This essay—based on an interview with Guillermina Jasso, Silver Professor of Arts and Science and Professor of Sociology at New York University and recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Justice Research—offers an in-depth reflection on her influential career in the social sciences. Spanning five decades of scholarship, Jasso’s work has shaped central debates on distributive justice, inequality, status, and sociobehavioral theory. In this essay, we review how Jasso has contributed to understanding what people think, say, and do when confronted with inequality, understood in a broad sense as the distribution of valued goods and burdens in society. We revisit some of Jasso’s early contributions in light of her account of their emergence, including her pioneering use of the factorial survey method to study fairness perceptions and the development of the justice evaluation function. Relying on Jasso’s reflections on her interdisciplinary trajectory across theory, methodology, and empirical analysis, as well as her profound engagement with mathematics and philosophy, we discuss her contributions to unifying three sociobehavioral forces—justice, status, and power—within a single theoretical framework. Finally, we provide a glimpse into the question of “where to go next?” drawing on Jasso’s reflections that emphasize the need for improved measurement, deeper formalization, and intellectual openness.
The 2020 U.S. presidential election presented a unique opportunity to assess U.S. voters’ willingness to engage in election-oriented collective action. Both presidential candidates invoked neighborhood-based comparisons to support their policies, the political parties were polarized, and President Trump, who lost the election, and his supporters, claimed the election results were illegitimate. Before and after the November 2020 election, 293 self-reported Trump voters and 370 self-reported Biden voters completed the same survey. Both before and after the election, resentment and anger about the perceived deprivation of one’s neighborhood predicted election-related collective action among Biden voters. For Trump voters, before the election, anxiety about neighborhood deprivation predicted collective action. However, the perceived legitimacy of the election emerged as a notable predictor of collective action for Trump voters after the election. The results show how neighborhood-based economic comparisons can help make sense of people’s willingness to protest election outcomes when political messages focus on traditional economic narratives but for Trump voters, election illegitimacy narrative may have supplanted local economic concerns after the election.
Drawing on a theoretical framework that emphasizes the significant role of fairness in shaping individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB), this study examined the association between perceived income fairness and life satisfaction across 29 European countries using data from European Social Survey Round 9. On average, perceived fairness was positively associated with life satisfaction, supporting the hypothesis that individuals who perceive their incomes as fairer report higher well-being. However, the strength of this relationship varied substantially across national contexts. Multilevel analyses reveal that country-level income inequality significantly moderated this link, with the positive association between perceived fairness and life satisfaction being more pronounced in high-inequality settings. These findings highlight the contextual nature of distributive justice perceptions and demonstrate that the psychological impact of income fairness is intensified by the broader economic context. The study underscores the need for comparative, context-sensitive approaches to understanding the social foundations of subjective well-being.
All day, every day, the sense of justice is at work, touching farflung areas of the human experience. Understanding its operation is thus a central goal for social science. This paper provides an overview of justice analysis—framework, theory, empirics. The core foundational relation is the justice evaluation function (JEF)—specified as J = θ ln(A/C)—whereby the observer reflects on a rewardee (self or other), comparing the actual reward A to the just reward C (where “just” always means “just in the eyes of the observer”) and generating the justice evaluation J, the assessment that the rewardee is fairly or unfairly rewarded, and, if unfairly rewarded, whether underrewarded or overrewarded and to what degree. The paper briefly describes the JEF’s origins and properties, the latter including loss aversion and a link to the Golden Number. The JEF has proved fruitful, delivering an abundance of testable predictions across multiple topical domains—including novel predictions—and useful empirically. The paper probes a major current challenge, namely, the JEF’s vulnerability to response biases in C and J. Justice analysis itself distinguishes between true and disclosed C and between experienced and expressed J (the latter pair linked by the expressiveness coefficient theta). Justice empirics has fielded designs that estimate true C and experienced J—chiefly by using factorial survey experiments in which the actual reward A is fixed by the researcher and enough observations are obtained from respondents to enable respondent-specific regressions. The paper also considers links between distributive justice and retributive and procedural justice; links between the principles of microjustice and macrojustice in distributive/retributive/procedural justice and the three principles of tax justice; further links to all reference-dependent processes; the Anselmian decisionmaking model; the unification of justice, status, and power; and a quartet of deeper engines of behavior which may themselves give rise to justice, status, and power. Importantly and crucially, inequality appears everywhere and in many guises, suggesting the busy life of inequality in the justice circuit.
