ucalgary 2015 violato efrem - university of calgary in alberta
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University of Calgary
PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository
Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations
2015-01-08
The Role of the Justice Motive in Reactions to Illness
and Injury
Violato, Efrem
Violato, E. (2015). The Role of the Justice Motive in Reactions to Illness and Injury (Unpublished
master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28361
http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1998
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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
The Role of the Justice Motive in Reactions to Illness and Injury
by
Efrem Violato
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN PSYCHOLOGY
CALGARY, ALBERTA
JANUARY, 2015
© Efrem Violato 2015
Abstract
Justice motive theory provides an account of people’s reactions to violations of their belief in a
just world and the variable ways they will attempt to maintain their view of the world as just.
Work in the area has extensively examined observer reactions to the fates of others. Less is
known about how people react to injustice associated with their own outcomes. The present
research examines justice relevant factors associated with experiencing injury or illness
including fairness, deservingness, and the potential moderating effects of severity and
responsibility. To assess these factors correlational, regression and MANOVA analysis were
used. The potential for injury and illness to give rise to fairness and deservingness concerns was
apparent for many but not all participants. In addition the hypothesized just world protective
strategies of self-blame, self-derogation, compensatory cognition, and reevaluating the outcome
were evident in participants’ reactions to infirmities.
Keywords: justice motive, belief in a just world, deservingness
ii
Acknowledgments
My Parents
My Nonni
Dr. Ellard
iii
Table of Contents
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………...…ii
Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………..…iii
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………iv
List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..vi
List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………...…viii
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1
Background………………………………………………………………………………..1
Justice Motivation and Reactions to Physical Health Affliction……………………..…...4
Justice Motive Reactions to One’s Own Injustice………………………………..……….7
Just World Beliefs and Health Outcomes………………………………………………....8
Justice Motivation and Health Outcomes………………………………………………9
Severity and Responsibility…………………………………………………………...11
Self Esteem……………….…………………………………………………………...12
Aims and Hypotheses………………………………………………….…………….….13
Aim 1………………………………………………………………………………….13
Aim 2………………………………………………………………………………….15
Aim 3………………………………………………………………………………….16
Method…………………………………………………………………………………………..19
Participants……………………………………………………….…………….………19
Procedure……………………………………………………………..………………..22
Measures…………………………………………………………………..……….......23
Results…………………………………………………………………………….…………….36
Preliminary Analysis……………………………………………….………………….36
Preliminary Analysis Discussion………………………………………..…………......43
Aim 1Results……………………………………………………………….………….48
Aim 1 Discussion………………………………………………………………..….….61
Aim 2 Results……………………………………………………….……………….…69
Aim 2 Discussion…………………………………………………….………..……….77
Aim 3 Results and Discussion………………………………………………………....83
General Discussion……………………………………………………………………………..87
References………………………………………………………………………………………100
Appendix1………………………………………………………………………………………110
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Appendix 2…………………………………………………………………………………...…111
Appendix 3…………………………………………………………………………………...…112
Appendix 4…………………………………………………………………………………...…114
Appendix 5……………………………………………………………………………………...117
Appendix 6……………………………………………………………………………………...119
Appendix 7……………………………………………………………………………………...121
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List of Tables
Table
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Table
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Table
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Table
4………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Table
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Table
6………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Table
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Table
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Table
9………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Table
10……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Table
11……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Table
12……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Table
13……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Table
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List of Figures
Figure
1………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Figure
2………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Figure
3………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Figure
4………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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1
How people think about and psychologically experience physical health afflictions has
long been understood to have implications for both their psychological adjustment and recovery
trajectory (Kiviniemi & Rothman, 2010; Rothman, Klein, Cameron, 2013; Salovey, Rothman,
Rodin, 1998; Taylor, 1984). The ways in which psychological processes can affect health
outcomes and the way people cope with disease is diverse. The research reported here examines
how perceptions of fairness and deservingness inform reactions people have to injury and illness.
The basic premise grounded in justice motive theory (Lerner, 1980; Ellard, Harvey, & Callan, in
press) is that injury and illness have considerable potential to threaten people’s sense of fairness
in so far as illness and injury are undesired “bad” outcomes, happening to people who
presumably most often see themselves as good people. When bad things happen to good people,
people unsurprisingly will feel like their sense of justice has been challenged. Justice motive
theory has stimulated extensive research into how people respond to perceived injustice and the
goal of this research is to examine how this research can shed light on psychological reactions to
injury and illness.
Background
Much of the research in this area has been in the area of stress and coping. Coping has
been defined as “the efforts to master, reduce, minimize or tolerate the negative consequences of
internal or external demands” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Coping has focused largely on
individual differences particularly in terms of control with an internal locus of control producing
more problem focused approaches (Salovey, et al, 1998). The early focus in coping research was
on problem focused coping compared with emotion focused coping, with problem focused
coping being seen as more useful. More recent work has shown that rather than determining
which specific method is most adaptive the use of any one method that is able to produce
2
positive change will be the most important for a person’s coping (Troy, Shallcross & Mauss;
2013).With this in mind various strategies for dealing with health issue such as denying the
adversity, remaining calm, personally dealing with the situation, or seeking a second opinion
have all been examined and found to be useful (Olff, Brosschot, Godaert, 1993).
Other individual difference research emphasizing human strengths focuses on qualities
such as resiliency (Rutter, 1987), optimism (Peterson, 2000), and hardiness (Maddi & Kobasa,
1984). Optimism for instance, has been associated with better surgical outcomes (Scheier et al.,
1989). In the case of resiliency, patients high in resiliency with worsening diabetes showed
better physical health after one year along with better self-care behaviours than those moderate
or low in resiliency (Yi, et al. 2008). A more complex individual difference with demonstrated
relevance for health following infirmity is spirituality and religious involvement. For instance,
people who say they believe in God appear to have a greater ability to recover from illness
(Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2001).
For the proposed research both individual differences and aspects of the infirmity and its
antecedents will be considered. This will help emphasize the importance of peoples’
understanding of what happened to them as well as with more general issues of meaning that
involve moral concerns such as blame and responsibility. How people make sense of disease or
injury will reflect both individual differences in beliefs and attributional strategy as well as the
particular circumstances of the disease or injury itself such as severity or the extent to which the
infirmity is the result of the victim’s behavior.
Presently the approach to examining how people make sense of their infirmity has drawn
most heavily on attribution theory (Salovey, Rothman, Rodin, 1998). Attribution theory
3
describes how people determine the cause of outcomes and their inferences or judgments about
blame and responsibility for the outcomes in their social environment (Heider, 1958; Jones &
Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967). The theory has been useful in providing insight into how important
people’s understanding of their infirmity is for how they deal with it. Blame for instance, has
been shown to have important consequences that are sometimes counterintuitive. Janoff-Bulman
& Lang-Gunn (1986) found that self-blame is a common attribution following severe illness but
they also found that blaming oneself was not necessarily negative. For parents of children with
perinatal complications self-blame was more common with greater perceived severity of the
outcome however self-blame was associated with higher perceived preventability of recurrence
and better emotional adaptation (Teenen, Glenn, Gershman, 1986). To explain the seemingly
contradictory effects of self-blame, Janoff-Bulman & Lang-Gunn (1986) and others have argued
that blaming oneself can restore a sense of control and enhance self-efficacy for managing future
health threatening situations.
An aspect of people’s efforts at making sense of their disease or illness that has
implications for further understanding of the role of blame but has yet to be explored is the
matter of how a health event impacts peoples’ sense of fairness. When one becomes ill or suffers
an injury, it is known based on an extensive literature on justice motivation that the reactions of
others will be informed by how “unfair” or “undeserved” the fate is perceived to be (Braman &
Lambert, 2001; Cataldo, Jahan, Pongquan, 2012; De Palma, et al., 1999). It is further known that
observers, for reasons that will be detailed below, can engage in various reactions including
blaming victims, based on a need to see the situation as “just.” The present research is designed
to examine the proposition that the same justice concerns that inform the reactions of third
parties may inform the reactions of victims themselves. From this perspective, reactions such as
4
self-blame take on a different meaning: victims blame themselves not so much to regain a sense
of control but to accommodate their need to see all negative outcomes as fair. Examining how
people react to their illness or injury from a justice perspective has the further advantage of
providing potential insight into a variety of ways people make sense of their fate in addition to
self-blame.
Justice Motivation and Reactions to Physical Health Affliction
In so far as people do not desire to become ill or injured, when it happens it is not
surprising to see reactions that reflect fairness and deservingness concerns. The most transparent
expression of this is the question “why me?” Since most people are inclined to view themselves
as “good” and disease or injury as “bad” asking why me questions is understandable (Dalbert,
2001). It is predictable from the point of view of justice motive theory that people will find
themselves asking “why me?” in so far as their infirmity threatens the belief in a just world. In
situations where people do not have a way of seeing how or why they might deserve their
affliction and focus on the “why me?” the result can be depressogenic brooding, anxiety and
difficulties in physical health (Watkins, 2008) as well as leaving patients unable to assimilate
their belief systems with their experience (Dalbert, 2001; Park, et al., 2008; Holland & Reznik,
2005; Watkins, 2008).
Rumination about “why me?” is not the only response people have or necessarily the
most common one. The present research is based on the proposition that while explicit
unresolved concerns about justice and deservingness are the most apparent expression of justice
concerns, the same concerns can give rise to a variety of other reactions all of which reflect an
attempt at resolution of the “why me?” question. It is expected that the same strategies people
5
use as observers for maintaining their sense of justice will be used when confronted with a
personal injustice. As such, the proposal draws on theory and research documenting the
importance of the justice motive in people’s lives.
Justice motive theory as developed by Lerner (1980) deals with people’s implicit need to
see and experience the world as a just and morally coherent place. This notion can be
summarized in the phrase “good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad
people” or “people get what they deserve.” This is considered a fundamental delusion and people
will often deny being committed to such a belief, however their behaviour and cognitions often
betray them. Extensive evidence has accumulated attesting to the fact that people do in fact seek
to maintain the belief that the world is a just place (Lerner, 1991; Lerner, 1998). From a
psychological perspective, the belief in a just world is actually a metaphor for the dynamics of a
foundational assumption that rarely appears in consciousness the way conventionally understood
beliefs do. It is more psychologically precise to characterize the motive as a need to be able to
maintain the assumption that the world is a just place (Ellard, Harvey, Callan, in press).
According to Lerner, the motivated commitment to the assumption that the world is a just
place arises out of a personal contract associated with delay of gratification: “if I delay
gratification in the expectation that I will later get what I am entitled to, then I must at the same
time believe that I live in a world where other people get what they deserve too. Evidence to the
contrary threatens my own entitlements” (Ellard, et al., in press).
The importance of the justice motive is most apparent when people are confronted with
evidence suggesting the world is not just either because of someone else’s undeserved
circumstances or one’s own. In response to unjust circumstances, people have been shown to
6
respond in a variety of ways designed to diminish or remove entirely the threat to the just world
assumption. The responses documented in the literature examining reactions of observers to the
fate of others can be either behavioural or cognitive.
The most straightforward behavioural response is to take action to redress the injustice.
In the third party literature this can take form in seeking compensation for victims and/or
punishment of perpetrators. The important constraint on this response is that people will only
take action if they believe their actions will in fact fully redress the injustice (White,
MacDonnell, & Ellard, 2012). As a result, observers often resort to cognitive strategies for
resolving the injustice in just world terms.
Documented third party cognitive strategies for maintaining the belief in a just world
include blaming or derogating the victim, re-evaluating the outcome, and invoking compensatory
assumptions that can include altering the time frame for justice to be done. Rape is a commonly
studied context for examining just world maintaining cognitive distortions or cognitive
reframing. By blaming and/or derogating a rape victim the just world threat can be diminished by
the observer to see the outcome as deserved. If the observer re-evaluates the outcome by insisting
that the rape was really not that traumatic they remove the existence of the injustice: no harm, no
injustice. Compensatory assumptions range from adopting the view that by virtue of suffering
the trauma of a rape, the victim will experience “silver linings” such as new wisdom or growth.
Alternatively, the observer may rely on the extended time frame of the ultimate justice view that
in a just world it is those who suffer who are most likely to be compensated in the future, either
in this life or an afterlife. In another example from early investigations of the derogation
response it was demonstrated that an innocent victim receiving a high level of electric shock was
derogated more than one receiving less shock (Lerner & Simmons, 1966). A sizeable body of
7
evidence has accumulated documenting not only the existence of the different strategies but also
their implications in a variety of contexts (see Lerner & Miller, 1978; Hafer & Begue; 2005; &
Ellard, Harvey, & Callan, 2013 for reviews).
Justice Motive Reactions to One’s Own Injustice
Poor health outcomes are one of the cases where a basic violation of the belief in a just
world occurs and a solution is necessitated (Jensen & Petersson, 2002; Park, et al., 2008;
Westman, Bergenmar, Andersson, 2008). When damage to the belief in a just world occurs it can
be a primary cause of significant distress (Holland & Reznik, 2005) and can have varying
impacts on people’s coping with and observing tragedies (Anderson, Kay, Fitzsimmons. 2010).
The experiencing of these bad outcomes and peoples’ responses associated with deservingness
concerns is an area that is open to further study:
“…less research, however, has focused on whether the same processes operate in the
contexts of one’s own random experiences and deservingness. If the justice motive is essential
for people’s long-term goal pursuits, then one might expect to find that people’s reactions to their
own fates as deserved might parallel their reactions to the fates of others as deserved” (Callan,
2013).The existing literature specifically for personal just world threat and deservingness exists
almost entirely in the study done by Callan, and as identified by Callan (2013) and others
deservingness has been invoked as a mechanism for understanding good and bad outcomes but
has not been measured directly: “Such studies have not measured participants’ sense of
deservingness, so we cannot be sure that deservingness was important” (Wood, 2009, p. 364).
The proposed research draws on this limited literature examining how people maintain
their belief in a just world when they are the target of injustice. The approach is to examine the
8
extent to which observer responses have parallels with how people react to their own fates. As
with the observer literature that began with a focus on victim derogation and blame, researchers
have been particularly interested in the extent to which the propensity for people to derogate or
blame themselves is a justice motive response.
Two distinct approaches to the conceptualization of the just world have emerged over the
years (Hafer & Begue, 2005; Ellard, et al., in press). The first, characterized by research
employing experimental techniques designed to assess various reactions people have when their
sense of a just world is threatened, assumes that the justice motive is sufficiently foundational
that it is a more or less universal component of human psychology. This is the approach adopted
for the present research. A larger body of research has focused on individual differences in just
world beliefs assessed with self-report measures. As efforts to link just world with health
outcomes has been most extensively pursued from this perspective the themes that emerged from
that literature will be considered first.
Just World Beliefs and Health Outcomes.
In the realm of health and illness it has been found that people’s justice beliefs affect
reactions to personal health outcomes (Lucas, 2009). Most of the research deals with how justice
beliefs affect coping with injury or illness. Threats to a person’s health threatens their just world
belief, a bad thing is happening to a good person (Tomaka & Blaskovich, 1994). It has been
shown that just world beliefs play a role in psychological and physical health challenges and
perceived fairness has been linked to measures of well-being and health benefits (Feather, 1991,
Lucas, 2008) while unfairness has been linked with negative health outcomes (Lucas, 2009).
Seeking to maintain the belief in a just world, such as by self-derogating, has been shown to have
9
some positive byproducts including buffering against anger, stress and depression and helping
with coping with negative life events with the effect of buffering being to reduce or diffuse the
negative affective components of the emotion. (Dalbert, 2001, Feather, 1991, Lucas, et al. 2008,
Tomaka & Blascovich, 1991). The general pattern that emerges from this literature is that justice
beliefs tend to serve as a protective factor, preventing or mitigating, negative outcomes such as
depression, at least in the short term (Dalbert, 2001; Dalbert, 2002; Dzuka & Dalbert, 2002).
The relationship has been observed in diverse populations, from schoolchildren to prisoners, to
examine how they will see their world as a just place (Correia & Dalbert, 2007; Otto & Dalbert,
2005).
Justice Motivation and Health Outcomes.
The alternative approach to exploring the relationship between justice motivation and
health outcomes is based in the notion that people may adopt a number of different ways of
dealing with the deservingness implications of their disease or affliction that are not well
captured in self-report measures most importantly because they are outputs of unconscious
processes (Ellard, et al., in press). These outputs can be thought of as strategies to deal with
injustice (Hafer & Begue, 2005) such as blaming the victim. Parallels can be drawn between how
third parties deal with the just world threat posed by another’s suffering and how people make
sense of their own disease or injury. An important implication of the following analysis is that
the important individual differences between people may not be about their global beliefs about
justice but rather the particular just world protecting strategy they invoke in connection with
undeserved illness or injury. Even though people with a physical health affliction may not
explicitly ask “why me” or be upset about fairness that does not mean that deservingness
concerns have not been an influential factor in their reactions. Since the goal of the justice
10
motive is to be able to assume the world is a just place, strategies that in some way preempt or
answer the “why me” question would be expected to be more common alternatives than
remaining preoccupied with unfairness. Some evidence does exist that is consistent with this
analysis. For instance in the case of self-blame, Dalbert (2001) found mothers who gave birth to
disabled children whose disability was unrelated to the mother’s behaviour when the child was in
utero were often inclined to blame themselves. As Dalbert noted “A fate viewed as self-inflicted
can no longer be unjust” (Dalbert 2001). While studies such as Dalbert’s provide evidence of a
particular just world protection strategy, no research has systematically attempted to examine a
variety of strategies in the same study of people who have experienced illness or disease. The
emphasis then is on strategies people use to deal with injustice rather than strength of justice
beliefs. Thus, the present research proposes to examine how deservingness concerns are
reflected in reactions to infirmity and in particular whether or not a number of just world
sustaining strategies can be found to be part of those reactions.
