When Citizens Fight Back: Justice Sensitivity and Resistance to Political Reform

A considerable number of individuals show resistance to reform, whereas others, although similarly affected, do not react in a resistant way at all. Based on research showing that people differ concerning how sensitive they are toward being a victim of injustice (victim justice sensitivity), we argued that people high in victim justice sensitivity perceive a reform more as an illegitimate limitation to their freedom resulting in more reactance. Consequently, people high in victim justice sensitivity should show more resistance to reform. We conducted three studies to test these assumptions. Our studies revealed that physicians (healthcare reform, Study 1) and students (introduction of tuition fees, Studies 2 and 3) with higher victim justice sensitivity experienced more reactance and thus showed more resistance to reform. The implications of these results for the implementation of political reforms are discussed.     

Assessing the Impact of Affective and Cognitive Information in Predicting Attitudes toward Capital Punishment

Research studying the public's attitudes toward capital punishment has typically assessed whether individuals favor or oppose the use of the death penalty, without examining the underlying structure of these attitudes. The present study used a general model of attitude to examine the relative importance of affective information (i.e., feelings) and cognitive information (i.e., beliefs) in predicting attitudes toward capital punishment. Open-ended elicitation measures were used to determine the particular feelings and beliefs respondents most frequently associated with the issue. Participants also reported their attitude (i.e., overall evaluation) toward the issue. The results revealed that: (a) even the most frequently elicited responses were provided by a minority of respondents, (b) overall, both affective and cognitive information were important in predicting attitudes toward capital punishment, and (c) the relative importance of affective and cognitive information in predicting attitudes differed as a function of individual differences in attitude structure. The implications of the results for future research are discussed.     

Preference for the Merit Principle Scale: An Individual Difference Measure of Distributive Justice Preferences

The present paper describes the development and validation of the Preference for the Merit Principle (PMP) Scale, a measure to assess people's preference for allocating outcomes on the basis of the distributive justice principle of merit. On the basis of data from a large sample of undergraduate students, we tested the construct and predictive validity of the scale and compared the results with the performance of two existing justice scales (Rasinski's, 1987, Proportionality Scale, and Rubin and Peplau's, 1975, Belief in a Just World Scale). Overall, we found that the PMP Scale had superior construct validity as compared with the Proportionality Scale. In brief, the PMP Scale was more independent of conceptually distinct constructs, such as prejudice and right-wing authoritarianism. In addition, unlike the Proportionality and Just World Scales, the PMP Scale was able to predict participants' future attitudes toward affirmative action