The discussion about the fair allocation of scarce medical resources through triage decisions gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical experts proposed to maximize the overall treatment benefits by prioritizing patients with the highest estimated post-treatment length of life, and apply a random lottery if the estimated post-treatment length of life for two patients is equal. However, implementing expert ethics requires the procedures to at least coincide with the preferences of the general public to ensure trust in institutions and social cohesion. Although there is a growing body of research on preferences of the public in triage decisions, evidence for preferences in accordance with this rank-ordering approach is lacking. To address this research gap, 1,998 English-speaking adults from North America and Europe completed an online conjoint experiment. We find a close match between the rank-ordering approach and participants’ preferences. We discuss implications and provide guidance for future research.
This research examines gig drivers’ experience of platform company fairness through the lens of organisational justice, and the platform company’s perceptions of fair management to understand this experience. The analysis is based on a survey of drivers doing car transfers in Finland. A total of 85
Pay dispersion in American firms has grown with CEOs vastly out earning others, which has been met with mixed reactions in public opinion. We propose that different meritocracy beliefs, descriptive versus prescriptive, can account for such opposing reactions. On the one hand, we expect descriptive meritocracy beliefs (i.e., the belief that outcomes are allocated based on merit, such as effort, ability) to predict less negative evaluations of pay dispersion, regardless of how high those levels are, due to hierarchy-enhancing/system-justifying motivations. On the other hand, we expect prescriptive meritocracy beliefs (i.e., the belief that outcomes ought to be allocated based on merit) to predict negative evaluations of pay dispersion, particularly when levels of pay dispersion are higher, as it may be seen as less equitable. We found support for these hypotheses in two survey experiments with American MTurk participants (Ns = 778, 762) in which we assessed meritocracy beliefs, manipulated levels of pay dispersion within fictious organizations, and assessed participants’ evaluations (i.e., perceptions of inequity, and evaluations of the spread of pay as too unequal and as unfair). We found that as levels of pay dispersion rise, participants more negatively evaluate it, particularly if they have stronger prescriptive meritocracy beliefs. However, the more participants believe that organizations are currently meritocratic, the less negatively they evaluate any level of pay dispersion. Thus, two different forms of meritocracy beliefs, descriptive and prescriptive, predict opposing reactions to pay dispersion.
People hold different preferences concerning the justice principles—such as merit, equality, and need—that should guide the distribution of resources. Additionally, they judge the existing distribution as just or unjust. Both sets of attitudes differ across social groups. So far, relatively little attention has been paid to migration experiences as a factor potentially underlying different attitudes toward distributive justice. Integrating the insight from migration scholarship that generation matters, this study explores migration background and migrants’ generational status as possible factors shaping distributive justice attitudes. Using an original survey in Germany, this study tests whether migrants of different generations hold attitudes different from those of non-migrants. Almost no differences were found with regard to individuals who moved to Germany as children or grew up in Germany with migrant parents. However, personal experiences of migration in adolescence or adulthood strongly shape distributive justice attitudes. Migrants who moved to Germany after or during adolescence tend to find inequality more acceptable and support the equality and need principles less. The paper highlights migrants as an interesting population for empirical justice research. Moreover, it urges justice scholars to differentiate between migrant generations.
