The Concern for Justice—The Justice Motive 539not mean that justice and its standards are disregarded. They
can perhaps be interpreted as trade-offs between self-interest
and justice motives, but not as a reduction of the justice
motive to self-interest; this is not what Walster et al. (1978)
and others wanted to explain by referring to self-interest.
What they wanted to explain was why people care about
justice in the first place.
Concern for justice may mean that people claim justice for
themselves—for example, equitable shares in their social ex-
changes, voice in disputes, and so forth; it is incontestable
that this serves self-interest. But concern for justice means
also that people claim or (at least) that they concede justice
for all parties involved, equitable shares for all actors, or
equal voice for all. Equal justice for all involved does not and
must not result in maximum benefits for the subject who
raises these claims: Equitable shares are usually less than the
maximum share, and voice may benefit the other party if he
or she has the better arguments. There is consensus among
philosophers of justice that the crucial test of whether actions
are based on a concern for justice is whether the actor not
only claims justice for him- or herself, but at least concedes
justice for others, if not claiming it for them.
Of course, the rules of justice may be applied for reasons
other than establishing justice. Self-interest and further con-
cerns may provide the motivation.
- Politicians may fight for more justice merely in order to
win the votes of those whose claims they are voicing. - In business exchanges, equity rules may be observed be-
cause the actors expect that this will pay off in the long run. - Companies may expect just wages to increase efficiency
by stabilizing the motivation and performance of their
employees. - Retaliation may be used for the rational reason that it will
stop continued defection (egoistical behavior) by another
party. - Applying the rule of parity in allocations within a group
may be a rational choice aimed at furthering the social
cohesion of the group. - Responsiveness to needs of one’s spouse may express
one’s sympathy and love (and may not be an application
of the need principle of justice).
In these cases, justice is not the primary concern—if it is a
concern at all—but rather comes into play as a means of pur-
suing the actors’ other concerns. This is a tactical use of jus-
tice that does not require that the actors have internalized the
relevant justice principles, that they believe in their validity,
or that they are convinced that these principles should be
applied by everyone in similar cases. It can be assumed that
concerns for justice—if they exist at all—will be trumped by
the actors’ primary concerns if there ever were a conflict
between the two motives.
This is not the case when justice is the actors’ primary
concern or at least one of his or her main concerns. In these
cases, actors are committed to establishing, reestablishing, or
maintaining justice—whatever they may hold to be just. In
such cases, concerns for justice are not easily trumped by
other concerns.
It is well known in psychology that actors usually have
more than one concern in a given situation and that different
concerns may come into conflict. We need to use valid diag-
nostic measures to show that justice was one of the concerns
taken into consideration in a given situation, even if it was ul-
timately trumped by other concerns. If justice was only con-
sidered for tactical reasons, actors who neglected justice in
order to achieve the desired outcomes should not be expected
to show signs of moral disquiet about their behavior.
In cases in which justice is a concern in itself, its neglect
causesfeelings of guiltand possibly also efforts to correct
one’s actions, compensate for the resulting injustice, beg for
pardon, excuse or justify one’s actions, minimize the unjust
consequences mentally, deny the injustice by blaming the
victims or the disadvantaged, and so on. These are possible
indicators for the neglect of justice concerns by acting
subjects.
In social interactions, the rules of justice may be neglected
or violated by others. In this case, subjects’ concern for
justice may be indicated by explicit claims for justice, resent-
ment of others’ behavior,criticism of this behavior, punish-
ment, or retaliation; but this concern may also be indicated
by mental reconstructions aiming at minimizing or denying
the perceived injustices, as shown in the literature on belief in
a just world and observed injustices (cf. Lerner, 1977, 1980;
Montada & Lerner, 1998, for overviews), as well as by cop-
ing with suffered injustice (cf. Montada, 1994). Both victims
of injustices and observers who are not directly affected may
have concerns for justice and have to cope with experienced
or perceived injustice in one way or the other.Empirical Evidence for the Justice Motive
as a Primary MotiveLooking at empirical research, we find much evidence that
does not fit the rational-choice modeling of the justice con-
cern. Instances of resentment in which the resenting subjects
do not have any vested interests of their own but nonetheless
commit themselves to costly and potentially risky attempts to
restore justice are especially significant in this respect. It is not