554 Justice, Equity, and Fairness in Human Relations
components for honest apologies in a private context: The
perpetrator must (a) express remorse and emotional distress
because he or she has violated a legal and moral norm and
has harmed the victim; (b) he or she accepts responsibility
for the violation and liability for blame; (c) he or she credi-
bly expresses willingness to observe the moral rule in the
future; and (d) acknowledges that it is up to the victim to
accept or to refuse the apology, and that forgiveness is a
grace granted by the victim which cannot be claimed by the
perpetrator.
It has been empirically proven that sincere apologies rec-
oncile victims and judges (as well as observers not directly
involved) and reduce their desire for retribution and their
punitiveness (Miller & Vidmar, 1981; Montada & Kirchhoff,
2000). Goffman (1971) explained this phenomenon as fol-
lows: By showing remorse, the perpetrator accepts the valid-
ity of the violated norm, accepts his or her own guilt and
blameworthiness, brings him- or herself once again back to
the normative consensus of the community, and confirms the
views of the victim. Therefore, apologies attenuate the ret-
ributive counteraggression of victims as well as of the puni-
tiveness of the broader public (Ohbuchi et al., 1989). The
perpetrator’s attempt at reparation has similar effects (Darley
& Shultz, 1990). Some courts also reduce the penalties if in
perpetrator-victim compensation an agreement was reached
(Rössner, 1998).
Victims’ Need for Retribution
Whereas the assessment of appropriate penalties has been
widely studied, only a few studies exist of the victim’s needs
for retribution. It is known, however, that for the victims of
violent crimes, retributive reactions by the state are more im-
portant than are reparations (Baurmann & Schädler, 1991;
Pfeiffer, 1993). The large majority of victims assess sen-
tences as too mild in their own cases (Richter, 1997).
A study of victims of violent crimes (rape, physical injury,
attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping) done by Orth
(2000)—on the average 4 years after the crime and 2 years
after the court trial—pointed out that two thirds of the sample
were dissatisfied with the court’s judgment; and those who
were dissatisfied tended to react with pronounced feelings of
indignation, disappointment, helplessness, mistrust in the
legal system, a diminished belief in a just world, reduced
self-esteem, and reduced trust in the future. The effects of
dissatisfaction, however, were moderated by victims’ ap-
praisal of the proceedings as just. Procedural justice was as-
sessed by some of Leventhal’s (1980) criteria and by the
relational criteria proposed by Lind and Tyler (1988) that will
be discussed in a following section.
THE JUSTICE OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS
AND POLITICSThe justice of allocations and existing distributions in general
can be assessed for different levels, for instance, within pri-
mary groups, within casual social formations as realized in
most laboratory experiments, within organizations and insti-
tutions (Elster, 1992, speaks of localjustice), at the level of
the society (Brickman, Folger, Goode, & Schul, 1981, speak
of macrojustice), and at the international level.
It is important to note that for assessing the justice of allo-
cations and distributions, one needs to determine social bor-
derlinesthat specify who is principally entitled to receive a
share of the resources to distribute, who is obligated to bear a
share of the tasks and loads to be allocated, and so on (Cohen,
1986). However, the determined borderlines may be criti-
cized as unjust. Should the inheritance of a deceased person
who has not made his or her will be distributed only among
his or her descendants, or should those persons be included
who have self-sacrificingly cared for him or her for years?
Should the profits of a business be distributed exclusively to
the shareholders or should the stakeholders participate? Who
has to bear the losses? Should the tax revenues of rich states
be distributed exclusively within the state or should develop-
ing states also participate?
Because the constitution, the legal system, and the institu-
tions of a society have an impact on distributions, these compo-
nents of the societal system are also the objects of justice
appraisals—for example, the economic system, the labor laws,
the health and welfare system, the educational system, envi-
ronmental protection laws, immigration rules, the generation
contract; all of these may be valued as basically just or may be
criticized as unjust, as well as the politics responsible for their
implementation and adaptation. Constitutions may be criti-
cized for failing to guarantee human rights, the protection of the
environment, or animal welfare; the economic and tax systems
may be criticized for allowing the development of huge in-
equalities in wealth or for demotivating individual productiv-
ity; the educational system may be blamed for failing to provide
equal opportunities for the socially disadvantaged or failing to
meet the needs of gifted students. Justice arguments can be
found to support or censure any given policy, and all parties
concerned usually seem convinced that their view is the only
valid one; this is how normative standards are conceived—as
generally valid and as binding for all concerned.Imbalances of Justice at the Societal LevelNot every claim, not every evaluation of social conditions,
and not every protest against injustice is justified. Claims and