In so far as the strategies under investigation reflect the motivational concern with justice,
the relation between different strategies is expected to conform to some degree with established
principles of social cognition. First is the principle of equifinality, where equifinality refers to
the capacity of any of a number of different strategies to all be able to reduce just world threat.
Thus blaming oneself for an infirmity potentially achieves the same goal as construing the
experience in compensatory terms. In addition, while a set of strategies may be available the
strategy that best achieves the goal of reducing the threat and is most cognitively available is the
one expected to be chosen. The extent that one strategy is unable to achieve the goal and another
is available will determine the substitutability of the set. If one strategy is successful there will
not be a need to invoke other strategies (Kruglanski, et al., 2002). However, the substitutability
11
of the set of means for achieving equifinality will be expected to be increasingly less apparent as
the magnitude of just world threat increases. Severe health outcomes that have no generally
understood links to the victim’s behavior can be enough of a threat to a just world that people
may show reliance on multiple means or strategies at once.
Severity and Responsibility
The level of severity of a disease or injury can vary widely as can the person’s
responsibility for their infirmity. These factors may have an effect on the justice coping
strategies that people use. By asking people to describe their illness or injury and evaluate the
severity of it and their responsibility for it the most complete analysis will be provided by
including these two major factors known to moderate just world threat. Since early experimental
investigations of reactions to just world threat these are the two most commonly manipulated
factors (Walster, 1966; Feigenson, Park, Salovey, 1997, Hanson, 2011). In general, justice
motive theory would predict that an outcome that is low in severity, or is perceived to be low in
severity, would minimally threaten a person’s just world beliefs as opposed to a high severity
case where a greater impact on just world beliefs would occur.
Illness and injury also vary with how they are understood to be the fault of the victim. In
the case of smoking and lung cancer where the correlation is strongly apparent those with lung
cancer can be expected to be more aware that others will view them as responsible for their fate
and thus be more likely to self-blame (Braman & Lambert, 2001). Finding cause or explanation
for an unwanted event or outcome gives a person the ability to understand the negative event that
has happened to them and allows them to maintain a consistent and just worldview regardless of
whether it is rational or practical (Faller, Schilling, Lang, 1995; Ferrucci, et al. 2011). The non-
12
rational or practical can also be seen as normative and non-normative. For a person who obtains
lung cancer through smoking or injures themselves partaking in a risky activity it would be
rational and normal to blame themselves. In a case where responsibility is not readily apparent
for the outcome it would be non- normative to engage in self-blame. Yet if self-blame is
occurring in a situation such as this then it would likely be that we are observing the use of a
justice motive strategy. Some just world strategies may occur in both situations but it is where
the person is not responsible that their use will be most apparent. The implications for
moderation are that normative understanding of what happened and why will influence the just
world protective strategy.
Questions about the extent to which the infirmity felt unfair and undeserved at the time
and how much it feels that way now will be used to assess strategy use. This will also be done
with questions that ask how much the illness or injury made them feel diminished or think poorly
of themselves and how much they think it had a continuing effect on themselves. To do this they
will also be asked about the extent to which they believe they are responsible for the infirmity
and whether they ever felt that it was “punishment” for things they had done previously.
Compensatory cognition questions will ask participants the extent to which there were
unexpected positive outcomes associated with their affliction and when they first started to
recognize the positive aspects
Self Esteem
A deservingness related paradigm examined by Callan (2013) was self-esteem. Callan
(2013) along with others have found that those low in self-esteem will feel more deserving of
bad outcomes (Feather, 2006, Wood, Heimpel, Manwell, & Wittington, 2009), if a person who is
13
low in self-esteem becomes injured or ill then they may feel deserving of that negative outcome
and evidence a lack of just world threat as the person is not seeing themselves as a good person
deserving good things. It has also been found that people may be situationally low in self-esteem
as the product of a negative event. Self-esteem can be measured to help to determine how
people’s self-esteem may be affected by their negative event and again if it is having any major
effect on perceived just world threat. The previously identified importance of self-esteem as a
factor in people’s sense of deservingness makes it an important metric to measure to determine
how self-esteem will function in the present context.
Aims and Hypotheses
Aim 1.
The initial aim of the research was to explore the extent to which people may experience
their own illness and injury as unfair and if so do they also demonstrate reactions predicted by
justice motive theory for how people use specific strategies to protect their need to believe in a
just world? Finally, are perceptions of fairness related to emotional experiences associated with
illness and injury and if so are these emotional reactions moderated by justice motive protective
strategies?
Aim 1 Hypotheses.
1. As suggested by justice motive theory, to the extent that people see themselves positively
and injury or illness as a bad outcome, participants are expected to evidence feelings of
unfairness in connection with their illnesses or injuries.
a. Perceived unfairness will be positively related to self-reported negative affect.
14
2. Participants will evidence use of justice motive protective strategies that parallel
strategies used by observers perceiving the fates of others as unfair to diminish just world
threat: self-blame, self-denigration, re-evaluating the outcome, and compensatory
cognition. One of the strategies for testing this hypothesis will be to perform a
MANOVA analysis. If a latent variable, that relates all four strategies, is detected then
follow up univariate analysis will be done to determine how the use of strategies relates
to perceived fairness and deservingness. The MANOVA strategy is advantageous as
multiple dependent variables were being measured that are intercorrelated and relate to a
general latent variable, justice motive protection. The dependent variables are moderately
correlated and allow us to simultaneously analyze several quantitative variables over a
single IV. This will also help to address substitutability and equifinality by determining if
several strategies are used for addressing just world threat.
a. Use of justice motive protective strategies will be inversely related to perceived
fairness because reported unfairness is evidence of lack of successful application
of a just world protective strategy
b. Use of justice motive protective strategies will be inversely related to perceived
negative affect.
3. In so far as participants reports of deservingness reflect their sense of unfairness (i.e.,
unfairness = I didn’t deserve this) deservingness judgments are expected to yield
analogous relationships with protective strategies and emotional reactions as perceived
fairness does.
15
Aim 2.
In the justice motive literature examining observer reactions to the suffering of others both
severity of the harm and victims’ responsibility for their fate have been found to be important
moderators of the extent to which observers’ are motivated to protect their belief in a just world.
For instance, the justice motivated tendency to blame and/or derogate victims is most apparent
when they are innocent and when the harm is severe. Thus a second aim of this project is to
examine the extent to which participants’ responses to their own fate are influenced by their
perceptions of responsibility for, and perceptions of seriousness of, their illness or injury.
Aim 2 Hypotheses.
1. As suggested by justice motive theory, the less participants feel responsible for their
injury, the more they will perceive it as unfair.
2. The more serious the injury or illness, the more participants will see their illness or injury
as unfair
3. Responsibility and severity are expected to interact in their effects so that the highest
levels of perceived unfairness will occur when participants don’t feel responsible and
severity is high.
4. Accordingly, strategies for protecting the belief in a just world will be most apparent
when severity is high, participant responsibility is low, and most apparent when
participants see their illness or injury as severe but also not something they are
responsible for.
5. In so far as participants reports of deservingness reflect their sense of unfairness (i.e.,
unfairness = I didn’t deserve this) deservingness judgments are expected to yield
analogous relationships with severity and responsibility as for perceived fairness.
16
Aim 3.
The possibility that individual differences my play a role in justice motive reactions to
illness is explored through examination of relationships between relevant variables and the
primary constructs that are the focus of this research: perceived fairness and deservingness, and
justice motive protective strategies of self-blame, self-derogation, compensatory cognition, and
reevaluating the outcome.
Aim 3 Hypotheses.
1. In so far as self-esteem informs the extent to which people will experience outcomes as
unfair (e.g., people with low self-esteem are less likely to see bad outcomes as unfair),
self-esteem is expected to be inversely related to perceptions of fairness and
deservingness.
a. Self-esteem will be inversely related to self-blame and self-derogation
b. No a priori predictions are offered for the relation between self-esteem and re-
evaluating the outcome or compensatory cognitions.
2. Personal belief in a just world (PBJW) has been shown to serve as a protective factor
when people experience injustice. Fairness, deservingness and protective strategy use are
also psychological protective measures against just world threat and thus accordingly,
PBJW is predicted to be positively related to perceived fairness, deservingness, and
protective strategy use.
3. General belief in a just world (GBJW) has been shown to be an individual difference
moderator of just world belief effects. Violations of the just world beliefs would indicate
that the world is not a fair place and would coincide with a lack of fairness and
17
deservingness. Accordingly, GBJW is expected to be inversely related to perceived
fairness and deservingness, but positively related to protective strategy use.
4. Immanent (IJ) and ultimate (UJ) justice individual differences reflect different styles for
maintaining the belief in a just world. Accordingly, IJ is predicted to be positively
related to self-blame, self-derogation, and reevaluating the outcome, whereas UJ is
expected to be positively related to compensatory cognition.
a. No predictions are offered for relationships between IJ, UJ and fairness or
deservingness
5. Individual differences in justice sensitivity are of two sorts: sensitivity to being unjustly
harmed or sensitivity to unjustly benefitting (getting more than one deserves).
Accordingly, justice sensitivity to harm is predicted to be inversely related to perceived
fairness and deservingness.
a. Sensitivity to the injustice of privilege is not expected to be related to any of the
variables of interest.
b. No a priori predictions are offered for the relation between the injustice of harm
and protective strategy use.
Justice motive theory has been shown to operate in variable ways when people are
addressing tragedy and illness and there are multiple protective, risk, coping, personality, social
contextual, normative and other specific conditions that will affect predictive outcomes for
people in dealing with critical life events (Dalbert, 2001; Furnham, 2003). However the
experience of justice and injustice has not been thoroughly explored in the context of specific
justice perceptions and in particular those related to health or the integration of mental and
18
physical health (Dalbert, 2001; Lucas, et al., 2008). This research will apply recent, though
limited, developments in our understanding of the role of deservingness in reactions people have
to their own fates in a health context. While deservingness has been examined in people with
illness there is the need for further research and expansion of the study beyond the perception of
others and into a personal sense of deservingness (Braman & Lambert, 2001; Callan, et al. 2013;
Cataldo, Jahan, Pongquan, 2012; Park, et al., 2009; Switzer & Boysen, 2009; Tong, et al., 2010;
Zebrack, 2000). The proposed research will also develop knowledge around specific situations
and possible predictable outcomes; ie. If a person encounters a serious health issue how will this
affect their just world beliefs and how will this be manifested? Threats to people’s just world
beliefs can result in significant distress. If we develop an expectation around the JW threat posed
by a personally threatening, as opposed to a third party situation, and people’s reactions to the
situation then we will be better informed for future examinations of how to deal with distress
posed by just world threat.
The research may also be useful in the realm of public health. Debate exists in the
medical field about the allocation of health care resources depending on people’s responsibility
for their disease and outcome. This essentially is an issue of deservingness of care (Feiring,
2008). Understanding how people make personal attributions of deservingness will be useful in
the debate of lifestyle and the just allocation of health care. People’s personal sense of
deservingness affected by severity and responsibility may affect how they think about the ways
in which resources, care and attention should be allocated. If a person has been personally
affected by a certain health outcome the way in which they perceive the outcome in terms of
personal deservingness may affect how they think of others deservingness.
19
Examining people’s reactions to their own fate will help to expand justice motive
research with a personal application of the theory and in addition the results will help to elucidate
the validity of theory proposed around people’s feelings of deservingness such as done by Callan
(2013).
Method
The purpose of present study was to examine the effect of a just world threatening
event in a personal context as opposed to a third party context. Having participants think of a
health event that disrupted their daily lives was done in order to make salient an event that may
have had just world implications. Various measures were used to examine if just world strategies
were being applied.
Participants
The various ways in which people might choose to deal with the just world implications
of a negative health outcome was examined using a survey of students taking psychology courses
for research participation credit as well as participants from the general population who were
accessed using the crowdsourcing website Crowdflower. The study population was expanded
beyond an initial student sample to a crowd sourced population in order to increase the sample
size as well as increase generalizability by using a sample that is more diverse and has been
shown to have equal to or greater reliability than a student sample (Behrend, et al. 2011; Best, et
al., 2001). Crowdsourcing has been defined as “a distributed problem-solving and production
model” where people are recruited through an online source to complete various tasks (Brabham,
2008). Crowdsourcing is an emerging and viable approach for research including health related
20
research (Swan, 2012). Any user of this crowdsourcing site was eligible to participate in the
study.
It is expected in the student population overall health status will likely be high relative to
other age cohorts but participants will nonetheless have had experience with a variety of illnesses
or injuries varying in both severity and blameworthiness. This variability enables the
examination of the proposed moderator research questions. In university aged populations
illnesses such as respiratory tract infection are common and significant enough to cause missed
school days, doctor visits and poor test performance (Nichol, Heilly, Ehlinger, 2005). Young
Canadians are also more prone to injury or death from injuries, have rising obesity rates, and
have the highest rates of STIs (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2011). It will be made clear that
participants may report experience with a chronic condition if that is most relevant for them.
Three hundred and thirty eight participants were recruited for the study. Participants were
recruited through the University of Calgary Psychology Departments’ research participation
system (RPS) and Crowdflower. Students received 1 course credit for their participation while
the crowd sourced participants were compensated $1.
Eighty seven students were initially recruited for the study. Seventeen participants (20%)
were eliminated from the student population for indicating that their data should not be used
because they did not complete the survey with care while 5 (6%) others were eliminated for
careless responding1.
1Careless responses were considered cases where participants inserted a string of meaningless letters or
words to bypass the forced response written portion. Responses were also considered careless when
participants answered all of the scale items with the same value (e.g. 1).
21
From the student sample 22 (25%) were removed in total leaving 65 participants. The mean age
for the student sample was 20.64 years with a range of 18-26 years. Of the student sample 26%
(17) indicated their sex as male and 74% (48) indicated female.
Two hundred and fifty one participants were recruited through crowdsourcing. Twelve
participants (5%) were eliminated from the sample for indicating that they did not complete the
survey with care while 29 (12%) others were eliminated for careless responding. Overall, 41
(16%) of the crowd sourced sample was removed leaving 210 participants.
The crowd sourced population had a mean age of 37.6 years with a range of 16-81 years.
From the crowd sourced population 48% participants indicated their sex as male, 50% female
and 2% selected the option Other.
A total of 63 participants were eliminated from the two sample sources for careless
responding such as entering non-sense responses in the written portion of the survey and or not
completing the majority of the questions. Participants were also eliminated for reporting that they
had not had any physical health issues or for reporting mental health issues such as depression or
reporting events that affected people close to them. From the combined sample 19% of
participants were removed. Careless responding has been identified to typically be in the range
of 10%-12% for students responding to long form surveys. For employee surveys this range is
typically up to 20%-50% in long form surveys (Meade & Craig, 2012). While the 19% rate of
elimination for this study seems high it falls within what is a normative range for the present
style of survey responses for the samples used. Two hundred and seventy five participants
remained with 65 (24%) coming from the student population and 210 (76%) coming from the
crowd sourced population. Forty three percent (118) of participants indicated they were male,
22
56% (154) female, and 1% (3) selected Other. The mean age of the combined sample was 33.75
years with a standard deviation of 14.8 and a range of 16-81 years.
The two samples differed on age and sex with the student population being significantly
younger and with proportionately more females. The two samples did not differ on most
measures so results are reported combining both samples except where indicated.
Procedure
Participants were recruited to the study either through the University of Calgary SONA
research participation system or through a link accompanied by a description of the study on the
website Crowdflower. After providing consent to participate, participants completed a
questionnaire with six sections, always in the same order:
1. Demographic information
2. Health status, injury and illness experiences, and fairness judgments
3. A series of four justice individual difference premeasures
4. A description of a specific infirmity event
5. Illness or injury related emotions
6. Judgments about the event
After completion of the study participants were debriefed and thanked for their participation.
The questionnaires were identical for both samples excluding a question asking about program of
study that was eliminated from the crowd sourced sample questionnaire.
23
Ethics approval for the study was granted in April of 2014 by the Conjoint Faculties
Research Ethics Board for the study. The ethics approval from the CFREB can be requested from
the researcher.
Measures
Demographics. Participants reported their age and sex. The student sample also reported
their program of study.
Health status, injury and illness experiences, and fairness judgments. Participants
answered a series of a questions that used a seven-point vertical “thermometer” type scale
ranging from 1 (bottom value) to 7 (top value). The three general status measures were:
1. How would you rate your general level of health? (with 1 being very poor and 7 being
very good)
2. To what extent are you concerned with your health? (with 1 being not at all concerned
and 7 being very concerned)
3. Do you feel that throughout your life you have generally been healthy?
Participants were asked to report experiences with injury and illness in the last five years. In
separate series of questions for illness and injury participants were asked: “Thinking about
injuries/illness you have experienced that resulted in you not being able to function (e.g. go to
work or school) for 5 days or more how often would you say this has happened in your life? (1 =
rarely, 7 = very often); “Sometimes when we are injured/ill it seems unfair. Have you ever felt
this way?” (yes, no); “ If you answered yes to the previous question: How unfair did the
injury/illness feel to you:” (1 = slightly unfair, 7 = extremely unfair).
24
A parallel series of questions asked participants to reflect on infirmities experienced by
close others: “Thinking about injuries or illnesses people who are close to you have experienced
over your life, to what extent have their experiences impacted your life?” (1 = rarely, 7 = very
often); “Sometimes when someone close to us experiences injury or illness it seems unfair. Have
you ever felt this way?” (yes, no); “If you answered yes to the previous question: How unfair did
the other person’s injury or illness feel to you?” (1 = slightly unfair, 7 = extremely unfair).
