Tyler G. Okimoto

Why are women penalized for success at male tasks?: The implied communality deficit.

In 3 experimental studies, the authors tested the idea that penalties women incur for success in traditionally male areas arise from a perceived deficit in nurturing and socially sensitive communal attributes that is implied by their success. The authors therefore expected that providing information of communality would prevent these penalties. Results indicated that the negativity directed at successful female managers--in ratings of likability, interpersonal hostility, and boss desirability--was mitigated when there was indication that they were communal. This ameliorative effect occurred only when the information was clearly indicative of communal attributes (Study 1) and when it could be unambiguously attributed to the female manager (Study 2); furthermore, these penalties were averted when communality was conveyed by role information (motherhood status) or by behavior (Study 3). These findings support the idea that penalties for womens success in male domains result from the perceived violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions.

Motherhood: a potential source of bias in employment decisions.

Results of 2 experimental studies in which job incumbents were said to be applying for promotions to traditionally male positions demonstrated bias against mothers in competence expectations and in screening recommendations. This bias occurred regardless of whether the research participants were students (Study 1) or working people (Study 2). Although anticipated job commitment, achievement striving, and dependability were rated as generally lower for parents than for nonparents, anticipated competence was uniquely low for mothers. Mediational analyses indicated that, as predicted, negativity in competence expectations, not anticipated job commitment or achievement striving, promoted the motherhood bias in screening recommendations; expected deficits in agentic behaviors, not in dependability, were found to fuel these competence expectations. These findings suggest that motherhood can indeed hinder the career advancement of women and that it is the heightened association with gender stereotypes that occurs when women are mothers that is the source of motherhoods potentially adverse consequences.

The Price of Power: Power Seeking and Backlash Against Female Politicians:

Two experimental studies examined the effect of power-seeking intentions on backlash toward women in political office. It was hypothesized that a female politician’s career progress may be hindered by the belief that she seeks power, as this desire may violate prescribed communal expectations for women and thereby elicit interpersonal penalties. Results suggested that voting preferences for female candidates were negatively influenced by her power-seeking intentions (actual or perceived) but that preferences for male candidates were unaffected by power-seeking intentions. These differential reactions were partly explained by the perceived lack of communality implied by women’s power-seeking intentions, resulting in lower perceived competence and feelings of moral outrage. The presence of moral-emotional reactions suggests that backlash arises from the violation of communal prescriptions rather than normative deviations more generally. These findings illuminate one potential source of gender bias in politics.

The symbolic meaning of transgressions: Towards a unifying framework of justice restoration

This chapter proposes and provides evidence for a conceptual framework for understanding the restoration of justice. Specifically, there is a fundamental distinction between two primary symbolic concerns that follow from transgressions: concern over the status/power relations between the involved parties, and over the violation of the values those parties expect to share. Recognizing these concerns is paramount to understanding the psychological needs of injustice victims, how they conceptualize the restoration of justice, and the processes by which various interventions instill feelings of justice. This framework also elucidates when alternative avenues towards justice might be more effective than traditional retributive responses.

Retribution and Restoration as General Orientations Towards Justice

We proposed two distinct understandings of what justice means to victims and what its restoration entails that are reflected in individual–level justice orientations. Individuals with a retributive orientation conceptualize justice as the unilateral imposition of just deserts against the offender. In contrast, individuals with a restorative orientation conceptualize justice as achieving a renewed consensus about the shared values violated by the offence. Three studies showed differential relations between these two justice orientations and various individual–level values/ideologies and predicted unique variance in preferences for concrete justice–restoring interventions, judicial processes and abstract justice restoration goals. The pattern of results lends validity to the understanding of justice as two distinct conceptualizations, a distinction that provides much needed explanation for divergent preferences for injustice responses. Copyright

Is Compensation Enough? Relational Concerns in Responding to Unintended Inequity

Traditional justice models suggest that monetary compensation is an adequate response to unintended distributive harm. This perspective is widely accepted in real world settings, and is manifested in policies ranging from worker compensation to the court-based tort system. Drawing on the arguments from relational models of authority, we hypothesize that compensation for losses may be viewed by victims as an inadequate response to the situation, even when those losses are accidental and not the result of intentional harm. In four experimental studies, respondents were asked to react to the receipt of monetary compensation for accidental distributive inequities under varying degrees of relational concern. Results indicate that judgments about the favorability of compensation are only one aspect of peoples reaction to responses to harm. In each case, victims displayed more favorable reactions toward the group when compensation was supplemented by relational concern.

