Why is Justice Regarded as so Important? Theoretical Considerations and an Empirical Test of a Fundamental Question

Abstract

DFG Research Center (SFB) "From Heterogeneities to Inequalities"Whether fat or thin, male or female, young or old -people are different. Alongside their physical features, they also differ in terms of nationality and ethnicity; in their cultural preferences, lifestyles, attitudes, orientations, and philosophies; in their competencies, qualifications, and traits; and in their professions. But how do such heterogeneities lead to social inequalities? What are the social mechanisms that underlie this process? These are the questions pursued by the DFG Research Center (Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB)) "From Heterogeneities to Inequalities" at Bielefeld University, which was approved by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as "SFB 882" on May 25, 2011.In the social sciences, research on inequality is dispersed across different research fields such as education, the labor market, equality, migration, health, or gender. One goal of the SFB is to integrate these fields, searching for common mechanisms in the emergence of inequality that can be compiled into a typology. More than fifty senior and junior researchers and the Bielefeld University Library are involved in the SFB. Along with sociologists, it brings together scholars from the Bielefeld University faculties of Business Administration and Economics, Educational Science, Health Science, and Law, as well as from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In addition to carrying out research, the SFB is concerned to nurture new academic talent, and therefore provides doctoral training in its own integrated Research Training Group. A data infrastructure project has also been launched to archive, prepare, and disseminate the data gathered. Research Project A6 "The Legitimation of Inequalities -Structural Conditions of Justice Attitudes over the Life-span"This project investigates (a) the conditions under which inequalities are perceived as problems of justice and (b) how embedment in different social contexts influences the formation of attitudes to justice across the life course.We assume that individuals evaluate inequalities in terms of whether they consider them just, and that they hold particular attitudes toward justice because, and as long as, these help them to attain their fundamental goals and to solve, especially, the problems that arise through cooperation with other people (cooperative relations). As a result, attitudes on justice are not viewed either as rigidly stable orientations across the life span or as "Sunday best beliefs" i.e. short-lived opinions that are adjusted continuously to fit situational interests. Instead, they are regarded as being shaped by the opportunities for learning and making comparisons in different phases of the life course and different social contexts.The goal of the project is to use longitudinal survey data to explain why individuals have particular notions of justice. The key aspect is taken to be changes in the social contextparticularly households, social networks,...

Subjective Inequity Aversion: How Unfair Inequality Affects Subjective Well-Being

“…Theories stressing the importance of normative ideals suggest that individual utility is reduced when the perceived distribution differs from a theoretically 'just' distribution like equality or equity (Adams, 1963;Alesina and Angeletos, 2005;Alesina et al, 2004;Deutsch, 1975). Thus, investigating how fair individuals perceive their own and others' endowments, such as income or wealth, in light of their normative ideals should be essential for understanding the mechanisms linking perceived inequality and utility (Liebig et al, 2015). Other theoretical approaches stress the importance of social comparisons and suggest that individuals care about relative differences in endowments between themselves and others (Runciman, 1966;Yitzhaki, 1982).…”