Justice measures. The next section of the questionnaire involved completion of four
measures designed to assess participants orientation to justice: The General Belief and Personal
Belief in a Just world (GBJW, PBJW; Dalbert, 1987), Immanent and Ultimate Justice (IJ/UJ;
Maes, 1998), and Justice Sensitivity (Schmitt et al., 2005, 2010).
General and Personal Belief in a Just World. The General Belief in a Just World scale
(GBJW; Dalbert et al., 1987) is a six-item scale that assesses the extent to which the respondent
views the world as just by asking for degree of agreement with statements such as “I think the
world is basically a just place,” “I believe that, by and large, people get what they deserve,” and
“I am confident that justice always prevails over in-justice.” (See Appendix 1 for the complete
scale). Responses range from “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (7). The scale
demonstrated adequate consistency (α = .88).
The Personal Belief in a Just World scale (PBJW; Dalbert, 1999) is a seven-item scale,
conceptually similar to the GBJW, but asks respondents to report the extent to which their own
world is just with items such as: “Overall events in my life are just,” “I believe that I usually get
what I deserve,” and “I believe that most of the things that happen in my life are fair.” The same
agree/disagree response format was used for this scale and the items for both the PBJW. The
25
PBJW also demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .95). The PBJW and GBJW scales were
completed together mixed as a single just world belief scale.
Both the GBJW and PBJW have been shown to be psychometrically sound (Dalbert et
al., 1987; Dalbert 1999; Lipkus et al., 1996) and have been used widely in research concerned
with how justice world beliefs inform reactions people have to their own and others’ fates (see
Dalbert, 2001 and Hafer & Sutton, in press for reviews).
Justice Sensitivity 1 & 2. Participants were presented with two Justice Sensitivity (JS)
scales with the first, JS1, measuring the degree of injustice people experience in situations that
advantaged others but disadvantaged them. This scale contained 10 items such as “It bothers me
when others receive something that ought to be mine” and “It worries me when I have to work
hard for things that come easily to others”. Each question asked respondents for the extent of
their agreement with each item’s statement using a response scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5
(extremely).This scale demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .91).
The second justice sensitivity measure asked about the degree of injustice people felt in
situations that advantaged them but disadvantaged others. The JS2 scale also had 10 items and
the same response format as JS1. The scale included questions such as “It disturbs me when I
receive what others ought to have” and “It bothers me when things come easily to me that others
have to work hard for.” This scale also demonstrated good internal consistency (α = .90). (See
Appendix 3 for the complete scales).
The JS self-report scales for victim, JS1, and beneficiary sensitivity, JS2, have been
demonstrated to have strong psychometric properties for assessing individual differences for
differing justice perspectives. These scales have been frequently used to assess demographically
26
differing groups and groups that vary on life experiences such as social inequalities (Schmitt et
al., 2005; Schmitt et al., 2010).
Immanent and Ultimate Justice. Participants were presented with an Immanent/Ultimate
justice (IJ/UJ) scale of 31 items with a disagree/agree response format ranging from -3 (disagree
very much) to 3 (I agree very much). People with an immanent justice orientation demonstrate a
need to see justice on an ongoing basis relying on the various strategies described in the justice
motive research to do so (e.g. victim blaming; see Lerner, 1980). Ultimate justice on the other
hand allows for less defensive reactions to ongoing injustice but aided by the assumption that
justice will be obtained “in the long run.” A score greater than zero on this scale indicate an
Ultimate Justice perspective while a low score would indicate an Immanent Justice perspective.
Examples of items included were “A badly lived life is directly followed by doom” (immanent)
and “At some point, everyone has to pay for their ill deeds.” (ultimate). (See Appendix 4 for the
complete scale.) Once again good internal consistency was demonstrated (α = .93).
As with the other justice measures the IJ/UJ scale has undergone rigorous psychometric
assessment and been demonstrated to be reliable. The present IJ/UJ scale has been repeatedly
used to assess the correlates of Immanent and Ultimate justice in varying conditions and
populations (Maes, 1998).
Rosenberg self-esteem scale. The Rosenberg self-esteem scale with integrated
deservingness items as developed by Callan (2013) was presented to participants in order to
assess the participant’s current levels of self-esteem as well as the participants’ general sense of
deservingness. The scale consisted of thirteen items that were assessed on a scale from strongly
agree, SA, to agree, A, disagree, D, to strongly disagree, D. The items from the Rosenberg scale
27
included items such as On the whole, I am satisfied with myself, the items from Callan to assess
deservingness included items such as Right now I do not feel deserving of positive outcomes. The
deservingness items as presented on the scale include items 3,6 and 10. The Rosenberg scale
demonstrated adequate internal consistency (α = .83) while the Callan deservingness sub items
demonstrated poor internal consistency (α = .24). The Callan items were not used for any further
analysis.
The Rosenberg scale has undergone rigorous psychometric evaluation since its inception
(Crandal, 1973) unto the present and has been widely used for the assessment of self-esteem with
varying populations (Hatcher & Hall, 2009).
Description of injury or illness event. For the infirmity event, participants were asked
to recall a time in the past 5 years when they experienced an injury or illness that was serious
enough to disrupt their daily routine, see Appendix 6. Participants described their infirmity in a
brief paragraph following these instructions:
“We would now like you take a moment and think about an illness or injury in the last
five years that was serious enough to disrupt your daily routine (ability to work, go to
school, engage in routine activities). This can include, though is not limited to, anything
from an infectious illness to physical injury to cancer (please exclude any mental health
issues).”
They also indicated how long ago the event occurred using a slider scale with one year
increments from 0 to 1 and ending with > 10. As participants moved the slider the actual age for
each point on the scale appeared as a popup so that age was recorded to the year.
28
Writing tasks in which participants are asked to write about an event in their lives have
been shown to increase emotional engagement (Marlo & Wagner, 1999) as well as reflexive
capacity for, and emotional engagement with, the event (Treasure & Whitney, 2010). Having the
participants highly emotionally engaged is important as they are being asked to think of a past
event and the event may have lost some of its impact and salience to them over time. When a
person becomes engaged in an event, such as through a writing task, and it becomes more salient
to them or there is a degree of emotional engagement they are likely to identify with it (Montada
& Schneider, 1989; Reed, 2004) If the participants are more emotionally engaged then it is more
likely the just world threat evoked by the situation will be apparent to them.
Illness or injury related emotions. A series of questions were developed to assess
participants’ affective responses to the health event they described. Participants were presented
with nine emotions and were asked to evaluate each one using a scale ranging from 1 (Very
Slightly) to 7 (Very Much). The evaluation was made for the emotions in the past and present.
The items can be seen in Table 1. below. These items were used in order to gain an
understanding of the emotional impact of the experience they described and if this impact
changed, or did not change, over time. Understanding changes in the emotional valence of the
health event described would help to determine if just world strategies were being used
successfully.
29
Table 1
Affective items presented to participants.
Time 1: How did you feel when the event
occurred?
Time 2: How do you feel about the event now?
Distressed Angry
Upset Ashamed
Afraid Irritable
Guilty Sad
Scared
Judgments about the Illness or Injury. Participants made a series of judgments about
their infirmity designed to assess the manner in which participants dealt with any associated just
world threat. These measures included perceived details of the event and their reactions to it, see
Appendix 7.
Fairness. After participants finished writing about their illness or injury and reported
related emotions they were asked about the perceived fairness of the event. This was done by
asking a simple yes/no question: “Sometimes when people have a bad experience like illness or
injury they can feel the experience is unfair. Did you feel that way when this happened?”
Severity. In order to assess the perceived severity of the health event, several items were
constructed that asked about how serious the event was in terms of the impact on participants’
lives. These questions were developed in order to determine the severity of the event at the time
it occurred and the continued impact it had on participants’ lives. Participants responded to six
30
items on a scale of 1 to 7 with 1 being not at all serious and 7 being very serious. The 6 items
presented to participants can be seen below.
1. How serious was your illness or injury event overall?
2. How serious was your illness or injury in terms of its effects on your health at the
time?
3. How serious was the illness or injury in terms of its effects on your daily life?
4. How serious was this illness or injury in terms of its effects on your long-term health?
5. How serious was this illness or injury in terms of its effects on other people in your
life?
6. How serious was this illness or injury in terms of its effects on your present
psychological well-being?
Deservingness. Participants were asked about the extent to which they felt deserving of
the health outcome that befell them. These items were inspired by items used by Callan (2013) to
assess perceptions of personal deservingness for specific outcomes. Three items utilizing a 1-7
Likert-type scale with 1 being not at all deserving and 7 highly deserving were used to measure
deservingness at the time of the event while a fourth question asked if participants still felt that
they were deserving of their outcome:
1. When your illness or injury happened did you feel at the time that you deserved what
happened to you?
31
2. When you think now about the illness or injury do you feel at all that you deserved
what happened to you?
3. To what extent do you think that others may have thought that you deserved what
happened to you?
Do you feel now that you deserved the health outcome you described? Yes/No.
Responsibility. A 3 item measure was used to identify how responsible participants felt
for their injury or illness. As with the deservingness items a direct approach was taken in asking
the participants about their perceived responsibility for the outcome. The items were rated on a
1-7 scale with 1 being not at all responsible and 7 highly responsible.
1. To what extent do you feel responsible for your illness or injury?
2. To what extent do you believe others would think you are responsible for your illness
or injury?
3. To what extent do you feel someone else is responsible for your illness or injury?
Justice strategies. Four assessments of known justice motive strategies were taken.
Assessments of these constructs have not previously been used for experiences involving
personal just world threat all of the measures were constructed for this study. The measures were
based on conceptually analogous measures used to assess these third party strategies used in
reactions to other people’s fate.
Self/Other-blame. Three questions were used to determine the extent to which
participants felt they or someone else could be blamed for their outcome. The manner in which
this assessment of Self-Blame is measured can be described as self-reported. Before an inference
32
can be made about potential evidence of strategy use an independent evaluation of the legitimacy
of the participant to Self-Blame will need to be made. The manner in which this will be done is
described below. The items used to measure self-blame were rated on a 1-7 scale with 1 being
not at all and 7 being highly.
1. To what extent do you feel you are to blame for your illness or injury?
2. To what extent do you believe others would blame you for your illness or injury?
3. To what extent do you believe someone else is to blame for your illness or injury?
The alpha coefficient with the third item included is .6, after deletion the alpha rises to
.83. For all subsequent analysis only the first two items were used.
Self-derogation. Three items were used to determine to what extent participants self-
derogated. The items were presented with a response scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7
(highly). The scale demonstrated adequate consistency (α = .83).
1. Do you feel that what happened to you has anything to do with who you are as a
person?
2. Did you feel diminished by this experience or feel less good about yourself as a person
after this happened?
3. Do you feel that as a result of your health outcome your self-perception was lowered?
Compensatory cognition. Compensatory cognition is viewed as a more positive strategy
for dealing with just world threat. Compensatory cognition can be seen as evaluating to what
degree participants are able to find a “silver lining” in their negative health outcome. If a positive
33
interpretation can be found the event may no longer be unjust. Compensatory cognition was
measured with 4 items each rated on a 1 to 7 Likert-type scale. The scale demonstrated adequate
consistency (α = .86).
1. Do you feel that your health setback presented an opportunity for personal
growth? (1 = no personal growth; 7 = lots of personal growth)
2. Do you feel that your health situation had any positive outcomes? (1 = no positive
outcome; 7 = many positive outcomes
3. Do you feel that any positive outcomes of your health situation outweighed the
negative outcomes? (1 = not at all; 7 = very much so)
4. Do you think that given the suffering you went through that you experienced some
compensating “lucky breaks” or even now can expect can look forward to some
“lucky break”? (1 = not at all, 7 = very much so)
Re-evaluating the outcome. Finally the degree to which participants may have altered
their perception of the event that occurred was measured. Participants may have changed the
extent to which the negative health outcome was seen as such. As with Self-Blame the use of
independent raters to verify the veracity of Re-evaluating the outcome as a potential justice
motive strategy, and not simply an accurate assessment of the situation, must be done. Re-
evaluating the outcome was measured with 3 items:
1. Do you feel that your health outcome is not as severe as others perceived it to be? (1
= highly disagree; 7 = highly agree)
2. When you think about your own health outcome how would you rate the severity of
it if it occurred to another person? (1 = not at all severe; 7 = highly severe)
34
3. When you think about your own health outcome how would you rate how much
someone deserved it if it occurred to another person? (with 1 being not at all deserved
and 7 being highly deserved)
The scale demonstrated an alpha level of .43, after the third item was removed the alpha
level rose to .60. For subsequent analysis the third item was removed.
Independent rater judgments of severity, responsibility, and blame. A difficulty inherent
in two of the justice restoring strategies, re-evaluating the outcome and self-blame, is knowing
the extent to which participants’ judgments reflect justice preserving motivated cognition or
reasonably “veridical” assessments of severity and culpability. One approach to addressing this,
adopted here, is to gather independent rater judgments of severity, responsibility, and blame after
reading each participant’s report of what happened. While imperfect given potential sources of
error, the strategy was designed to capture the everyday judgments of third parties to other
peoples’ experiences that are also limited with respect to the information available to the
observer. With respect to the responsibility and blame ratings, it was assumed that rater
judgments would reflect application of generally held normative understandings of moral
attribution (Shaver, 1985). The presence of discrepancies between rater and participant
judgments on these dimensions were expected to indicate participant application of the re-
evaluation of outcome and self-blame JW maintenance strategies
A group of three coders were used to make evaluations about the severity, blame and
responsibility of the events reported by participants. The coders consisted of the author and two
undergraduate assistants. The writing tasks that asked participants to describe an illness or injury
scenario used by the coders to make an evaluation of responsibility and severity for the health
outcome. For severity items 1 and 3 were used:
35
1. How serious was your illness or injury event overall?
3. How serious was the illness or injury in terms of its effects on your daily life?
For responsibility items 1 and 2 were used:
1. To what extent do you feel responsible for your illness or injury?
2. To what extent do you believe others would think you are responsible for your illness
or injury?
For self-blame items 1 and 2 were used:
1. To what extent do you feel you are to blame for your illness or injury?
2. To what extent do you believe others would blame you for your illness or injury?
For frame of reference training, the coders evaluated 10 participants from each sample
using the same scales as presented to participants (reworded to reflect the raters’ 3rd
party
perspective). Following discussion of inconsistencies in ratings of the initial 20, each coder read
and evaluated each of the 275 participants’ written responses and then made an evaluation of the
responsibility and severity of each case. An inter- class correlation (ICC) was performed to
assess inter-rater reliability of the coders assessments. An ICC of .855 was found with
confidence intervals of .781-.899, α = .880 indicating an acceptable level of inter-rater reliability.
Differences between the mean rater rating and the mean participant rating on each dimension
were used as indices to evaluate the use of just world strategies.
36
Results
Preliminary Analyses
Justice measures. Participants were given five scales in order to measure various just
world perceptions the results of which can be seen in Table 2. Participants completed measures
of their Personal Belief in a Just World and General Belief in a Just World consisting of 10 items
each that ask respondents for the extent of their agreement with each item’s statement using a
response scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). The student and crowd
sourced samples differed on the Personal Belief in a Just World (PBJW) scale with the student
sample scoring higher than the crowd sourced population, t(262)=3.53, p<.001. The samples did
not differ on the General Belief in a Just World. Participants were also presented with two
Justice Sensitivity (JS) scales; the groups were not significantly different on either of the scales.
Finally participants were presented with an Immanent/Ultimate justice (IJ/UJ) once again the
groups did not significantly differ.
The PBJW and GBJW scales were highly correlated (r=.731, p<.01) indicating that
participants sense of personal justice coincided with their general sense of justice. The IJ/UJ
scale was moderately correlated with the PBJW and GBJW scales, r=.496, p<.05, and r=.648,
p<.01, respectively. The two Justice Sensitivity scales were only weakly correlated r=.283,
p<.01. Justice Sensitivity Two was also weakly correlated with the IJ/UJ scale, r=.262, p<.01.
37
Table 2
Results for Just World Measures scales
Mean/SD Skew/SES Student
M/SD
Student
Skew/SES
Crowd
M/SD
Crowd
Skew/SES
PBJW** 4.22/1.02 -.545/.150 4.7/.66 -.330/.304 4.2/1.1 -.384/.171
GBJW 3.52/.87 -.179/.150 3.63/.654 .379/.314 3.5/.93 -.179/.170
JS1 2.9/.93 -.207/.150 2.91/.78 -.446/.311 2.9/.96 -.167/.170
JS2* 2.81/.92 .006/.151 2.80/.74 -.484/.316 2.92/.97 .065/.171
IJ/UJ .26/.96 .087/.160 .32/.79 .294/.333 .23/1.01 .08/.181
Note. Significant differences between the crowd sourced and student populations are indicated
by an asterisk, *=p<.05, **p<.01.
Health status. Possible ratings for these measures ranged from one to seven, with seven
indicating healthiness. The majority of participants felt that they were generally healthy, with the
student sample having a mean score of 5.74 (SD=.871) and the crowd sourced sample having a
mean score of 5.01 (SD=5.01), and had been so for most of their lives (M=5.2, SD=1.4).
Participants were moderately concerned with their health (M=4.34, SD= 1.73). For participants
overall ratings of health throughout their lifetime significant differences were found with the
crowd sourced population having a lower mean rating (M=5.01, SD=1.21) compared to that of
the student population (M=5.74, SD=.871), t(263)=4.32, p<.001.
