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.
Published Version
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