Although the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to redress social inequities and income disparities to end poverty, eliminate hunger, and ensure that ‘no one is left behind’, relatively less attention is paid to the top end of the income distribution and the few who have accumulated vastly more than the majority. Social justice frameworks typically seek to mobilize the most disadvantaged in social change efforts and often overlook those with wealth and privilege. The last few years have seen an inequitable surge of wealth creation for corporations and those at the top of the income distribution. Given the unfettered expansion of billionaire wealth and compounding polycrisis we now face, this conceptual paper argues that support for greater income security must shift to not only involve those among the lower- and middle-income rungs but also those at the highest echelons of capital accumulation. The paper reframes the conversation on basic income to not only consider the consequences of not addressing poverty and income inequality for broader society, but to pay specific attention to the implications of the failure to do so the failure to do so for people in the highest income quintiles. Concomitant with growing capital accumulation in fewer hands, symptoms such as the potential for greater crime, declining health and wellbeing, the erosion of trust and challenges to democracy, reduced prosperity and hindered social mobility may thrive. An unconditional basic income, funded through increased taxation on the ultra-wealthy, could play a significant role in mediating the deep destabilization caused by growing capital accumulation and wealth disparities.
Sabbagh’s Socializing Justice reorients justice research from a focus on individual development to one of organizational socialization, offering a timely exploration of how social justice unfolds within and across educational settings. This expansive review advances three propositions. First, a cross-disciplinary depiction of justice typologies reveals how distributive, procedural, relational, and institutional logics are variably privileged across sociological, psychological, and philosophical traditions. Second, blending Sabbagh’s sociological focus on organizational structures with a psychological focus on development and relational practice offers an integrative account of socialization: Individual agency becomes situated within institutional, cultural, and policy-driven processes. Additionally, a normative framework conceptualizes learning environments as moral spaces—sites in which social justice is not merely taught or regulated but actively produced.
In the face of climate change, the principles of distributive social justice have become paramount in addressing the implications of resource allocation and the unequal impacts of environmental degradation. Our study explores the relationship between distributive social justice and environmental attitudes among young people in the context of climate change. Using a natural experimental design, we examine how the 2021 European Floods influenced social justice and environmental attitudes. Our results indicate significant shifts in attitudes, particularly regarding social justice, following the flooding. We found a strong and robust relationship between social justice and environmental attitudes. A causal mediation analysis revealed that floods affected environmental attitudes indirectly through social justice attitudes beyond direct effects. Our results emphasise the importance of integrating the principles of justice in addressing climate change and suggest that young people’s perspectives on social justice play a crucial role in shaping environmental policies and responses to climate crises.
Believing in justice can enhance health, especially if one believes the world is personally fair (justice beliefs for self). However, health benefits conferred by believing in justice may be nuanced for racial minorities, whose lived experiences may also reinforce links from health outcomes to beliefs about justice more generally (justice beliefs for others). Across two studies, we consider how the belief in a just world for self and others are related to African Americans’ evaluations of self-reports of discrimination when receiving healthcare – a largely overlooked domain in the justice literature. In study 1, African Americans completed measures of the belief in a just world for self and others, along with measures of perceived healthcare discrimination. In study 2, these measures were re-administered along with measures of perceived personal control over healthcare and trust in the healthcare system. In study 1, the belief in a just world for self was associated with less perceived healthcare discrimination, especially when the belief in justice world for others was low. In study 2, this interactive pattern was replicated. Additionally, believing in justice for self was associated with stronger perceived personal control over healthcare, whereas beliefs about justice for others predicted greater trust in the healthcare system. Justice beliefs may be linked to healthcare experiences in complex ways among African Americans, including through both independent and interactive associations with beliefs about justice for self and others.