38
Lifetime experience with injury and illness. Essential to answering the hypothesis of
the first aim it was necessary to find whether or not experiences with illness and injury can also
include the sense that such experiences can be unfair. Participants provided information in two
ways that speak to this. First, participants reported the frequency with which they had been
injured or ill and the extent that their lifetime experiences with injury and illness included
unfairness. Secondly they were asked about the unfairness of the particular injury or illness they
described. The first step is detailed below while the unfairness of a particular injury or illness is
expounded on in Aim 1.
Participants were asked about the lifetime incidence of injury that had kept them from
work, school or regular activities for more than 5 days on a scale of 1-7 with 1 being rarely and 7
being very often. The incidence rate for injuries that kept them from work, school or regular
activities for more than five days was low with the crowd sourced population having been
injured more frequently (M=2.33, SD=1.55) than the student population (M=1.77, SD=1.41),
t(260)=-2.45, p=.015. The rate of illness that had kept participants from work, school or regular
activities for more than 5 days was also low (M= 2.67, SD=1.71) though higher than the rate of
injury that had the same consequences (M= 2.19, SD=1.71), t(248)= -4.99, p<.001.
Illness and Injury for Others. Participants felt that when people around them were ill or
injured it had affected them at a moderate rate (M=4.17, SD=1.82). Seventy seven percent of
participants had felt that the injuries or illness that occurred to others around them were unfair.
Types of Illness and Injury. Participant’s illness and injury were coded into 5 different
groups to categorize the type of illness and injury. The majority of participants reported some
kind of acute injury or trauma, 49.1%; the second largest group was comprised of those who
reported a type of infectious illness, 26.2%. These two groups were followed by those who had a
39
type of autoimmune issue, 17.1%, then surgery, 4.4%, and cancer, 3.3%. A Chi Square analysis
found no significant differences between types of illness and injury and the experience being
perceived as unfair.
Experience with specific injury or illness. Participants described a specific illness or
injury they experienced. The subsequently rated the severity of the illness or injury and related
emotions.
Severity. Given the high correlation among the six perceived severity items, they were
combined into a single index (α = .87). Participants’ reported severity of their experience was in
the mid-range of the scale (M= 4.1, SD=2.1) with 1 being not at all serious and 7 being very
serious.
Affect associated with injury or illness. Participants were given a series of affective
measures related to the specific injury or illness they described that asked about past as well as
present affective state. The results for each of the individual scale items can be seen in Table 3.
Significant changes were found for overall affective state from the past to present for the student
and crowd samples. A paired samples t-test found the student samples overall recalled affect
decreased from when the event occurred, Mean=2.81, SD=.9, to the present, Mean=1.54,
SD=.84, t(61)=12.4, p<.001. The crowd sourced sample showed a similar pattern with a decrease
in affect from the past Mean=2.95, SD=1.03, to the present Mean=1.85, SD=.96, t(195)=14.75,
p<.001
.
40
Table 3
Mean scores for affective components and past to present affective change
Past Rating Present Rating Past to
Present
t-test
Item Sample Mean/SD Mean/SD Sig Diff p value
How did
you feel?
Distressed*
Student 3.48/1.12 1.52/.937 Yes p<.001
Crowd 3.53/1.27 2.09/1.31 Yes p<.001
Combined 3.51/1.24 1.96/1.26
How did
you feel?
Upset*
Student 3.58/1.13 1.69/1.05 Yes p<.001
Crowd 3.57/1.28 2.02/1.28 Yes p<.001
Combined 3.57/1.24 1.94/1.23
How did
you feel?
Afraid
Student 2.56/1.4 1.56/1.02
Crowd 2.98/1.55 1.85/1.13
Combined 2.88/1.52 1.78/1.11 Yes p<.001
How did
you feel?
Guilty
Student 1.74/1.21 1.35/.82
Crowd 1.77/1.16 1.53/.99
Combined 1.76/1.17 1.49/.95 Yes p<.001
41
How did
you feel?
Scared*
Student 2.57/1.4 1.46/.95 Yes p<.001
Crowd 2.92/1.5 1.84/1.11 Yes p<.001
Combined 2.84/1.5 1.75/1.10
How did
you feel?
Angry*
Student 2.75/1.50 1.48/.959 Yes p<.001
Crowd 2.83/1.45 1.81/1.3 Yes p<.001
Combined 2.81/1.46 1.74/1.21
How did
you feel?
Ashamed
Student 2.09/1.4 1.32/.86
Crowd 1.99/1.32 1.51/.99
Combined 2.01/1.4 1.47/.97 Yes p<.001
How did
you feel?
Irritable
Student 3.15/1.3 1.63/1.03
Crowd 2.99/1.33 1.8/1.2
Combined 3.03/1.32 1.76/1.15 Yes p<.001
How did
you feel?
Sad*
Student 3.05/1.24 1.47/1.04 Yes p<.001
Crowd 2.99/1.38 2.0/1.40 Yes p<.001
Combined 3.00/1.35 1.87/1.30
Note. Those scales marked with an asterisk had significantly different ratings between the two
samples at p<.05
42
For the affective measures an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine
relationships among the items. Principle axis factoring was applied with varimax rotation. For
feelings participants experienced at the time of the event there were three factors with the first
accounting for 48% of the variance, eigenvalue = 4.35, and comprised of distressed, upset, angry,
and irritable. The second was comprised of afraid and scared, accounting for 15% of the
variance, eigenvalue = 1.4. The third component was comprised of guilty and ashamed
accounted for 12% of the variance, eigenvalue = 1.07. The analysis had a KMO of .813 with the
three factors comprising 75% of the total variance. The results for past affective impact for the
three components can be seen in Table 4.
Factor analysis of the same items for current feelings revealed two with the first factor
comprised of distressed, upset, afraid, scared, angry, irritable and sad. The second factor was
comprised of guilty and ashamed. The analysis had a KMO of .879 and with the two components
comprising 78% of the variance with the first accounting for 66% of the variance, eigenvalue =
5.95, and the second component accounting for 11%, eigenvalue = 1.0. The results for present
affective impact can be seen in Table 4.
43
Table 4
Affective impact for EFA components
Components Mean SD Range
Past 1 3.23 1.06 1-5
Past 2 2.86 1.44 1-5
Past 3 1.9 1.13 1-5
Present 1 1.81 1.02 1-5
Present 2 1.47 .89 1-5
T-tests were performed to examine if there were any differences between the student and
crowd samples for the three identified components for past affect. No significant differences
were found. T-tests were also performed to examine sample differences for present affect. A
significant difference was found for component one for present affect, t(1,256)=-2.32, p=.021,
where the crowd sample scored higher (M=1.89, SD=1.1) than the student sample (M=1.53,
SD=.89) This result is consistent with the majority of the individual affect items.
Preliminary Analyses Discussion
Health Status.
Based on the demographic information gathered regarding lifetime experience with
illness and injury our sample can be characterized as finding themselves generally healthy and
have been so for most of their lives. They have not experienced a high degree of injuries or
44
illnesses that have significantly disrupted their lives and they are concerned with their health, if
only moderately so. Interestingly participants found illness or injury that occurred to those close
to them as being unfair at higher rate than for personal injury or illness as well as rating the
unfairness at a higher level. This rate was significantly greater than unfairness for personal injury
X2= 33.1, p<.001; or illness X
2= 35.4, p<.001. Participants rated the unfairness of injury or illness
for others at a mean of 4.99 (SD=1.72) on a 1-7 Likert scale with 1 being not at all unfair and 7
being highly unfair. When asked about fairness associated with personal lifetime experiences
with injury and illness, 54.4% reported feelings of unfairness associated with injuries and 63.8%
with illnesses, see Aim 1 for further discussion. This outcome may be due to being able to better
personally understand deservingness, fairness, justice and control personally than we are for
other people. When a negative event occurs to another person, particularly when we do not have
any control over the outcome, it becomes harder for us to understand the event and we are likely
to perceive the event as being more unfair. This would coincide with JM literature regarding
third parties (Dalbert, 2001; Lerner, 1980). If this is in fact the case it is also likely a greater use
of JW maintenance strategies would be used when thinking about experienced illness or injury
for others. The area of justice motive theory in the personal sense however is nascent in the just
world literature and the comparison of personal and third party justice concerns for similar
negative outcomes is an area for future study.
Justice Measures
Participant samples varied significantly on the Personal Belief in a World Measure with
the student sample scoring higher than the crowd sample and also being significantly negatively
skewed. This result can be expected as younger populations tend to score higher on the PBJW
scales. This is a product of differences in life experiences. The PBJW is partially an experiential
45
construct and as a younger sample is less likely to have experienced as many violations to their
PBJW they will score higher on the scale than an older sample (Dalbert, 2009). No differences
existed between the samples for the GBJW. People tend to more strongly endorse the PBJW and
the GBJW and they exist as separate constructs. Thus the sample differences on the PBJW and
not on the GBJW are because the PBJW is a stronger held belief and younger people tend to hold
the belief to a greater extent than older people. The differences are expected then for the PBJW
while for the separate construct of GBJW the belief is not as strongly endorsed and not more so
by youth versus a more aged population so no differences between the samples are expected
(Dalbert, 2009). The same sample differences occurred for the second Justice Sensitivity scale
and again can be expected as younger participants perceive greater justice in their own lives
(Dalbert, 2001; Dalbert, 2009). In general participants scored on the higher end of the scales for
PBJW, GBJW and JS1 and JS2 indicating they find their lives and the world to generally be just
places. On IJ/UJ scales the scores above zero would indicate that participants tend to have an
ultimate justice perspective, which is expected as people age they tend to move from an
immanent towards an ultimate justice view (Lerner, 1980).
Experience with a specific injury or illness
The factor analysis regarding the affective measures regarding the specifically described
illness or injury reveals that each of the set of scales is measuring common affective outcomes
related to the event. People will have to deal with the results of their health outcome and these
results may be discomforting; this forms the first component comprised of distressed, upset,
angry, and irritable. This component is likely measuring some aspect of negative emotion related
to consequences surrounding the health outcome. The second component made up of afraid and
scared likely relates to fear from not knowing what the ultimate result of your current affliction
46
would be and to a degree lacking some control over what will happen. The third component
comprised of guilty and ashamed may be related to moral affect related to embarrassment and
acknowledgment of having some influence on the negative health outcome or stigma related to
it.
For when the event was considered presently two components were identified with the
first comprised of distressed, upset, afraid, scared, angry, irritable and sad. The second
component again likely deals with moral affect and embarrassment and possible stigma related to
the event as identified when the event is thought of retrospectively. The first component contains
all the other affective results related to the event. These may be all related as distress and
discomfort become one component, as opposed to two when thought of retrospectively, as the
event loses impact over time and the emotions become washed out. Finally the two components
that were found when participants were asked about their emotions presently as opposed to the
three found for thinking about them in the past supports the aforementioned changes in
emotional perception of negative health events over time.
For both groups there was a significant decrease for each scale on the overall scores from
the past to the present. The affective impact of the event lost power over time. This is reasonable
and can be expected as memory and emotions tend to degenerate over time (Hassan, 2005). The
crowd sourced population experienced a significantly greater present affective impact for the
health event as compared to the student sample on both scales. This is interesting as the two
groups did not differ on the past affective impact of the event. This may indicate the presence of
some kind of coping mechanism that is present in the student population as compared to the
general population. A potential mechanism at work is the PBJW. The student sample scored
significantly higher on the PBJW than the crowd sourced population did. A stronger sense of
47
personal justice has been related to positive coping with negative life events (Dalbert, 2001). So
while the injuries and illness were equally impactful the youth populations PBJW may have been
a protective factor that reduced the emotional impact over time. Alternately the student
population may be better equipped with resources such as family and community support, access
to health care; higher SES and better general resiliency that allow them to better manage the
impact of the experienced event. This is an area that demands further study to determine how
justice beliefs function in regards to various demographic factors when personal violations of
justice occur.
For the first set of affective components, for both samples, the highest scores were found
for distressed and upset and the lowest for guilty. As may be expected participants were unhappy
and concerned by their negative health outcome. The scores for afraid and scared were not
significantly different and these two items may be regarded as semantically different expressions
of the same emotion. This pattern held for the past and present iterations. The second scale had
the items of angry and irritable as the strongest and ashamed with the lowest scores. As with
afraid and scared angry and irritable may be semantic variations. It is interesting that on both
scales the two items related as a singly component on factor analysis, guilty and ashamed had the
lowest scores. Participants did not score highly on these two items that may be associated with
some kind of stigma. It may be understood that participants did not feel violations of their
personal moral standards of values of conduct regarding the event. Stigma tends to be an
externally induced feeling (Cataldo, et al., 2010), if our participants were not experiencing the
related emotions of guilt and shame then it may be inferred that those around them were not
imposing such connotations on the health event. As well it may simply be that what occurred
48
would not contain any reason for the participants to feel guilty or ashamed; the participant was
able to rationally understand what occurred.
When the scores for the EFA derived components are examined the highest scores are for
emotional concern related to the outcome of the event followed by fear and moral affect. As with
the item scores the participants are most concerned with, and may initially be dealing with, the
negative emotions caused by the event, secondly they face fear regarding the possible outcomes.
Lastly and most weakly they are concerned with the moral affect and potential shame or stigma
as discussed above. The first component for present affect found significant differences in the
sample scores with the crowd sample scoring higher. This likely is occurring because of the
difference scores on the individual items for present scores and for the same potential reasons.
Though three factors exist for the past and only two for the present the same pattern as item
scores exist and there is a decrease from affective impact in the past to the present.
Aim 1 Results
Fairness, Deservingness, Just World Threat, and Protective Strategies
Fairness. Participants’ fairness judgments provided support for hypothesis 1: illness and
injury can be accompanied by feelings of unfairness. When asked about fairness associated with
lifetime experiences with injury and illness, 54.4% reported feelings of unfairness associated
with injuries and 63.8% with illnesses. When those reporting unfairness associated with injury
were asked how unfair on a scale ranging from one, slightly unfair to seven extremely unfair,
responses ranged from one to seven with a mode of five and a mean of 4.59. A similar pattern
obtained for those seeing their illness as unfair. Responses ranged from one to seven, with a
mode of five and a mean of 4.67. In sum, feelings of unfairness associated with injury and
49
illness were common and the most common rating of magnitude of unfairness on a five-point
scale with seven being extremely unfair was five.
Interestingly, participants reporting more experiences with injury were also more inclined
to report the injuries as unfair, r = -.37, p <.001 and the same was true for illness, r = -.36, p
<.001. It was also the case that participants reporting their injuries as unfair, were also more
likely to report their illness as unfair, X2(1) = 58.03, p <.001.
When asked if the specific reported illness or injury was experienced as unfair at the
time, 38.7% of the respondents said yes. When those who said yes were asked if they still felt
the experience was unfair, 46.2% (17.9 % of total sample) said yes. Reporting the experience as
unfair either at the time or presently was unrelated to time since the event. In addition,
perceptions of fairness did not depend on whether the participant reported an illness or an injury,
X2(1) =1.4, p=.237.
Hypothesis 1a predicted a relation between perceived unfairness and reports of negative
emotions and this was supported as well. As shown in tables 5 and 6, perceived unfairness at the
time of the illness or injury was related to negative emotions at the time except for guilt and
shame. Although emotions at the time tended to be more negative (excluding guilt and shame)
for those who still experience their infirmity as unfair, only for upset was the difference reliable.
Current emotions were related to perceived fairness at the time of the event (excluding guilt and
scared) and current unfairness (except guilt).
50
Table 5
Mean Emotions at the Time for Perceived Infirmity Fairness at the Time and Currently
Fairness at the time
N = 274
Fairness Now
N = 106
Emotions at the time Fair Unfair Fair Unfair
Distressed 3.13 4.13*** 4.02 4.27
Upset 3.17 4.20*** 3.91 4.53**
Afraid 2.43 3.60*** 3.38 3.84
Guilty 1.76 1.77 1.88 1.65
Scared 2.40 3.54*** 3.50 3.59
Angry 2.45 3.40*** 3.18 3.65
Ashamed 1.90 2.20 2.31 2.06
Irritable 2.77 3.46*** 3.44 3.48
Sad 2.59 3.65*** 3.48 3.85
Note: aThe fairness now sample includes only those who perceived unfairness at the time.
* p <. 05, ** p <. 01, *** p <. 001
51
Table 6
Mean Current Emotions for Perceived Infirmity Fairness at the Time and Currently
Fairness at the time
N = 274
Fairness Nowa
N = 106
Current Emotions Fair Unfair Fair Unfair
Distressed 1.76 2.26* 1.79 3.08***
Upset 1.64 2.41*** 1.91 3.26***
Afraid 1.58 2.09*** 1.83 2.51*
Guilty 1.48 1.49 1.36 1.69
Scared 1.60 1.97 1.76 2.33*
Angry 1.48 2.13*** 1.63 2.97***
Ashamed 1.40 1.57* 1.31 2.00*
Irritable 1.58 2.05** 1.66 2.69***
Sad 1.61 2.27*** 1.70 3.26***
Note: aThe fairness now sample includes only those who perceived unfairness at the time.
* p <. 05, ** p <. 01, *** p <. 001
Deservingness. The hypothesis three prediction that deservingness judgments would
parallel fairness judgments received mixed support. When asked, yes or no, if they feel now that
52
specific reported illness or injury was deserved, only 11.3% said yes. Responses to scaled
responses were more varied. In each case the modal response was “not at all deserved” and
responses were positively skewed away from the mode. When asked if they felt at the time that
they deserved what happened, 42.1% of participants said not at all with the remainder reporting
that they at least somewhat deserved what happened (M = 2.45). Perceived current
deservingness was similar with 42.3% seeing the illness or injury as not at all deserved (M =
2.49). Interestingly, when asked if they thought others may have thought they deserved what
happened, the pattern was very similar, with 45.2% saying not all (M = 2.42).
