No abstract

Three studies examined whether the concern for justice can be a genuine determinant of attitudes toward affirmative action (AA) or whether justice-based opposition merely masks prejudice. In line with the hypothesis of justice as a cause, we found mat, independent of their level of prejudice, people were opposed to AA programs that violate distributive and procedural justice norms, as a result of genuine beliefs in the principles of fairness that the programs violate. Nevertheless, in line with the hypothesis of justice as a rationalization, we also found that people's prejudice level was positively associated with opposition to AA programs that were not explicitly justice violating; moreover, the effect of prejudice was mediated through the tendency to construe these programs as justice violating. The present research has implications for understanding attitudes toward social policies where it is possible that justice concerns could be a genuine source of opposition or a rationalization of prejudice.

Philosophers and behavioral scientists refer to wisdom as unbiased reasoning that guides one toward balance of interests and promotes a good life. However, major instruments developed to test wisdom appear biased, and it is unclear whether they capture balance-related tendencies. We examined whether shifting from global, de-contextualized reports to state-level reports about concrete situations provides a less biased method to assess wise reasoning (e.g., intellectual humility, recognition of uncertainty and change, consideration of the broader context at hand and perspectives of others, integration of these perspectives/compromise), which may be aligned with the notion of balancing interests. Results of a large-scale psychometric investigation (N = 4,463) revealed that the novel situated wise reasoning scale (SWIS) is reliable and appears independent of psychological biases (attribution bias, bias blind spot, self-deception, impression management), whereas global wisdom reports are subject to such biases. Moreover, SWIS scores were positively related to indices of living well (e.g., adaptive emotion regulation, mindfulness), and balancing of cooperative and self-protective interests, goals (influence-vs.-adjustment) and causal inferences about conflict (attribution to the self-vs.-other party). In contrast, global wisdom reports were unrelated or negatively related to balance-related measures. Notably, people showed modest within-person consistency in wise reasoning across situations/over time, suggesting that a single-shot measurement may be insufficient for whole understanding of traitlevel wisdom. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for research on wisdom, judgment and decision making, well-being, and prosociality.

We argue that the preference for the merit principle is a separate construct from hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies (i.e., system justification beliefs, prejudice, social dominance orientation), including descriptive beliefs that meritocracy currently exists in society. Moreover, we hypothesized that prescriptive beliefs about merit should have a stronger influence on reactions to the status quo when hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies are weak (vs. strong). In 4 studies, participants' preference for the merit principle and hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies were assessed; later, the participants evaluated organizational selection practices that support or challenge the status quo. Participants' prescriptive and descriptive beliefs about merit were separate constructs; only the latter predicted other hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies. In addition, as hypothesized, among participants who weakly endorsed hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies, the stronger their preference for the merit principle, the more they opposed selection practices that were perceived to be merit violating but the more they supported practices that were perceived to be merit restoring. In contrast, those who strongly endorsed hierarchy-legitimizing ideologies were always motivated to support the status quo, regardless of their preference for the merit principle.

To test hypotheses concerning the influence of prospective and retro-spective rationality in the development of organizational commitment, we measured both the affective and continuance commitment of recent university graduates on three occasions during theirfirst year of employment and examined their relations with variables measured prior to and following entry into an organization. Prior to entry, we measured variables presumed to bind individuals to their choice of organization (i.e., volition, irrevocability, and importance) as well as perceived decision quality. Following entry, we measured perceptions of job quality, investments, and alternative employment opportunities. The results were more consistent with a prospective- than with a retro-spective-rationality view of the development of commitment. The best predictors of affective commitment were the job-quality and decision-quality variables. Continuance commitment correlated most strongly with the pre-and post-entry measures of perceived alternatives. Implications for organizational efforts to foster commitment in employees are discussed.