This study examines the relationship between encounters with the criminal justice system and psychological well-being in a large U.S. sample. This project builds upon previous research about the negative outcomes tied to such encounters by examining potential long term negative effects on people’s subjective well-being and sense of meaning and purpose in life. Panel study participants indicated their lifetime exposure to the criminal justice system, and then, about two years later, indicated their current subjective well-being and sense of meaning and purpose in life. Our findings reveal that the number of past police arrests is associated with reductions in well-being, with the first arrest showing the strongest effect. When controlling for number of previous arrests, no other aspect of exposure to the criminal justice system (e.g., the presence of a criminal conviction, amount of time spent detained) was significantly related to well-being. Race and gender predict encounters with the criminal justice system, but the relation to well-being remains consistent across demographics. Given the importance of meaning and life purpose as a protective factor against trauma and stress, it is vital to understand how first encounters with the criminal justice system, in particular, are related to people’s sense of purpose and meaning.
Poverty lowers physical and psychological wellbeing. Yet, as economic inequality has grown in the United States, a minority of Americans list it among their top concerns. To understand the psychological underpinnings of this paradox, this study surveyed U.S. young adults (N = 184, Mage = 19.43) about their beliefs around social mobility, attributions of individual sources to wealth, and perceptions of U.S. wealth and wage inequalities. We were particularly interested in the difference between what participants believed were the actual levels of economic inequality and what their ideal levels were–their perceived-ideal disparity. Results revealed that the association between attributions of wealth to individual sources and their perceived-ideal disparity was mediated by perceptions of societal mobility. These findings help to explain attitudes that contribute to perpetuating wealth inequalities.
Public awareness of the environmental impacts of food systems and their implications for people’s lives is growing in many countries. There is also an increasing recognition of the links between sustainability and social justice goals. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between perceptions of social justice and sustainable consumption in the context of food. The study employed Rawls’s theory of social justice and was based on a survey conducted in Italy with a representative sample of 2000 respondents. The analysis encompassed indicators of sustainable consumption, political orientation, and attitude toward a sustainable lifestyle. The findings confirmed that in Italy, the sense of social justice is mainly inspired by the maximin principle, which drives toward sustainability depending on political orientation and the motivation for lifestyle change. The principle of egalitarianism seems to be the least effective in concretely supporting sustainable consumption, whereas utilitarianism has the potential to facilitate sustainability-related practices when based on personal motivations. This study contributes to advancing knowledge on the relationship between sustainable food consumption and the sense of social justice, which is a crucial condition for societal contexts that support the idea of affordable, sustainable options for all consumers.
People are motivated to believe that the world is just and often affirm this belief even in extreme situations through immanent justice reasoning (IJR) and secondary victimization behavior, especially when this supports their belief in a just world (BJW). We investigated this phenomenon by presenting participants with a scenario involving a car accident victim who either affirmed or threatened BJW. In Study 1 (N = 106), participants were randomly assigned to a condition in which a male victim's past behavior either affirmed or threatened the BJW. Results showed that participants who endorsed individual differences in BJW more strongly reported more IJR and secondary victimization attitudes in the BJW-affirming condition than in the BJW-threatening condition. In Study 2 (N = 158), we presented that the victim was a woman, which allowed us to replicate the findings from Study 1 for participants with lower hostile sexism. However, participants with higher hostile sexism who endorsed individual differences in BJW more strongly responded with more IJR and secondary victimization in the BJW-threatening condition than in the BJW-affirming condition. These findings extend the understanding of justice motives and show how BJW interacts with ideological attitudes such as sexism to shape responses to victimization.