For purposes of examining the relationship between deservingness and emotional
reactions to the illness or injury, a deservingness index was created as the correlations among the
deservingness items was high (α = .91). As shown in Table 7, deservingness was most strongly
related to the moral emotions of guilt and shame both at the time and currently. Other negative
emotions at the time of the event were either unrelated or inversely related. At the time of the
survey, some but not all negative emotions were positively related to deservingness, which is the
reverse of what might be expected from hypothesis 3. Overall, the judgment that one deserved
the illness or injury was associated generally with negative emotions, particularly moral
emotions.
53
Table 7
Correlations Between Perceived Deservingness and Emotions at the
Time of Illness or Injury and Currently.
Emotions At the time Currently
Distressed -.20** .18**
Upset -.22*** .11
Afraid -.08 .19**
Guilty .41*** .41***
Scared -.09 .21**
Angry .06 .15*
Ashamed .36*** .32***
Irritable .02 .18**
Sad .03 .11
Note: * p <. 05, ** p <. 01, *** p <. 001
Fairness and Deservingness. When the yes or no assessment of current deservingness
was cross-tabulated with the choice of fair or unfair at the time of the illness or injury, there is no
relationship (χ2 = 0). However, point biserial correlations between perceived fairness or
unfairness at the time, do correlate moderately with perceived deservingness at the time (r = .30,
p < .001) currently (r = .24, p < .001), and with perceptions that others would see the illness or
injury as deserved (r = .15, p < .05). In each case perceived fairness is associated with perceived
54
deservingness as predicted by hypothesis three. These moderate relationships indicate that some
but not all of the variance in participants’ judgments of the fairness of their illness or injury is
based in the extent to which they believe they deserved what happened.
Just world protective strategies. As shown in Table 8, and consistent with hypothesis
two, participants did evidence the same sort of justice world protective strategies employed by
observers. The scores for each are significantly positively skewed, except for compensatory
cognition, indicating that most participants scored toward the lower end of the scales.
Table 8
Univariate results for the Justice Motive Strategy Measures
Sample Mean
Score
Standard
Deviation
Median Range Skew Standard
Error of
Skew
Self-Blame Combined 2.77 1.74 2.5 1-7 .695 .153(.306)
Self-
Derogation
Combined 2.5 1.54 3 1-7 .7 .155(.310)
Compensatory
cognition
Combined 3 2.02 4 1-7 .223 .156(.312)
Re-evaluating
the Outcome
Combined 3.19 1.16 3 1-7 .352 .155(.310)
Note. Each measure employed a 7-point scale with larger values indicating higher levels of the
construct. No significant differences were found between the two samples
55
The relationships among the strategies as shown in Table 9 indicate that the tendency to engage
in one strategy was related to the tendency to use the remaining three
Table 9
Summary of Justice Motive Strategies Intercorrelations and Reliability Coefficients
Measure 1 2 3 4
1. Self-Blame α=.603 r=.395** r=.433** r=.397**
2. Self- Derogation r=.395**
α=.834 r=.495**
r=.291**
3. Compensatory
Cognition
r=.433**
r=.495**
α=.862 r=.432**
4. Reevaluating the
outcome
r=.397**
r=.291**
r=.432**
α=.602
Note. A significance level of p<.05 is indicated by *, a significance level of p<.01 is indicated
by**
In order to explore the relationship between the JW strategies a factor analysis was
conducted. Principle axis factoring was applied with varimax rotation that revealed a single
component that comprised all four of the JW strategies with a KMO of .788 and accounting for
63% of the variance. This would indicate that self-blame, compensatory cognition, self-
derogation and re-evaluating the outcome share significant common variance suggesting the
presence of a latent just world protective strategy variable.
56
To assess average differences between strategies in the magnitude of their use, the scores
on each of the justice maintenance measures were converted to z scores in order to standardize
them. A two way repeated measures ANOVA was then performed to test the rate of use of
justice motive strategies. The four strategies were analyzed across the two samples and time. No
significant main effect was found for differences in strategy use nor was an interaction found for
sample, crowd sourced vs. student, and time, present vs past.
Just world protective strategies and independent rater assessment. The relation
between fairness and self-blame was examined taking into account differences between
participants’ self-reports of culpability and independent rater judgments of the same experience
as reported by the participant. This was done for both ratings of blame and responsibility. As
positive scores on the difference score indicate more self-reported self-blame than the raters
assigned, in the present context positive scores would be indicative of self-blame as a protective
strategy2.
With perceived fairness as the predictor and responsibility difference scores as the criterion,
fairness was found to be positively related with the tendency to assign more responsibility to
oneself, than others would, t(1,249)= 2.9, β=.181, R2=.033 p=.004. No relationship between
fairness and the blame difference scores was present.
2 The participants tended to rate themselves as being more responsible for the event (M=2.94, SD=1.68)
than did the coders (M=1.61, SD.95), t(524)= 11.21, p<.001. For blame the coders issued higher ratings
of blame (M=5.19, SD=2.98) than did the participants (M=2.73, SD=1.7), t(522)= -11.26, p<.001.
57
In the case of re-evaluating the outcome raters did not use the same rating scales as
participants so direct difference scores could not be used. However, differences in perceived
severity were examined as the basis for inferring possible re-evaluation of outcome.
In this case because higher scores indicate more perceived severity than the judgment of
raters, negative values are treated as indicative of re-evaluating the outcome in a positive
direction. In this case the tendency to view the illness or injury as less severe than others might
was associated with more perceived fairness, t(1,257)= -3.0, β=-.184, R2=.034, p=.003
3.
MANOVA Analyses. To examine the relationship between the JM strategies and fairness
and deservingness two MANOVAs were conducted. a MANOVA strategy was used as multiple
dependent variables were present that were associated with a more general, or latent variable,
that was being measured, justice world protection. The categorical dichotomous fairness was
used as the independent variable.
Fairness at the time of the illness injury. A Hotelling’s T2
or two group between subjects
multivariate analysis of variance was conducted on four dependent variables: self-blame, self-
derogation, compensatory cognition and re-evaluating the outcome. The independent variable
was whether the described health event was seen as fair or unfair.
Using Wilks Lambda as the criterion, the composite dependent variate was significantly
affected by fairness, Wilks Lambda = .817, F(4,228) = 12.784, p<.001. This would indicate the
presence of justice motive protection is significantly affected by fairness perceptions.
3 For the severity comparison a significant difference was found, t(532)=10.99, p<.001, where the
participants rated their health event as being more severe (M=3.86, SD=1.61) than did the coders
(M=2.60, SD=.99).
58
Univariate ANOVA’s were conducted on each dependent measure separately.
Statistically significant univariate effects were found for (see also Table 10):
Self-derogation F(1,231)= 39.66, p<.001, η2= .147, where those who found the situation
to be unfair self-derogated at a greater rate than those who did not find it unfair.
Compensatory cognition F(1,231)= 7.787, p= .006, η2= .033; where those who found the
situation to be unfair used compensatory cognition at a greater rate than those who did not find it
unfair.
Re-evaluating the outcome F(1,231)= 13.385, p<.001, η2= .055; where those who found
the situation to be unfair re-evaluated the outcome at a greater rate than those who did not find it
unfair. No effect was found for self-blame. The univariate ANOVAs support that those who
found their situation unfair showed greater just world protection.
Table 10
Descriptive statistics for MANOVA univariate analysis of fairness
Unfair Fair
Mean SD Confidence
Interval
Mean SD Confidence
Interval
Self-
derogation
9.15 4.69 8.42,9.89 5.53 3.79 4.66,6.39
Compensatory
cognition
12.82 6.1 11.81,13.83 10.62 5.71 9.44,11.81
Re-evaluating
the outcome
7.6 2.44 7.19,8.01 6.42 2.42 5.93,6.9
Note. Confidence Intervals are measured at 95%
59
Fairness now of illness or injury. A Hotelling’s T2
or two group between subjects
multivariate analysis of variance was conducted on four dependent variables: self-blame, self-
derogation, compensatory cognition and re-evaluating the outcome. The independent variable
was whether they presently felt the health event they described was fair or not.
Using Wilks Lambda as the criterion, the composite dependent variate was not
significantly affected by fairness, Wilks Lambda = .514, F(4,228) = 19.4, p=.87. This would
indicate that no justice motive protection for present feelings of fairness for the illness or injury
is apparent.
Deservingness at time of illness or injury. A median split was performed in order to
categorize the continuous variable deservingness into a categorical one with values falling on the
median of nine or above categorized as being feeling deserving of their outcome and participants
falling below the median categorized as being undeserving of their outcome.
A Hotelling’s T2
or two group between subjects multivariate analysis of variance was
conducted on four dependent variables: self-blame, self-derogation, compensatory cognition and
re-evaluating the outcome with the dichotomized deservingness measure as the predictor
variable.
Using Wilks Lambda as the criterion, the composite dependent variate was significantly
affected by deservingness, Wilks Lambda = .546, F(4,228) = 47.436, p<.001. This would
indicate the use of JM strategy is significantly affected by deservingness perceptions.
Univariate ANOVA’s were conducted on each dependent measure separately. Statistically
significant univariate effects were found for (see also Table 11):
Self-blame F(1,231)= 130.73, p<.001, η2= .361, where those who felt they were
deserving used self-blame at a greater rate than those who did not feel deserving.
60
Self-derogation F(1,231)= 75.178, p<.001, η2= .246, where those who found themselves
to be deserving self-derogated at a greater rate than those who did not feel deserving.
Compensatory cognition F(1,231)= 73.768, p<.001, η2= .242; where those who found
themselves to be deserving used compensatory cognition at a greater rate than those who did not
find their illness or injury to be deserved.
Re-evaluating the outcome F(1,231)= 24.102, p<.001, η2= .094; where those who found
themselves to be deserving re-evaluated the outcome at a greater rate (M= 8.04, SD = 2.23, 95%
CI(7.55,8.53)) than those who did not find it deserved (M= 6.47, SD = 2.47 95% CI(6.08,6.88)).
Those who felt deserving of the outcome evidenced the use of just world protection.
Table 11
Descriptive statistics for MANOVA univariate analysis of deservingness
Deserving Undeserving
Mean SD Confidence
Interval
Mean SD Confidence
Interval
Self-blame
8.03 2.74 7.46,8.6 3.81 2.74 3.35,2.27
Self-
derogation
10.5 4.74 9.64,11.306 5.74 3.57 5.06,6.42
Compensatory
cognition
15.52 5.29 14.45,16.60 9.48 5.23 8.6,10.36
Re-evaluating
the outcome
8.04 2.23 7.55,8.53 6.47 2.47 6.08,6.88
Note. Confidence Intervals are measured at 95%
61
Aim 1 Discussion
Fairness
Participants showed evidence of feelings of unfairness in connection with their illnesses
and injuries as predicted in Hypothesis 1. At the time of the negative health event slightly over
one third of participants found it to be unfair. If there is an issue of fairness regarding the illness
or injury that has occurred then it is likely that some threat to the participant’s view of the world
as just is occurring. The main issue with the fairness, as well as the other measures such as
deservingness, is the extent to which it is occurring as a consequent of the event or is a reflection
of persistent fairness concerns. Though this fairness as an antecedent or consequence is an issue
the group level changes in fairness concerns between when the event occurred and not suggest
that the measures are likely capturing fairness at the time of the event and fairness now.
The emotional impact of the fairness of the event also followed the expected pattern.
Some of these emotions may be expected to be the product of the event itself, such as distress,
but they may also be related to the violation of the view of the world as just and fair. Yet as
emotions at the time are not reliably related to current perceived emotions present affect is not
impacted by the fairness issues experienced at the time of the event; the way emotions are
experienced currently are likely related to general distress regarding the event. The negative
emotions participants experienced at the time are associated with fairness however the moral
emotions of shame and guilt are not related. This result indicates that unfairness is adding to
general psychological distress caused by the event but moral implications are related to other
elements of the negative event. This is discussed in the following two sections.
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Deservingness
Participant’s deservingness perceptions somewhat followed the expectation that they
would mirror participants fairness perceptions. Though similar to emotional concerns with
fairness deservingness was related to fewer aspects of emotional affect. This may be the result
of perceptions of control of the situation. If participants have a feeling of deservingness then the
participant will likely be feeling that they impacted the outcome of the situation. If the
participant was the effector of their outcome then it may be that the participant will not
experience the same emotions as someone who sees the situation as unfair as it is unfair due to
the lack of effect they had on the outcome. The that are most related to deservingness at the time
of the event are moral ones that could be expected to be related to a negative outcome that a
person brought upon themselves, or deserved, such as guilt and shame (Cataldo et al. 2012).
Fairness and Deservingness
The positive correlations between fairness and deservingness indicate that participants
who perceive the situation as fair also see themselves as more deserving. Due to the design of the
question measuring fairness if participant’s perception of the situation was that it was unfair a
negative correlation would indicate a relationship with greater deservingness. While hypothesis
three is supported in that deservingness is related to fairness perceptions it is such that if a
participant perceives their situation as fair there will be a moderate correlation with feeling that
they are deserving of the situation. Interestingly only between 2% and 9% of the variance in
fairness is associated with deservingness. This may be due to participants thinking about their
own deservingness, participants become more narrowly focused on the extent to which they are
morally culpable for their outcome with respect to responsibility and blame as opposed to the
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general fairness of the situation. This aligns with the justice motive literature for a third party
observer: of primary concern to observers is assessing deservingness of the outcome, preferably
in terms of antecedent behavior (e.g. blaming the victim) or in terms of character (self-
derogation) (Lerner, 1980). For fairness though observers may differ when it comes to perceived
fairness versus when an event occurs personally. Personally fairness may well be related to a
variety of other factors such as timing and counterfactuals, the extent to which the single
experience of illness or injury is yet another instance of an increasingly unfair pattern. The latter
is supported somewhat by the finding that the more participants experienced illness and
unfairness, the more they found these things to be unfair.
Just World Protective Strategies
The participants appeared to evidence the use of just world strategies, though participants
scored on the low end of the scales. If these strategies are available to participants when third
party threat occurs then it is reasonable to assume they would be available when threat occurs
personally. The previous work done by Callan (2013) that identified deservingness concerns and
the deservingness and fairness concerns identified in this study that would indicate just world
threat is occurring make it reasonable to assume that the scales used to measure the strategies are
indeed identifying the use of these strategies.
The single component found by the factor analysis with all four strategies being related as
a common factor also supports the presence and use of the four strategies The single component
though allows confidence that self-blame, self-derogation, compensatory cognition and re-
evaluating the outcome are all psychological processes with the common goal of maintaining the
sense that the world is just. The lack of significant differences found by the 2 way repeated
64
measures ANOVA indicates that none of the strategies were being used at a greater rate than any
of the others as well as there was no difference based on the sample. The context and conditions
where each strategy is used though is a place for further investigation. For prediction of strategy
use it would be necessary to elicit more specific detail about an experienced injury or illness or
take an experimental approach and create conditions that may provoke variable strategy use.
Just World Protective Strategies and Independent Rater Assessment
Participant’s assessment of seeing the health outcome as being more fair when they
assign more responsibility to themselves than the independent raters did would support the
notion that they are reassessing the situation in some manner. This association can be seen as
support for self-blaming however the lack of relationship between fairness and blame difference
scores makes the suggestion tenuous. Evaluation of responsibility however may be a better
evaluation than blame itself. The difference in blame may be affected by participant’s knowledge
of the event versus the rater as well as by connotations related to the word blame. While saying
they are responsible the participant may not want to assign blame to themselves and this
becomes lost in their description of the event that the raters used to make a decision on blame.
Where participants viewed the situation as being more fair when they rated it as less severe than
the independent evaluators provides support for re-evaluating the outcome. As the participant
sees the situation as not being as severe as others would the participant is making a re-evaluation
of the outcome, a just world strategy is being used.
The difference scores for the independent raters related to perceived fairness in the cases
of self-blame and re-evaluating the outcome were somewhat as predicted. The more participants
rated themselves as responsible compared to the raters, the more fair; the less severe the outcome
65
compared to the raters, the more fair. These findings support the univariate findings and the
factor analysis that participants are using just world strategies. This provides further confidence
in stating that when there are fairness concerns and subsequent just world threat that participants
will use the available strategies to restore a perception that the world is a just place.
MANOVA
Justice Motive strategy use was significantly affected by participants’ fairness
perceptions however their reporting of concern with unfairness and strategy use ran contrary to
the hypothesis. Those who indicated that they found their situation to be unfair evidenced
strategy use at a significantly greater level than those who did not. It had been expected that
those who found their situation to be unfair would not have successfully dealt with the just world
threat created by the lack of fairness and they would not show that they were using any
strategies. The opposite was found and there were effects for self-derogation, compensatory
cognition and re-evaluating the outcome when the situation was unfair. No effect was found for
self-blame. When participants were asked to think of the event presently and their fairness
concerns no just world strategies were apparent. It may be that as participants think
retrospectively about their health event the writing task may be effective enough in eliciting a
stimulus that they are able to think of the JM strategies used to deal with the event at the time.
Alternately it may be that for the self JM strategies are temporally fluid and if a person used any
JM strategy to deal with an issue in the past when they recall it the person will present evidence
of its use. For example a person is indicating that they are using self-derogation because as they
think of the past scenario the fairness concerns are now present and any resolution is
momentarily rescinded. As well it may be that they are able to accurately distinguish past from
present: when asked about the past they report what was going on then, which is in turn different
66
from their current experience. Relatedly it may also be that as participants think of and write
about their own past experience when they have to respond to questions about strategy use the
participants perspective is more that of a third party observer than personal. The third party
perspective though seems unlikely as a review of the material produced in the writing task shows
that participants were highly engaged with the past event. This is a case where it would be
beneficial to continue the research using a sample that is presently experiencing a personally just
world threatening situation.
