analyses. A 19-cluster solution reproduced intuitively-defined main types of unjust events very well. An 8-cluster solution, which provided the most meaningful higher level grouping, and results of the MDS analyses indicated that a meaningful structural representation of types of injustices has to consider the particular content of unjust events as well as the social setting where they occur. For instance, injustices in task-oriented relationships of unequal power and impersonal short-term encounters are distinguished from injustices occurring in personal, long-term, social-emotional relationships of equal power. 1 figure, 2 tables, 7 footnotes, 25 references, and 1 appendix. (Author abstract modified)