Just-World Reasoning in Children's Immanent Justice Judgments

Abstract

The present study investigated the belief by Piaget that immanent justice responses occur when fairness judgments override conceptions of physical causality in young (6-8 years) children's understanding of a certain type of story. The structure of Piaget's stimulus stories was analyzed, and they were found to involve 3 narrative elements: motive valence, outcome valence, and causal connection. These 3 factors were crossed to create 8 types of stories, one of which (e.g., a character with a bad motive receives a negative outcome which is noncausally related to the previous motive) was the type used by Piaget. It was predicted that 2 types of stories would yield immanent justice responses: good motive/positive outcome/noncausal and bad motive/negative outcome/noncausal. Subjects received 4 stories and answered the Piagetian immanent justice questions and rated outcome fairness. Subjects were 48 each of children in grades 1, 3, and 5 and 38 college students. Results supported the prediction that children use the belief in a just world in immanent justice judgements.