The lack of an effect for self-blame may be the product of participants not associating
fairness issues with blame as a product of fairness. Deservingness and blame are moderately
correlated, r=.633, while deservingness and fairness are not as strongly correlated. Self-blame
may only be apparent when there are deservingness concerns and so it does not appear when it is
only related with fairness.
Ultimately the unexpected results could be a measurement issue. Participants were asked
about fairness using a dichotomous response. This is advantageous in terms of parsimony and
being able to delineate on diametrically opposing viewpoints. If a situation was not fair then it
must be unfair, however participant’s perceptions of their event are likely to be more complex
than this. The participants may have felt limited by having to choose yes of no and the use of a
scale would have been beneficial. Participants may not have seen the situation as fair but it was
not unfair either.
Justice motive strategy use was significantly affected by feelings of deservingness. In
terms of feelings of deservingness at the time of the event those who found the event to be
deserved evidenced strategy use to a greater degree than those who felt their situation was
undeserved. This aligns with the hypothesis and the theoretical explanation that those who have
67
used JM strategies to deal with the deservingness issues will no longer show evidence of those
strategies. Participants are showing that when the outcome is deserved they are using any of the
four strategies at a greater rate than those who see it as undeserved. Those who are stating that
the situation is undeserved have not dealt with the justice issue presented by the undeserved
situation through the use of maintenance strategies. While this aligns with what may be expected
by the JM theory the evaluation of the resolution of justice issues in this manner is problematic.
By stating that the participants have dealt with the justice threat, with deservingness being a
proxy for threat, by observing the significantly higher rates of use when participants say they are
deserving may be affirming the consequent. The problem arises because participants are
thinking retrospectively about the event and then a declaration is being that because they no
longer evidence JW strategies for the undeserved case it means they must have successfully used
the just world maintenance strategies to successfully deal with the threat.
Nonetheless, the hypotheses are based on an a priori assumption that is challenging due
to the difficult nature of retrospectively distinguishing antecedent from consequence and no post
hoc interpretations are made based entirely on these assumptions. Thus it is reasonable to state
that some of the patterns in the present findings reporting perceptions of fairness and
deservingness are more consistent with them being consequences rather than antecedents of
strategy use and are in need of further investigation.
It will be necessary to deal with these problems by discerning what in fact the appropriate
causal model for personal justice violations is. The resolution of this issue exceeds the scope of
the present research and it would be necessary to use a sample that is currently undergoing some
kind of just world threat. For example people who are experiencing an injury or illness, accessed
as a clinical sample, could be presented with the same, or similar, measures for assessing strategy
68
use as done here. The evaluation and change in just world threat levels as maintenance strategies
are applied could be observed longitudinally. An experimental design could also be used to
resolve this issue.
Though there is the problem of interpretation presented by presently inherent issues this
does not necessarily void the findings of the present study. The intention of the research was to
take an exploratory approach towards personal just world threat and it appears that there are
theoretically consistent findings that support further study of the issue. A basic or general
understanding of the use Just World strategies has been garnered through Aim 1.
Substitutability and Equifinality
The univariate shown in Tables 8 demonstrate that all strategies are available to
participants in so far as it was demonstrated that all were actively used by participants. The
correlations of Table 9 show all of the strategies were significantly correlated and the factor
analysis shows them as being parts of a related construct. This supports the notion that all of the
strategies may be used. The repeated measures ANOVA used to determine if there were
differences in the rate of use of the strategies by participants did not yield significant results.
Again this support the principal of substitutability, when all of the potential justice motive
strategies are available to participants none take eminence and all of the strategies will be used at
an equal rate. Finally the MANOVA analysis shows that to deal with the JW threat that was
represented by fairness and deservingness all of the strategies were used. As each of four
strategies; self-blame, self-derogation, compensatory cognition and re-evaluating the outcome,
were invoked when fairness and deservingness issues arose and changes were seen in past and
present deservingness then it can be reasoned that each of the strategies was able to deal with the
69
just world threat fulfilling the principle of equifinality, any strategy or combination of strategies
can be effective in mitigating just world threat.
Based on the results of the Aim 1 analysis it does appear that people do experience illness
and injury as a just world threat. Participants use of just world maintenance strategies are related
to fairness perceptions however it is in the opposite manner as predicted, the more participants
reported their situation as unfair the more likely they were to evidence strategy use. As expected
participants who saw themselves as deserving of their outcome evidenced greater strategy use
than those who felt undeserved.
Aim 2 Results: Severity, Responsibility, and Perceived Fairness
To test for evidence of just world threat for the health event being moderated by
responsibility and severity experienced, unfairness of the event was used as an indicator of just
world threat (Hafer & Begue, 2005). The scores for participants on severity of the event and
responsibility for the event were centered to reduce mutlicollinearity (Gamst, Guarino, Meyers,
2013). An interaction term for the two variables was then created by calculating their product. As
perceived unfairness was a dichotomous response (Yes, No), logistic regression analysis was
performed on perceived unfairness as outcome and severity, responsibility, and their interaction
as predictors. A test of the full model against a constant only model was statistically reliable, χ2
(3, N = 241) = 35.39, p < .001, indicating that the predictors, as a set, reliably distinguished
participants who saw their illness or injury as unfair, from those who did not. Prediction
accuracy was 44.4% for participants who said their experience was unfair, and 84.5% for those
who said fair, for an overall success rate of 68%. According to the Wald criterion, both severity,
Wald χ2 (1, N = 241) = 17.96, p < .001, and responsibility Wald χ
2 (1, N = 241) = 9.83, p < .01,
reliably predicted perceived unfairness. The interaction term was not a reliable predictor. As
70
hypothesized the more severe the experience (β = -.08) and the less responsible participants felt
(β = .14), the more the illness or injury was perceived to be unfair.
One of the problems interpreting the responsibility findings is the extent to which
judgments of responsibility were influenced by the self-blame self-protective strategy (the
responsibility and self-blame correlation is .90, p < .001). There is no way with these data to
know whether participants responsibility judgments reflect their best understanding of what
transpired that others would agree with, or is the output of efforts at protecting just world beliefs
by self-blaming. To address this issue, coder assessments of responsibility were used as a proxy
for normative judgments of responsibility, see footnote 2 for the means and standard deviations
of the coder ratings. Interestingly, coder ratings of responsibility were unrelated to participants
own responsibility judgments (r = .05, ns). Using a median split on these ratings, the same
logistic regression analysis was done separately for participants who were judged to be high or
low in responsibility for their infirmity. These analyses indicate that the overall effect for
responsibility was more strongly apparent for participants coders perceived to be not responsible
for their illness or injury, χ2 (3, N = 143) = 29.26, p < .001 than for participants raters thought
were responsible for what happened, χ2 (3, N = 98) = 9.16, p = .03. In addition, whereas both
responsibility and severity remain significant predictors of perceived unfairness for those
participants the raters found to be low in responsibility (responsibility Wald χ2 (1, N = 143) =
6.91, p < .01, severity Wald χ2 (1, N = 143) = 16.68, p < .001) the same was not true for those
participants raters thought were more responsible for their infirmity (responsibility Wald χ2 (1, N
= 98) = 3.39, p = .06, severity Wald χ2 (1, N = 98) = 3.13, p = .08). These findings suggest that
the moderating effects of responsibility and severity for perceptions of fairness are strongest
under conditions of low responsibility and high severity.
71
Severity, Responsibility, and Deservingness.
A linear regression analysis that included severity and responsibility as predictors of
deservingness yielded a significant overall model, F(3,237)=63.1, p<.001 accounting for 44
percent of the variance, Adjusted R2 = .440.
There was no significant main effect for severity
t(3,237)=.334, p=.739, β= .016; but a significant responsibility effect t(3,237)=13.376, p<.001, β
= .653 and a significant interaction, t(3,237)=2.05, p=.042, β = .101. As shown in Figure 1, the
tendency for more perceived responsibility to result in more deservingness was unaffected by
severity at moderate and low levels of responsibility but was most apparent when both
responsibility and severity were high.
72
Figure 1. Interaction effects for the centered Severity score and Responsibility on participants
sense of Deservingness
Severity, Responsibility, and Protective Strategies.
Multiple regressions were performed to test the potential moderating effects of severity
and responsibility on just world protective strategy use. Severity and responsibility were entered
into a multiple regression along with each protective strategy and a severity by responsibility
interaction term. To create the interaction term the scores for participants on severity of the event
and responsibility for the event were centered to reduce mutlicollinearity (Gamst, Guarino,
Meyers, 2013). An interaction term for the two variables was then created by calculating their
73
product. Severity and responsibility both predicted strategy use as did the interaction term for all
strategies but self-blame and re-evaluating the outcome. For self-blame, only the responsibility
main effect was significant t(3,235)=36.56, p<.001, β= .925. As might be expected, participants
blamed themselves more when they felt responsible. For self-derogation there was a significant
main effect for severity t(3,230)=8.31, p<.001, β= .445; a significant main effect for
responsibility t(3,230)=6.71, p<.001, β= .359 and a significant effect for the interaction term
t(3,230)=2.59, p=.01, β= .414. Participants self-derogated more when they felt responsible and
when their experience was severe (see below for discussion of interaction). Similarly,
participants engaged in more compensatory cognition when the infirmity was severe,
t(3,231)=5.34, p<.001, β= .294; and when they felt responsible, t(3,231)=8.053, p<.001, β=
.440. The interaction term t(3,231)=3.67, p<.001, β= .203 was also significant (see below for
interpretation. Severity did not influence participants’ tendency to reevaluate the outcome,
t(3,237)=.571, p=.569, but they were more inclined to reevaluate if they felt responsible
t(3,237)=6.84, p<.001, β=.402 and the interaction was also significant t(3,237)=2.72, p=.007, β=
.161.
Figures two through three describe the severity by responsibility interaction for each of
the three strategies where the interaction was significant. For self-derogation, compensatory
cognition, and reevaluating the outcome, the highest level of strategy use occurred when both
perceived responsibility and severity were high, the lines for high responsibility trend in the
positive direction with increasing severity on the x axis. At moderate and low levels of
responsibility the influence of severity varied by strategy. Use of self-derogation and
compensatory cognition increased as severity increased at moderate levels of responsibility , this
can be observed as the lines for moderate responsibility rise over the increased severity on the X
74
axis. At low levels of responsibility, only self-derogation increased as severity increased, the
line for low responsibility increases as severity increases over the x axis. For reevaluating the
outcome, higher levels of severity resulted in less reevaluating at moderate and low levels of
responsibility, the lines for low and moderate responsibility trend in the negative directions with
increasing severity. Also see Table 12.
Figure 2. Interaction effects for the centered Severity score and Responsibility on the use of self-
derogation.
75
Figure 3. Interaction effects for the centered Severity score and Responsibility on the use of
compensatory cognition.
76
Figure 4. Interaction effects for the centered Severity score and Responsibility on the use of re-
evaluating the outcome.
77
Table 12
Interaction effects for the centered Severity score and Responsibility on Just World Strategy use
and Deservingness.
Strategy Low
Responsibility R2
Linear
Low
Responsibility r
High
Responsibility R2
Linear
High
Responsibility r
Self-derogation .253 .502 .240 .489
Compensatory
cognition
.005 .071 .281 .53
Re-evaluating
the Outcome
.008 .089 .091 .302
Deservingness .002 .134 .034 .184
Aim 2 Discussion
The hypothesized influence on fairness of severity and participants’ perceptions of their
responsibility for their illness or injury received partial support in the severity effect: the more
severe participants perceived the event to be the greater they saw it as unfair. This finding is
theoretically consistent. People do not expect bad things to happen to them. If an event is not that
severe, such as a cold, then people will not view it as a particularly terrible outcome and their
expectations of good things happening to them is not significantly violated and fairness concerns
are minimal. If an event is highly severe, such as a broken leg or serious illness, the event is, and
78
will likely be perceived as, very bad. This challenges people’s notion that bad things shouldn’t
happen to good people, and hence is a violation of their just world beliefs.
The lack of effects for participants’ responsibility for their illness or injury was not
expected so aim 2 hypotheses one and three were not supported. This finding does not align with
the theoretically expected outcome. When people are not responsible for a negative outcome that
befalls them it would be expected that the event be viewed as unfair: “If I did not do anything do
bring this outcome upon myself then I do not deserve it and it is thus unfair.” An important
consideration in understanding this finding is the extent to which participants’ perceptions of
responsibility align with normative understandings of responsibility. The infirmities reported,
particularly injuries, varied in the extent to which independent raters’ viewed the reported event
as something the participant was responsible for. Conceivably, participants’ own judgments of
fairness may have incorporated normative standards of responsibility that varied across the
sample, making any systematic relationship between responsibility and fairness to emerge. In
other words, if participants actually were responsible for what happened according to normative
understandings for assigning responsibility, they would be less expected to see their infirmity as
unfair in the same way observers wouldn’t.
A related issue is the extent to which judgments of responsibility were influenced by the
self-blame self-protective strategy. There is no way with these data to know whether participants
responsibility judgments reflect their best understanding of what transpired, or is the output of
efforts at protecting just world beliefs by self-blaming.
It is also conceivable that for the majority of the health outcomes reported by
participants, particularly illness, they understand that becoming ill for the most part is not
something that they have a high degree of control over, it is a random occurrence that happens to
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everybody. As the negative outcome is expected and common then there are no fairness issues.
“I did not do anything to deserve this outcome however it is a typical human experience and is
therefore not unfair”. This reasoning would likely not hold for more severe events such as a form
of cancer where there is no etiological responsibility and is hence more likely to be seen as
unfair. An example of this can be seen in our sample:
“I have dysmenorrhea. The main symptoms were pain concentrated in the lower
abdomen, as well as in the thighs and lower back accompanied by nausea, vomiting,
diarrhea, and headache, dizziness, fainting, and resulting in fatigue in the later days. In
addition, experienced hypersensitivity to sound, light, smell, touch, and made me sad,
frustrated. Nauseating, burning, or shooting pain usually lasted 2 full days during which I
could not function / do anything and occasional sharp pain the following days. Had to
take time off school and work. Was really terrible during junior high/high school years.
Occasionally had to go to the emergency and go by ambulance because of the loss of
blood, electrolytes, and overall functioning… its cause is genetic so much can't be
done… Other women don't experience it and I just find it extremely unfair, particularly
when other don't see how lucky they really are. It isn't fair when other women don't
experience it. They go about their days and can never tell when they are PMSing. The
other women feel small if no pain and aren't affected much. It makes me depressed.”
(Participant 54)
Most negative health outcomes though, as observed in this studies sample, are not severe
enough to cause a person to think of responsibility and thus there is only minor evidence of
unfairness at the group level. This may also be thought of in terms of the variance being taken up
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by severity as severity is more impactful for fairness concerns. Finally contrary to what was
hypothesized there does not appear to be an interaction between severity and responsibility for
the health event as predictors of participant’s fairness perceptions. This supports the notion that
severity is singularly more important than responsibility for fairness concerns.
Severity was found to be a significant predictor of self-derogation, compensatory
cognition and re-evaluating the outcome, none of these relationships were moderated by fairness
perceptions. While as stated above it appears fairness is related to severity in most cases for
participants this is a justifiable and rational reaction and there is no need to inquest just world
strategies. An event that causes a great deal of suffering or has a major impact on our health and
well-being would not be seen as fair however when the etiology is clear and present to a person
the fairness issues can be dealt with in terms of understanding the event and it is not necessary to
use any strategies to restore just world perceptions damaged by unfairness. Independent of
fairness though as an event has a more severe impact on a person’s health they may feel that
while they can deal with the fairness issues surrounding an event they are still not able to
understand it in terms of being justified and must use strategies.
Looking at strategy use when both severity and responsibility are invoked the eminence
of severity as a predictor of strategy use is changed. Main effects were found for both severity
and responsibility for self-derogation and compensatory cognition and for responsibility alone
for self-blame and re-evaluating the outcome. A significant interaction existed between
responsibility and severity for self-derogation, compensatory cognition and re-evaluating the
outcome. Interactions existed for severity and responsibility when participants self-derogated,
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used compensatory cognition and re-evaluated the outcome. For re-evaluating the outcome this
effect was marginally significant and weak.
For self-derogation the interaction between severity and responsibility is produced as
would be hypothesized. When severity is high and responsibility is low participants find it
necessary to use a just world strategy as an unjustified and negative event is happening to them.
As a highly severe event that the person is not responsible for occurs then the person will return
justice to the situation by saying that what happened had something to do with who they are as a
person. It is not possible to explain why the negative outcome is occurring thus they must be the
kind of person who deserves bad things.
The relationship changes though for compensatory cognition. The use of the strategy
increased with increases in both variables. It may be that as participants find themselves more
responsible for a more severe outcome they view their future selves as behaving in a manner that
can control the outcome and will produce more positive outcomes for themselves. A learning
experience is occurring and while this was an unpleasant and undesirable event the participant is
better off for having it happen. The person will be able to make better decision in the future that
will prevent something similar from occurring again.
The main effect of responsibility on re-evaluating the outcome is possibly a product of
the participant trying to find an alternate explanation for why the illness or injury occurred. They
are a good person and a good person would not be so irresponsible as to do something that would
have a negative outcome, therefor they view what happened as not being as bad as it seems. If
the negative event was not actually negative then they can maintain their just world view. A bad
event is not happening to a good person.