We critically examine the politicization of international student mobility (ISM) during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on Israel, China, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Applying Vicki Squire’s framework of the politics of control and migration, we reveal how the pandemic intensified existing political tensions and inequalities, challenging depoliticized narratives of ISM. The study demonstrates how crises magnify societal organizing principles and embed mobility policies within broader struggles over national identity, economic priorities, and geopolitical strategies. In Israel, selective border reopening exposed tensions between religious and secular interests, with lobbying efforts shaping mobility outcomes. China’s intensified regulation of ISM highlighted the state’s efforts to leverage mobility as a tool for soft power, narrative control, and geopolitical positioning. In the UAE, private universities adapted by targeting ‘permanently temporary’ expatriates with tuition incentives, revealing systemic inequities within its dual-track higher education system. Our analysis underscores ISM as a dynamic and contested field shaped by the interplay of state power, institutional strategies, and individual agency. We highlight the co-constitutive relationship between control and migration politics, demonstrating how mobility evolves across governance systems and through negotiation and resistance. These findings offer critical insights into ISM’s role as a site of political contestation and its implications for equity, access, and social justice.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented global disruption to education systems, exposing and deepening pre-existing structural inequalities. This special issue of Social Justice Research (SJR), titled (Re)Shaping Educational Justice in the Post-COVID-19 Era, critically explores how the pandemic has reshaped normative debates and empirical realities concerning educational justice. Grounded in theories of distributive justice, the introduction conceptualizes education as a complex distributive sphere encompassing four interrelated domains: access to education, pedagogical practices, assessment and grading, and teacher–student relationships. Drawing on diverse international case studies, the special issue examines how these domains—framed as “distributive arenas”—were reconfigured during the COVID-19 crisis, catalyzing new justice claims and practices. While the pandemic exacerbated existing educational disparities, it simultaneously created openings for ethical reflection, pedagogical innovation, and redistributive action. By situating the seven contributions of the special issue within broader scholarly and policy discourses, the introduction calls for a justice-oriented reimagining of education—one that is more equitable, inclusive, and attuned to the diverse needs of learners. It concludes by urging future research to move beyond conventional distributive frameworks to engage with educational structural, cultural, and epistemic dimensions of injustice in an increasingly volatile and unequal world.
Due to its commodification policies, the Chilean educational system is a paradigmatic case for study. It comprises private subsidies, achievement incentives, competition, selection, and segregation. After years of student and social protests, the 2015 Inclusion Law mandated that publicly funded schools accept all admitted students. Critics argue this restricts family choice and undermines merit. The COVID-19 pandemic further deepened inequalities, exposing contradictions in a merit-based system. This article examines how meritocratic ideals emerged post-pandemic in parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of school communities within a neoliberal educational model promoting meritocratic values alongside inclusive policies. Based on 32 interviews with parents and teachers from two private and two publicly funded schools in Santiago, findings show meritocracy is deeply entrenched, even in public education. The “meritorious student” is defined beyond academics, encompassing behavior, responsibility, and respect—traits also expected of families. The importance of effort as a mechanism for improvement permeates the notion of the “good student”, thereby overshadowing the importance of inclusive educational environments, as merit also becomes relativised by the post-pandemic scenario. The deep educational inequalities and behavioural problems force teachers and parents to focus on and solve different aspects rather than academic achievements. Merit, as understood by educational communities, is perceived as a process and an attitude intertwined with social opportunities.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the February 6, 2023 Earthquake in Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye have posed significant challenges to pre-service teacher education. The swift transition from face-to-face to remote teaching has led to social injustices, while students and pre-service teachers affected by the earthquake have had to adapt to new environments, including practicum schools. This case study, therefore, explores pre-service teachers’ sense of injustices in the aftermath of these crises and the resolutions that they implement to address these challenges. Participants include six pre-service teachers attending their practicum in the aftermath of the earthquake. Data come from retrospective interviews, journals, and social justice-oriented lesson plans. The analysis, carried out through coding, identified themes such as pre-service teachers' perception of injustice, responsive teaching practices, and reflections on these practices in the post-disaster term. In findings, each theme underscores the relationship between social and educational injustices, and professional responsibility and agency, providing a comprehensive understanding of PSTs’ roles in addressing injustices. PSTs reported a transition from viewing teaching merely as content delivery to recognising it as a dynamic interaction that addresses students’ emotional and social needs. PSTs’ responsive practices illustrate that SJTEP can serve as a tool for fostering awareness and advocacy for both social and educational injustices. Implications are shared to empower teacher education policies for promoting SJTEP in practicum.