The Other Side of Perspective Taking Transgression Ambiguity and Victims' Revenge Against Their Offender

The current investigation examined the untested effects of perspective taking on revenge. After taking the perspective of their offender (or not), victims of an experimentally induced injustice were given the opportunity to exact revenge. When the violation was ambiguous, perspective taking resulted in favorable attribution biases and reduced revenge. In contrast, perspective taking increased desires for revenge when the violation was clear. Both effects were apparent only for victims with a high interdependent self-construal, suggesting that they are motivated by the desire to condemn moral threats to one’s social self-concept, either by attributing the offender’s immoral actions to an external cause (decreased revenge) or taking a stand against the offender’s immorality (increased revenge).

On the relationship between justice and forgiveness: Are all forms of justice made equal?

This research investigates whether, following a wrongdoing, the restoration of justice promotes forgiveness. Three studies - one correlational recall study and two experimental scenario studies - provide evidence that while a restored sense of justice is overall positively related to forgiveness, forgiveness is highly dependent on the means of justice restoration being retributive (punitive) versus restorative (consensus-seeking) in nature. The findings showed that, overall, restorative but not retributive responses led to greater forgiveness. Although both retributive and restorative responses appeared to increase forgiveness indirectly through increased feelings of justice, for retributive responses these effects were counteracted by direct effects on forgiveness. Moreover, the experimental evidence showed that, while feelings of justice derived from restorative responses were positively related to forgiveness, feelings of justice derived from retributive responses were not.

Restorative justice: Seeking a shared identity in dynamic intragroup contexts

Purpose – To develop a new model of restorative reparation that attempts to capture the dynamic role of shared identity perceptions. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on recent advances in restorative justice theory (Wenzel, Okimoto, Feather, & Platow, 2008), we explore the theoretical proposition that a greater understanding of the identity relations between victims, offenders, and the groups in which they are embedded is key to understanding a victims underlying motives toward justice, and thus, predicting when victims will react favorably to restorative justice processes and prefer them over traditional retributive justice interventions. Findings – We argue that a perceived shared identity between the victim and the offender determines the extent to which the victim understands the transgression as requiring a revalidation of the rules, values, or morals undermined by the offense. Moreover, we propose that these identity relations are dynamic in that they both affect and are affected by the experience of injustice. Thus, identity is also shaped by the transgression itself through, inter alia, processes associated with positive social identity maintenance. Importantly, these shifts in identity determine how injustice victims are likely to respond to constructive approaches to conflict resolution such as restorative justice. Originality/value – We offer a series of testable hypotheses aimed at engendering future research in the domain of constructive justice restoration in groups. Moreover, this work suggests that to develop effective resolution strategies, we must consider how an injustice event shapes the relations between the affected parties over time rather than simply assuming identity relations are static.

“We forgive”: A group’s act of forgiveness and its restorative effects on members’ feelings of justice and sentiments towards the offender group:

Although typically conceptualized as a reconciliation outcome, we propose that intergroup forgiveness can also be construed as a decision or course of action that advances justice and positive intergroup sentiments among members of the victimized group. However, the process through which this occurs depends on the perceived differentiation between the groups. Following intergroup transgressions staged in the laboratory (Study 1) or reported in news article scenarios (Study 2), participants whose victimized ingroup expressed forgiveness perceived less injustice than those whose group did not forgive, which indirectly improved intergroup sentiments. Among high ingroup identifiers and in victim groups with low relative status (i.e., more salient intergroup boundaries), forgiveness diminished feelings of injustice by reducing the perceived threat to the ingroup’s status/power. In contrast, among low ingroup identifiers and in groups with high relative status, forgiveness diminished feelings of injustice by reducing the perceived threat to collectively shared values.