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The main effect of responsibility on self-blame and the absence of severity as a
contributing variable may fit the idea of a rational participant in that it is logical to blame
yourself for an event you are responsible for. As well if a person understands themselves to be
responsible for the event the level of severity will not matter and becomes washed out.
Regardless of how bad the illness or injury was the only thing that matters is that the person
knows they caused what happened. As a bad event happens to us and we understand the genesis
participants will self-blame but it is not a just world strategy it is a product of ratiocination.
Participant’s deservingness reactions to the events may mirror those of self-blame and the
idea of the rational participant. The main effect for responsibility, and lack of effect for severity,
is because participants are largely able to understand what happened and if they were responsible
they will feel that they were deserving of what happened to them. The person did something to
bring about their outcome and thus deserve what happened to them. An interaction of severity
and responsibility on deservingness does exist, however it is marginally significant with a weak
effect and any major conclusions should not likely be drawn from it.
It appears that severity and responsibility moderate just world threat and strategy use to a
certain degree. In certain cases varying levels of severity and responsibility affected evidence of
strategy use and coping with just world threat. For other scenarios only severity or responsibility
individually impacted coping strategies. Participant’s sense of deservingness was primarily
impacted by responsibility while severity was not found to be an influence on deservingness
perceptions. Just world threat is affected by severity and responsibility though not always in the
manner expected.
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Aim 3 Results and Discussion
Tables 13 and 14 summarize the correlational analysis findings for purposes of assessing
aim three hypotheses. The predictions for self-esteem set out in hypothesis one received little
support except for the prediction that self-esteem would be inversely related to self-derogation.
Thus self-esteem does not seem to figure prominently in justice related responses to injury and
illness.
The predicted protective properties of personal belief in a just world were apparent both
in the fairness and deservingness relationships. Stronger belief that one’s world is just was
associated with more perceived fairness and deservingness. How this is achieved is apparent in
the justice motive strategy correlations: those with stronger personal belief in a just world self-
blamed more, invoked more compensatory cognitions, and reevaluated the outcome more. Thus
Dalbert’s (2001, 2002) argument that PBJW functions as a resource for buffering the effects of
experienced injustice received support.
The expectation that GBJW would correlate negatively with fairness and deservingness
did not receive support and in the case of deservingness the opposite was true: those with
stronger GBJW actually saw their infirmity as more deserved. This was possibly the result of
GBJW also being positively related to both compensatory cognition and reevaluating the
outcome. Thus, this is another instance where the relationships make sense if one assumes that
the deservingness judgments are the outputs rather than antecedents of justice motive protective
strategies.
The pattern for IJ was very similar to GBJW except participants higher immanent justice
beliefs appeared to use all four protective strategies in the service of seeing their infirmity as
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deserved, whereas this orientation was not predicted to involve compensatory cognition.
Although UJ is conceptualized as a different orientation for maintaining the belief in a just world
that involves reliance on an extended time frame, the pattern of findings for UJ were essentially
the same as they were for IJ thus not supporting the prediction that UJ would be uniquely linked
to compensatory cognition.
The findings for justice sensitivity did support the predicted pattern at least for fairness.
Sensitivity to the injustice of harm but not sensitivity to unjust benefit was inversely related to
both perceived fairness: higher justice sensitivity to unjust harm was related to perceiving more
unfairness associated with illness and injury. No predictions were made for any relationship
between justice sensitivity and justice motive strategy use and none were found.
In sum, justice related individual differences moderately correlated with the justice
variables examined in this research in ways that were in some instances predicted but in others
not. As elsewhere, the unexpected reverse findings for fairness and deservingness are
interpretable if it can be assumed that the fairness and deserving judgments are the result rather
than the antecedent of justice motive protective strategy use.
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Table 13
Individual Difference Measure Correlations with Fairness and Deservingness
Scale Fairness
Lifetime
injury
Fairness
Lifetime
illness
Infirmity
Fairness
Then
Infirmity
Fairness
Nowa
Infirmity
Deserving
Then
Infirmity
Deserving
Now
Self-esteem .04 .08 .00 .00 .03 -.05
PBJW .22** .11 .16** .22* .15* .16*
GBJW .09 .09 .08 .16 .19** .14*
IJ .07 .09 .08 .16 .35*** .30**
UJ .04 .03 .03 .15 .22** .18**
JS - harm -.14* -.18** -.17** -.23** -.07 -.05
JS – privilege -.03 -.04 -.02 .00 .04 .04
Note. a N= 106 for this analysis as only those who saw the event unfair initially answered
this question. PBJW = Personal Belief in a Just World, GBJW = General Belief in a Just
World, IJ – Immanent Justice, UJ = Ultimate Justice, JS – harm = Justice Sensitivity to
unjust harm, JS – privilege = Justice Sensitivity to unjust benefit.
* p < .05, ** p < .01. *** p < .001
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Table 14
Individual Difference Measure Correlations with Justice Motive Protective Strategy
Scale Self-blame Self-derogation Compensatory
Cognition
Reevaluate
Outcome
Self-esteem -.09 -.13* -.05 -.04
PBJW .16* -.11 .23** .14*
GBJW .13 .08 .34** .23**
IJ .26** .20** .43** .33**
UJ .14* .21** .43* .25**
JS - harm .03 .12 -.01 .05
JS – privilege .01 .07 .06 .05
Note. PBJW = Personal Belief in a Just World, GBJW = General Belief in a Just World, IJ –
Immanent Justice, UJ = Ultimate Justice, JS – harm = Justice Sensitivity to unjust harm, JS –
privilege = Justice Sensitivity to unjust benefit.
* p < .05, ** p < .01. *** p < .001
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General Discussion
The results of this study generally support the hypotheses made. Overall a good cursory
understanding of the way that the justice motive functions when threat occurs personally and
how it affects our sense of deservingness and fairness has been garnered. The results of this
study generally support the previous research for personal just world threat in that people do
experience fairness and deservingness concerns in ways that are consistent with how threat is
experienced for third parties. As such, the findings are consistent with existing literature on
personal just world threat (Callan, 2013) and extend that work in documenting how particular
justice motive protective strategies operate when the threat takes the form of injury or illness.
The participants in this study had a good degree of experience with injury and illness
throughout their lifetime and were able to provide specific events that had affected their health.
Overall the participants had been healthy for most of their lives and as a group did not present
any apparent trends for health that appeared non-normative. The student and crowd sourced
samples did differ on some measures however most of these could be attributed to demographic
characteristics particularly age, for example the crowd sourced sample had more experience with
injury and illness. The specific illness participants were asked to think about was shown to be
psychologically impactful through the affect measures and could be reduced to a few categories.
The findings of Aim1suggest that experiencing injury or illness as unfair or undeserved is
not uncommon and people will use justice motive strategies in order to deal with their injury or
illness. Initial correlations and univariate analysis support that participants are using the
strategies to some extent. Inferences about re-evaluating the outcome and self-blame were
strengthened through the use of independent rater assessment of responsibility, blame, and
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severity. To continue to examine if participants were using justice motive strategies three
MANOVAs were conducted. The relationships between fairness, deservingness and the
strategies were examined. It appeared that fairness was related to the use of three strategies, self-
derogation, compensatory cognition, and re-evaluating the outcome, such that when participants
perceived the situation to be more unfair they tended to use the strategies at a greater rate. This
was contrary to the hypothesized results; however it may be that while completing the writing
task participants are reconstructing their experience of the event and are responding to their
experienced unfairness by invoking strategies as they would have when the event occurred. This
recalls the causal model issue, is the unfairness the cause of or is it antecedent to the use of
strategies. The deservingness findings show the participants who feel they were deserving of
their experience used all of the strategies at a greater rate than those who did not feel deserving
of their situation. This aligned with the hypothesized results that those who had used the
strategies to successfully deal with deservingness issues would not evidence use of the strategies.
When participants would think of their current feelings of fairness regarding the issue there was
no relation to any of the strategies. It is possible that current feelings of unfairness would not be
expected to be relevant with strategies that were present at the time. Participants successfully
used the just world strategies at the time of the event when the unfairness was present and no
longer need to invoke the strategies. If people are still showing unfairness concerns though it
may be the result of a failure to effectively utilize the strategies at the time of the event. This
again leads to the issues of post-hoc assumptions about the process of the use of strategies in
relation to the presence, or absence of fairness concerns. Further research is necessary to make
any affirming claims about this process.
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In Aim 2 it was found that severity did impact participant’s fairness perceptions while
responsibility, taking into account independent rater assessment did not have the same effect.
The lack of an effect may be the result of alignment with normative understandings of
responsibility and blame for the event where it is reasonable for others and yourself to see what
happened to you as being your fault. In some way you are responsible for the outcome and it is a
rational explanation. When severity and responsibility were used as predictors for strategy use
changes in the two variables aligned with the expected results for each strategy. If a situation is
unfair and a person is not responsible for it then it is reasoned there will be violations of just
world beliefs.
In Aim 3 support was found for the Personal Belief in a Just World acting as a protective
buffer for negative life events. Results for the General Belief in a Just World and
Immanent/Ultimate justice did not function as expected in relation to deservingness and
protection strategies however they do make sense if deservingness is taken to be a product of
justice motive protection strategies. Participants with higher sensitivity to justice showed more
susceptibility to unfairness. These results are interesting regarding the distinction made in the
introduction about the two interpretations of just world and the appropriate manner to study it.
Aim 3 uses the approach suggested by Dalbert and colleagues that the belief in a just world is a
trait that can act as a buffer against negative life events that are just world threatening. This is
opposed to the position, which is taken in this study, that people have a largely unconscious
motivation to maintain their view of the world as a just place and will use various strategies to do
so. Due to the prominence of the prior approach in the literature the various justice measures
were taken and appear to show to some extent that they function as would be hypothesized by
Dalbert (2001). Support is also found though for justice motivation and strategy use. This result
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implies that both positions have merit and should be considered. People will use strategies in
order to deal with just world threat and the use of these strategies may be informed by peoples
justice beliefs as measured in this aim; as person who is stronger in the PBJW or is more
sensitive to justice may apply a just world strategy like compensatory cognition to a greater
extent than someone who would score lower on those measures.
As discussed in the introduction one of the implications of participant’s use of just world
strategies is the use of the strategies for coping. As discussed in some cases self-blame can be
adaptive and in the case of various injury and illness as explored presently it may be thus so. If a
person blames themselves for an injury or illness, then it is possible that in the future they will
take action to mitigate the chances of the same event occurring in the future. Self-blame may
lead to better future health practices on the part of participants as they take responsibility for
their health. Conversely if a person is unable to have an impact on what occurred to them or self-
blames but does not take steps towards better future health practices the use of this strategy may
only result in depressogenic effects. Similar effects could result from self-derogation, if a person
sees what happened to them to be a product of who they are then the person may take steps to
change this self-perception. If the person views the reason that they became injured as being
because they are reckless and foolhardy then in order to change this self-derogating perception
they will act in a more careful manner in the future. Again though, as for self-blame, if a person
is not inclined or is not able to use the self-derogation to change in a positive manner potential
negative future outcomes may result such as damage to the self-esteem. If a person uses the two
strategies that tend to be viewed as more positive for justice motive protection, compensatory
cognition and re-evaluating the outcome, there could also be positive and negative results. If a
person is re-evaluating the outcome and is downgrading the severity of an illness or injury in
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order to maintain their view of the world as just it may result in them not taking the proper
actions to deal with their situation. In cases such as a cold or flu this may not matter for long
term health however if a person is afflicted with a more serious condition such as cancer there
could be serious consequences to re-evaluating the outcome in a manner that downgrades the
severity, such as not taking proper and prudent steps to deal with the situation. People’s personal
health beliefs tend to be one of the primary factors in their behavior in dealing with illness
(Kondryn, 2012) and if they are using the strategy of re-evaluating the outcome then it may be a
health belief that could negatively impact outcomes. Compensatory cognition could also have
potential positive and negative effects. If a person views what happened to them as having been
positive because it had a beneficial impact on their lifestyle choices or health behaviours then it
is a useful coping strategy. If though the person views what happened to them as being
something positive but does not experience any learning or counter strategies to deal with
negative health events then the person may be more likely to repeat behaviours that led to their
outcome. If it was the case where it was not a situation that they initially could have impacted,
using compensatory cognition may still lead to a more external locus of control where the person
may not be as likely to take positive steps towards ensuring future health.
The way in which people use just world strategies as coping mechanisms, whether
positively or negatively, likely comes down to individual difference factors such as resiliency,
self-esteem, self-worth and demographic factors such as education and access to health care. The
way in which just world protective strategies are used not only to cope with just world threat but
also how they function as coping mechanisms in relation to positive or negative health
behaviours is an interesting avenue for future study. It is likely that how the strategies are used
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and the effectiveness in which they are used to deal with just world threat will be a major factor
in peoples coping and health behaviours.
The results of this study have more general implications for justice motive theory and
social psychology overall. The finding that fairness and deservingness may exist as separate
constructs when people perceive just world threat personally is important. Previously it was
expected that peoples’ fairness concerns were initiated when they experienced something they
didn’t deserve. Yet when people experience an event personally deservingness concerns do not
overlap entirely with fairness concerns, possibly as a product of other context associated with the
event. For instance, whereas deservingness was construed by respondents to refer primarily to
things they did or didn’t do that resulted in injury or illness, fairness was informed by additional
considerations such as timing. If the illness or injury occurred at a point in time that extended
the impact for the person (e.g., getting sick just before an important performance) then perceived
unfairness was enhance. For JMT as a whole this is important because it suggests that the
psychological experience of fairness/unfairness includes factors other than deservingness. If in
fact there are differences in fairness and deservingness fore personally experienced threat then it
is possible that in certain contexts fairness and deservingness may also be separate constructs for
third party threat. This result along with the findings of the results of Aim 3 where just world
measures were shown to be in some cases related to just world protective strategies, and the
general findings of personal just world threat, show the justice motive theory phenomena to be
dynamic and potentially more diverse than found up to this point.
For social psychology in general the present research proves interesting in providing
reinforcement for the frame of reference for social psychological theory. In general, social
psychology is concerned with how the social context influences our thoughts and behaviours.
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Social psychology has also highlighted the importance of construal: it matters greatly how
perceive their context, with construal being influenced by both individual difference and
situational factors (Ross & Nisbett, 1991). This study aligns with this perspective by linking
construal patterns inform how being injured or ill is experienced psychologically.
This work also contributes to a long-standing interest in social psychology with how
actors’ construals align or don’t align with those of observers. In general, to the perceptions of
injustice and related reactions that occur for others, bear considerable resemblance to how people
experience unfairness themselves. At the same time, important contextual considerations such as
the severity of the injury or illness and perceived responsibility for it turned out to be factors
where personal judgments didn’t always align with third party judgments. In this context, these
differences provided insight into possible sources of construal for instance when participants’
sense of responsibility exceeded that of observers, suggesting justice motivated self-blame as a
source of construal.
There were several limitations to the study as it was conducted. Some of these arose from the
exploratory nature of the study while others came to light only upon examination of the results.
Order effects may have been present as the items that were presented to the participants in order
to gauge participants general overall health and experience with negative health events may have
had an effect on the individual difference measures. The individual difference measures, such as
Personal Belief in a Just World and Justice Sensitivity scales, are intended to assess stable
dispositions however by having preceding questions related to fairness perceptions around health
events participants may have been primed to think in justice terms creating bias in their
responding. It has been found that participant’s responses to justice scales can be affected by
presenting a justice perception inducing scenario to participants prior to completion of BJW
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scales (Dalbert, 2001). To deal with the potential order effects the individual difference measures
could be placed prior to any demographic or general justice questions, however this may create
order effects in the opposite direction and placing the individual difference measures variably
throughout future studies may mitigate the effects or at least allow for assessment of the
influence of prior justice related questions or information on these measures.
The retrospective nature of this research in terms of asking participants to recall past events
carries the inherent methodological issue of recall bias. Asking participants to think of an event
that may have happened months or years prior is problematized by the inherent shortcoming and
failing’s related to human memory (Hassan, 2005). The fact that participants were asked to recall
an issue that was highly impactful in their lives may diminish some of these effects. A negative
health event that had a great impact on a person’s life may be expected to be remembered with a
greater degree of clarity. Though this may be the case even memories that are highly salient and
important to people are often misremembered or improperly recalled (Robinson & Bridget,
2012). Though recall bias may be occurring it may not be a major issue. More so than an
accurate and precise recollection of the health event that occurred this study is interested in how
it impacted the participants. Even if the details of the event are not wholly recalled with exact
verisimilitude so long as the participants are able to become engaged with the event and have a
degree of emotional connection with what happened it is likely that the answers received from
the participants will in fact evidence some sort of justice motivation response.
The overall severity of the negative health outcomes, as measured in this study, was found to
be moderate to mild. This may be perceived as a determent to identifying the expected effects of
fairness, deservingness and protective strategies. Despite these concerns there was the detection
of fairness and deservingness concerns and the use of protective strategies. Particularly when
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regression analysis was performed in Aim 2 variability was found for the measures of fairness,
deservingness and protective strategies at varying levels of severity as well as responsibility;
specifically higher severity was related to greater unfairness and strategy use. While the group
mean for severity was on the lower end of the scale the there was sufficient variability to detect
differences for high and low severity.
While the retrospective approach taken in this study holds validity for the exploration of the
construct of interest further steps could be taken in the future, using the present research as
groundwork, to examine people’s personal justice perceptions and sense of deservingness. While
Callan (2013) has already begun to explore the issues through an experimental approach further
work may be done with participants experiencing real just world threat in their lives. The role of
justice motive processes in responses to injury and illness would be even more compellingly
established through research conducted at the time of the experience. If pursued longitudinally,
such research would also help clarify causal sequences that remain unclear in the cross-sectional
findings reported here.
