Susan Clayton

Justice and Identity: Changing Perspectives on What Is Fair

Most research on justice has aimed to describe abstract, depersonalized models that could apply to anyone. However, much of this research has involved identity, if only implicitly. We argue that justice needs to be contextualized to take into account the powerful effects of identity in determining when justice matters. The complexity and fluidity of identity need to be considered to understand when, why, and how strongly people care about justice, and how people choose among competing models of justice. We review existing research on distributive, procedural, and inclusionary justice and describe their connection to identity. We illustrate the intersection of justice and identity in environmental issues, a context in which these constructs have significant implications for individual, community, and planetary well-being. We conclude with 4 points to stimulate further research on the intersections of identity and justice.

Zoo experiences: conversations, connections, and concern for animals.

One way in which zoos attempt to fulfill their goal of conservation is by educating visitors about the importance of protecting wildlife. Research has only begun to examine the effectiveness of zoos in place-based learning, and there has been much debate about how such informal learning is defined and measured. Free-choice learning research has demonstrated that educational outcomes are often indirect, constructed by the visitor as much as they are influenced by the zoos educational staff. This constructivist definition of education includes emotional dimensions and personal meaning-making that occur in the social context of visiting, as well as any structured interpretive material provided on signs and through live presentations. This paper presents an examination of how the zoo is experienced by the visitor, through surveys and through observations of how visitors watch animals and incorporate those viewings into their social experience. Results from surveys of 206 zoo visitors show that support for protecting both individual animals and species is associated with learning, with wanting to know more, and with a feeling of connection to the animal. An analysis of 1,900 overheard visitor conversations suggests that zoo animals are used to facilitate topical interaction among social groups and to explore the connections that people share with nonhuman animals. The authors propose that these perceived positive connections may be related to support for conservation initiatives, and conclude that a visit to the zoo appears to be a positive emotional experience that leaves visitors interested in learning more about animals, irrespective of their reading the exhibit labels.

Introduction to the special issue: Place, identity and environmental behaviour

Abstract Research on identity has proliferated in recent decades, particularly within environmental psychology; the physical environment has been shown to have strong connections to a sense of self, and identity has proved to be an important mediator of behaviour. The concept of identity has been defined and measured, however, in a wide variety of ways. The goal of this special issue is to present some of the recent work tying identity to place and behaviour. In our opening essay we describe some of the distinctions among approaches to identity at different levels of specificity and scale and suggest some criteria to determine meaningful sources of identity, including impacts on cognitive processing, emotional responses, and behaviour. Although a monolithic framework is neither practical nor desirable, we encourage greater conceptual and methodological integration in future research on the interconnections among place, identity, and behaviour.

Cognitive Biases in the Perception of Discrimination: The Importance of Format.

Previous work has shown that people seem less able to perceive sex discrimination on a personal level than on a societal level. The present experiment was performed to test the hypothesis that this phenomenon is in part an information-processing bias; that is, the perception of discrimination is more difficult when one makes case-by-case comparisons than when one encounters information in aggregate form. The experiment demonstrated the importance of formatting for the perception of discrimination. Among subjects with little or no emotional investment in the issue of sex discrimination, the format of the pertinent information has a large effect on information processing: subjects perceived less discrimination when they encountered the relevant information in little chunks than when they saw the total picture at a single shot.

Justice, gender, and affirmative action

Demonstrates the fairness and necessity of affirmative action for women and minorities in the workplace

New Ways of Thinking about Environmentalism: Models of Justice in the Environmental Debate

Justice has become important in public and private consideration of the environment, but a number of different ways of operationalizing justice can be seen. Previous literature suggests that principles stressing responsibility and the public good are more common than need and equity in thinking about environmental issues. The results from two questionnaire studies, presented here, confirm that environmental justice—responsibility to other species and to future generations, and the rights of the environment—emerges as the most highly rated consideration in resolving environmental conflicts and that this factor is distinct from traditional procedural and distributive justice factors. Highlighting the individual or the collective makes different justice principles salient but that the effect depends on ones original position.

The Experience of Injustice: Some Characteristics and Correlates

Research on the phenomenology of justice, though messy, is necessary to enrich the more precise models of justice and to identify gaps in those models. The present studies were designed as a partial replication and extension of Mikula (1986). The goal of Study 1 was to obtain descriptions of the experience of injustice by asking subjects to describe typically unjust situations. Comparisons are made between the data from the present American sample and that of Mikulas Austrian subjects. Building on this, Study 2 asked subjects open-ended questions about their reactions to specific unjust situations. Both individual and situational characteristics affected responses to injustice, though not always in consistent ways. Implications for justice research are discussed.

The Justice of Affirmative Action

There is greater consensus in the United States on the goal of social equality than on the means to achieve that goal. Affirmative action, one legally mandated path to social justice, meets widespread resistance. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act refers to affirmative action as a compensatory procedure directed at victims of discrimination by employers who were guilty of discriminatory practices. Executive Order 11246, issued a year later, widens the field by suggesting that affirmative action is taken in order to avoid potential discrimination. Affirmative action goals have been operationalized in a variety of ways, including hiring and promotion of qualified women or minority group members over equally qualified White males, setting goals and timetables for hiring and promoting to be implemented, and active recruitment of underrepresented groups. Such policies are perceived to violate two basic principles underlying individual achievement in American society: equal access to opportunities and equitable assignment of rewards based on individual merit rather than on immutable status characteristics. It is this appearance of incompatibility with equality of opportunity and equity of rewards which has led some to conclude that affirmative action policies are fundamentally unfair.

Human Behavioral Contributions to Climate Change: Psychological and Contextual Drivers.

We are facing rapid changes in the global climate, and these changes are attributable to human behavior. Humans produce this global impact through our use of natural resources, multiplied by the vast increase in population seen in the past 50 to 100 years. Our goal in this article is to examine the underlying psychosocial causes of human impact, primarily through patterns of reproduction and consumption. We identify and distinguish individual, societal, and behavioral predictors of environmental impact. Relevant research in these areas (as well as areas that would be aided by greater attention by psychologists) are reviewed. We conclude by highlighting ethical issues that emerge when considering how to address human behavioral contributions to climate change.

Preference for Macrojustice Versus Microjustice in Environmental Decisions

Both attitudes and behavior toward the environment are affected by the perceived justice of an environmental position. However, both sides in an environmental conflict will usually claim that justice favors their position. Preference for one outcome over another may thus depend on the type of justice that each outcome represents. The author argues that macrojustice principles, such as equality and responsibility, lend themselves more easily to an environmentalist position, whereas microjustice principles, such as equity and procedural justice, are more congenial to an antienvironmentalist position. In the present study, participants were presented with three scenarios in which conflicts had been resolved in either an antienvironmentalist or a proenvironmentalist way. The positions were presented either as promoting individual concerns or based on the concerns of the wider society. Overall, macrojustice arguments were more successful for proenvironmentalist decisions and microjustice arguments were more successful for antienvironmentalist decisions.