6 - How People Assess Deservingness and Justice: The Role of Social Norms

Summary

The main function of presenting the evidence for the personal contract theory of justice imperatives and then critically examining the relevant self-interest literature was to set the stage for a theoretical model that attempts to describe how justice and self-interest appear in the normal course of people's lives and influence their reactions to critical events. Before embarking on that it is important to bring some clarity to the essentially important matter of how people assess who deserves what from whom. What rules and standards underlie or are revealed in their judgments of deservingness and justice?

Considerable research, as described in the preceding text, supports the hypothesis that people automatically seek out and respond to familiar cues that define who is entitled to what from whom as the primary and initial task in each encounter. The what in this context refers to forms of treatment and ways of interacting as well as to concrete and symbolic outcomes. As discussed in Chapter 5, interpersonal considerations and respect also represent resources that may be allocated (Clayton and Opotow, 2003). Unless and until modified by subsequent events, the automatically generated definition of the encounter provides the basis for what transpires. Having committed themselves to maintaining their personal contracts, people will naturally experience imperatives to comply with the preconsciously and consciously held rules that provide the structure and more or less specific guidelines for their daily activities. But what do we know of these rules?