Future populations examined for the effects of personal violations of justice can and should
be expanded beyond health scenarios. Health events are a convenient paradigm as everyone
experiences illness and injury in their lives however examining other situations where the
potential justice threat is variable will support the idea that people’s justice motivation is a
universal characteristic that is enacted and employed throughout various situations and events in
people’s lives. For instance, it may be expected that when another form of just world threat
occurs personally, such as a negative outcome in an educational situation where the participants’
preparation for an exam would have them expecting to achieve a good grade, it would be
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expected that they would experience the same fairness and deservingness concerns. The
participant would then use protective strategies to resolve the just world threat.
It would also be interesting to extend the research into cross cultural realms. Cultural
variation in belief systems related to justice would make for an interesting extension of justice
motive theory. The study of groups that hold more karmic or fatalistic belief systems would
make for particularly interesting study. People who hold a fatalistic view of the world may be
less likely, if at all, to show fairness and deservingness concerns. If in general a person does not
see themselves as having an influence on the outcomes of their lives if a negative outcome
occurs there will be no violation of expected fairness. If a person is good they will not be
expecting good things to happen to them thus when a bad thing happens it is not a bad thing
happening to a person who deserves good things, it is just something that happens. The
alternative to the fatalistic perspective would be where if all of one’s future outcomes are
expected to be a form of recompense for previous good or bad deeds a violation of this cycle will
be a gross contravention of their world view. If this occurs then those people who hold more
karmic beliefs will evidence stronger beliefs in a just world, that may be measured through the
PBJW and GBJW, and violations that occur will result in greater fairness and deservingness
concerns and subsequently more powerful attempts at restoring their just world view.
The measures used to evaluate the participant’s use of just world strategies were not
developed through rigorous psychometric assessment. Each measure was assessed to determine
inter-item reliability and in the case where items were not valid they were dropped from the
measure that was used for assessment. Callan (2013) developed and evaluated measures used to
assess deservingness and the measures, or variations thereof, of deservingness which were used
in this study. While it would have been ideal to use measures of self-blame, self-derogation,
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compensatory cognition and re-evaluating the outcome that had undergone assessment for
validity these did not exist in the prior literature. Previous studies had developed questions and
measures to look at just world strategy use in terms of third parties and guidance was drawn from
these to develop the items to evaluate participant’s personal strategy use. While this does not
present an ideal situation it is necessary as this research is one of the first forays into assessing
personal just world threat. As well the development and use of novel measures to assess an
operationalized psychic property is one of the persistent methods, and issues, in psychology
(Winston, 2004). Beginning with the basis of the present research it will be possible in the future
to develop measures with greater validity for the assessment of justice motive strategies when
personal violations of justice occur.
The actual method of conducting the study may have been a limitation. For pragmatic
reasons participants were provided with a link to an online survey to participate in the study.
While this is a common method used for sampling populations it may not be the most effective.
The experimenter secedes a degree of control over the conditions the study is conducted in and it
may be that participants do not complete the study with the same care and attention if they were
to be physically present in a testing environment with the researcher. Methods were used to
determine if participants were not completing the study with care particularly by inserting a
question that directly asks if their data should be included in the study. It is interesting to note
that the student population responded at a greater absolute rate, 17, that their data should not be
included compared to the crowd sourced population, 12, despite the fact that there were a greater
total number of participants from the crowd sourced population. The data was also combed to
determine if there were other careless responders who may not have indicated that their data
should not be included. Sixty three participants in total were eliminated from the study. If the
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testing had been conducted in person it is possible that less data would have been lost to careless
responding. By using an online survey though a far wider and more diverse population was
accessed and through a perfunctory assessment of the data retained particularly the written
response data it appears participants were putting effort into responding to the study questions in
a thoughtful and careful manner.
A strength of the current research was the use of the dual population sample. Participants
were recruited from both a university undergraduate population as well as a sample from the
general population. A current issue in the methods of psychology is the primary use of student
populations when conducting research. This sample of convenience raises numerous issues about
the generalizability of the findings of research based on a sample of convenience that has been
characterized as western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, W.E.I.R.D (Norenzyan,
2012). By using two samples that completed identical questionnaires further insight was
garnered regarding these population biases. Differences arose on the Personal Belief in a Just
World scale, some of the affective scales and on some demographic questions regarding
experience with illness and injury. Most of these can be attributed to the mean age differences in
the samples, see Preliminary Results. While the samples differed on these few measures overall
the samples were nearly identical in their responses. Both groups had experienced similar types
of illness and injury that caused some type of just world threat, an impact on deservingness and
elicited maintenance strategies. That both samples were on the whole largely identical would
imply that perhaps the university samples are not as different and W.E.I.R.D. as thought. This is
important for future research, specifically that surrounding the BJW but also in psychological
research in general. For the matter of convenience and simplicity it may not be inappropriate to
continue relying on student samples while also keeping an eye to obtaining a diverse and more
99
“general” sample whenever possible. A related topic is the sampling method used. The general
population sample was accessed through a crowdsourcing website. This sampling method has
been shown to produce results that are at a level of equal or greater reliability to student samples
(Behrend, et al. 2011; Best, et al., 2001). The ease of accessing such a large sample very quickly
balances out some of the misgivings regarding the attentiveness and care that the people
completing the study may be giving to their participation; though in the present study it seems
that the crowd sample actually completed the study more assiduously than the student sample.
This presents positive bearing for the use of crowdsourcing in the future for balancing student
sampling with sampling from the general population and improving the generalizability of
psychological studies.
The nature of this study was exploratory. A single experimental study had been done
previously to examine personal just world violations and people’s reactions to this threat (Callan,
2013) and so this work was carried out to gain a better understanding of personal just world
threat in more personally experienced situations. The general hypotheses of the study were met
and it appears that a personal negative life event can be just world threatening in a similar
manner to how threat is experienced by third parties. Interesting differences were also found
particularly for how fairness and deservingness may be separate constructs when personal threat
occurs. The results of this study support further research into personal just world threat as a
promising area of inquiry for enhancing our understanding of how justice informs how people
react to the good and bad things that happen in their lives.
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Appendix 1
General Belief in a Just World (Dalbert et al., 1987)
Below you will find various statements. Most likely, you will strongly agree with some
statements, and strongly disagree with others. Sometimes you may feel more neutral.
Read each statement carefully and decide to what extent you personally agree or disagree with it.
Circle the number which corresponds to this judgment. Make sure you circle a number for every
statement.
6=strongly
agree
5=agree 4=slightly
agree
3=slightly
disagree
2=disagree 1=strongly
disagree
1. I think basically the world is a just place
6 5 4 3 2 1
2. I believe that, by and large, people get what they deserve.
6 5 4 3 2 1
3. I am confident that justice always prevails over in-justice
6 5 4 3 2 1
4. I am convinced that in the long run people will be compensated to injustices
6 5 4 3 2 1
5. I firmly believe that injustices in all areas of life (ex. Professional, family, political) are
the exception rather than the rule
6 5 4 3 2 1
6. I think people try to be fair when making important decisions
6 5 4 3 2 1
7. I am convinced that in the long run people will be compensated to injustices
6 5 4 3 2 1
111
Appendix 2
Personal Belief in a Just World (Dalbert et al., 1987)
Below you will find various statements. Most likely, you will strongly agree with some
statements, and strongly disagree with others. Sometimes you may feel more neutral.
Read each statement carefully and decide to what extent you personally agree or disagree with it.
Circle the number which corresponds to this judgment. Make sure you circle a number for every
statement.
6=strongly
agree
5=agree 4=slightly
agree
3=slightly
disagree
2=disagree 1=strongly
disagree
1. I believe that by and large, I deserve what happens to me.
6 5 4 3 2 1
2. I am usually treated fairly.
6 5 4 3 2 1
3. I believe that I usually get what I deserve.
6 5 4 3 2 1
4. Overall events in my life are just
6 5 4 3 2 1
5. In my life injustice is the exception rather than the rule
6 5 4 3 2 1
6. I believe that most of the things that happen in my life are fair
6 5 4 3 2 1
7. I think that important decisions that are made concerning me are usually just
6 5 4 3 2 1
112
Appendix 3
Justice Sensitivity 1 (Schmitt et al., 2005)
People react quite differently in unfair situations. How do you react? First we will look at
situations that advantage others but disadvantage you.
(0= Not at all, 5= Extremely)
1. It bothers me when others receive something that ought to be mine
0 1 2 3 4 5
2. It makes me angry when others receive a reward that I have earned
0 1 2 3 4 5
3. I cannot easily bear it when others profit unilaterally from me
0 1 2 3 4 5
4. It takes me a long time to forget when I have to fix others’ carelessness
0 1 2 3 4 5
5. It gets me down when I get fewer opportunities than others to develop my skills
0 1 2 3 4 5
6. It makes me angry when others are undeservingly better off than me
0 1 2 3 4 5
7. It worries me when I have to work hard for things that come easily to others
0 1 2 3 4 5
8. I ruminate for a long time when other people are treated better than me
0 1 2 3 4 5
9. It burdens me to be criticized for things that are overlooked with others
0 1 2 3 4 5
10. It makes me angry when I am treated worse than others
0 1 2 3 4 5
113
Justice Sensitivity 2
Now we will look at situations that advantage you and disadvantage others.(0= Not at all, 5=
Extremely)
1. It disturbs me when I receive what others ought to have
0 1 2 3 4 5
2. I have a bad conscience when I receive a reward that someone else has earned
0 1 2 3 4 5
3. I cannot easily bear it to unilaterally profit from others
0 1 2 3 4 5
4. It takes me a long time to forget when others have to fix my carelessness
0 1 2 3 4 5
5. It disturbs me when I receive more opportunities than others to develop my skills
0 1 2 3 4 5
6. I feel guilty when I am better off than others for no reason
0 1 2 3 4 5
7. It bothers me when things come easily to me that others have to work hard for
0 1 2 3 4 5
8. I ruminate for a long time about being treated nicer than others for no reason
0 1 2 3 4 5
9. It bothers me when someone tolerates things with me that other people are being
criticized for
0 1 2 3 4 5
10. I feel guilty when I receive better treatment than others
0 1 2 3 4 5
114
Appendix 4
Immanent/Ultimate Justice Scale (Maes, 1998)
Below you will find various statements. Most likely, you will strongly agree with some
statements, and strongly disagree with others. Sometimes you may feel more neutral.
Read each statement carefully and decide to what extent you personally agree or disagree with it.
Circle the number which corresponds to this judgment. Make sure you circle a number for every
statement.
-3 = I Disagree very much, -2 = I Disagree on the whole, -1 = I Disagree a little, 1 = I agree a
little, 2 = I agree on the whole, 3 = I agree very much
1. A badly lived life is directly followed by doom
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
2. We will see the day when all victims will be compensated for their suffering
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
3. There is injustice in nearly every area of life
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
4. I am convinced everyone will be compensated one day for the injustice they've suffered
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
5. Those who plan bad deeds will fall by them
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
6. I believe everyone seeks justice when important decisions are made
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
7. There is hardly a crime which will not be punished in the long run
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
8. Life is full of injustice
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
115
9. There is a direct connection between one’s character and one's fate
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
10. I am sure at some point justice always wins in the world
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
11. I believe that people all overall get what they deserve
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
12. At some point, everyone has to pay for their ill deeds
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
13. Good and honest conduct leads to directly to happiness
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
14. One may anytime be hit by bad fortune
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
15. He who does good will soon reap rewards
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
16. Every bad fate will be balanced one day
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
17. I think that in general the world is just
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
18. In the long-run, those with the least now, will have the most
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
19. Injustice in all areas of life (i.e. work, family, politics) is the exception rather than the rule
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
20. Everyone who commits bad deeds will be held responsible for them one day
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
21. Many people suffer unjustly
116
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
22. Many things in life are completely unjust
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
23. Those who suffered yesterday will be better off tomorrow because of their suffering
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
24. Those who make others suffer will have to do penance one day
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
25. You never have to wait long for punishment or remuneration
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
26. Those who suffer will see better days
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
27. The punishment for bad deeds comes faster than you think
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
28. Those who have suffered badly will one day be compensated
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
29. Those who gain at others expense will pay dearly in the end
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
30. Anywhere you look, life is not just
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
31. Those who are being treated badly usually don’t deserve any better
-3 -2 -1 1 2 3
117
Appendix 5
Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale with Deservingness items (Callan, 2013; Rosenberg, 1965)
Instructions: Below is a list of statements dealing with your general feelings about yourself. If
you strongly agree, circle SA. If you agree with the statement, circle A. If you disagree, circle D.
If you strongly disagree, circle SD.
1. On the
whole, I am
satisfied
with myself.
SA A D SD
2.*
3.
At times, I
think I am
no good at
all.
Right now I
believe I am
deserving of
all good
things life
has to offer
SA
SA
A
A
D
D
SD
SD
4. I feel that I
have a
number of
good
qualities.
SA A D SD
5.
6.
I am able to
do things as
well as most
other
people.
Right now I
do not feel
deserving of
positive
outcome
SA
SA
A
A
D
D
SD
SD
7.* I feel I do
not have
much to be
proud of.
SA A D SD
118
8.* I certainly
feel useless
at times.
SA A D SD
9.
10.
I feel that
I’m a person
of worth, at
least on an
equal plane
with others.
Right now I
feel I
deserve my
current
situation
SA
SA
A
A
D
D
SD
SD
11.* I wish I
could have
more
respect for
myself.
SA A D SD
12.* All in all, I
am inclined
to feel that I
am a failure.
SA A D SD
13. I take a
positive
attitude
toward
myself.
SA A D SD
119
Appendix 6
In the following space please write about a health event in the last five years that was serious
enough to disrupt your daily routine. This can include, though is not limited to, anything from an
infectious illness to physical injury to cancer (please exclude any mental health issues). Describe
what happened, what caused it, how much it affected you at the time and how, as well as if it still
affects you now and how. Please feel free to include any other details you would like and to use
as much detail as you feel is necessary to describe the event.
What was the health event (In a couple words) ________________________
How long ago did the described event occur? _____________________
120
Sometimes when a people have a bad experience like illness or injury they can feel the
experience is unfair. Did you feel that way when this happened? Y / N
If yes why?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Do you feel that way now? Y / N
If yes why?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
121
Appendix 7
Items for severity, deservingness and the four just world protective strategies, self-blame, self-
derogation, compensatory cognition and re-evaluating the outcome
Severity
1. In your opinion how severe was this health event overall? (with 1 being not at all severe
and 7 being very severe)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. In your opinion how severe was this health event in terms of its effects on your health at
the time? (with 1 being not at all severe and 7 being very severe)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3. In your opinion how severe was this health event in terms of its effects on your daily life?
(with 1 being not at all severe and 7 being very severe)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
4. In your opinion how severe was this health event in terms of its effects on your long term
health? (with 1 being not at all severe and 7 being very severe)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5. In your opinion how severe was this health event in terms of its effects on your other
people in your life? (with 1 being not at all severe and 7 being very severe)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
6. In your opinion how severe was this health event in terms of its effects on your present
well-being? (with 1 being not at all severe and 7 being very severe)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Deservingness
1. When you think about the health outcome you described do you at all feel you deserved
what happened to you? (with 1 being not at all deserving and 7 being highly deserving).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. When you think about the health outcome you described do you that others may feel you
deserved what happened to you? (with 1 being not at all deserving and 7 being highly
deserving).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
122
3. When you think about the health outcome you described at the time of the outcome did
you feel you deserved what happened to you? (with 1 being not at all deserving and 7
being highly deserving).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Please describe why you had, or did not have, those feelings of deservingness
__________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4. If the event occurred again would you feel that you deserved what happened to you?
(with 1 being not at all deserving and 7 being highly deserving).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5. Do you feel now that you deserved the health outcome you described? Y / N
Self Blame
1. Do you at all believe you were at all to blame for your health outcome? (with 1 being not
at all and 7 highly to blame)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. Do you feel that someone else would blame you for your health outcome? (with 1 being
not at all and 7 highly to blame)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3. Do you feel that blaming yourself for your health outcome would be reasonable? (with 1
being not at all and 7 highly to blame)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Self Derogation
1. Do you feel that what happened to you has anything to do with who you are as a person?
(with 1 being not at all and 7 highly)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. Did you feel diminished by this experience or feel less good about yourself as a person
after this happened? (with 1 being not at all and 7 highly negative)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Do you feel that way now? Yes No
123
3. Do you feel that as a result of your health outcome your self-perception was lowered?
(with 1 being not at all and 7 highly lowered)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Compensatory Cognition
1. Do you feel that your health setback presented an opportunity for personal growth? (with
1 being no personal growth and 7 being lots of personal growth)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. Do you feel that your health situation had any positive outcomes? (with 1 being no
positive outcome and 7 being many positive outcomes)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3. Do you feel that any positive outcomes of your health situation outweighed the negative
outcomes? (with 1 being not at all and 7 being very much so)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
4. Do you think that your health setback was in anyway “payback” for previous bad deeds?
(with 1 being not at all and 7 being very much so)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5. Do you think that given the suffering you went through that you experienced some
compensating “luck breaks” or even now can expect can look forward to some “lucky
break”?
(with 1 being not at all and 7 being very much so)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Reevaluating the outcome
1. Do you feel that your health outcome is not as severe as others perceived it to be? (with 1
being highly disagree and 7 being highly agree)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2. When you think about your own health outcome how would you rate the severity of it if
it occurred to another person? (with 1 being not at all severe and 7 being highly severe)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3. When you think about your own health outcome how would you rate how much someone
deserved it if it occurred to another person? (with 1 being not at all deserved and 7 being
highly deserved)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7