Commonsense Morality Across Cultures: Notions of Fairness, Justice, Honor and Equity

Abstract

Two college-age samples, one from the United States (Washington, DC) and one from Spain (Madrid), were studied with mixed methods, phenomenological (with qualitative analyses) and traditional experimental (with quantitative analyses) - regarding the alleged foundational topic of `unfairness'. Participants gave their instantiations of `It's not fair!' (`No es justo'), which were deconstructed and qualitatively analyzed to find and compare the essential types of unfairness. Using traditional experimental methods, unfairness vignettes were rated by severity and quantitatively analyzed, to see whether the two cultural groups make similar or different distinctions among the concepts of `unfairness', `injustice' and `misfortune'. From qualitative analyses, the fairness principles of `equity' and `equality' appeared in both groups, but `honor and dignity' violations were much more frequent in the Spanish group, as different fairness principles interacted in complex ways. From the quantitative analyses, `unfairness' was the broadest of the three concepts, extending beyond `injustice' and both cultural groups viewed `misfortunes' as `unfairnesses'. Implications for a commonsense morality across cultures are discussed.