Injustice Without Evidence: The Unique Role of Conspiracy Theories in Social Justice Research

Conspiracy theories are widespread and have a profound impact on society. The present contribution proposes that conspiracy theories are explanatory narratives that necessarily contain justice judgments, as they include attributions of blame and accusations of unethical or criminal conduct. Conspiratorial narratives also are mental simulations, however, and may elicit genuine feelings of injustice also without evidence of actual malpractice. Indeed, conspiracy theories sometimes describe unfair events that are unlikely to have occurred, unethical authorities that might not actually exist, and so on. Here I propose two complementary processes that stimulate belief in evidence-free conspiracy theories: (1) Existential threats instigate biased mental processing and motivated reasoning, that jointly promote an alternative perception of reality; and (2) group allegiances shape how people perceive, interpret, and remember facts to highlight the immoral qualities of competing outgroups. Due to these processes, conspiracy theories elicit a set of distinct reactions such as poor health choices and rejection of science. Moreover, evidence-free conspiracy theories require interventions beyond traditional approaches to install justice principles, such as debunking falsehoods and reducing polarized intergroup distinctions. I conclude that the scientific study of conspiracy theories is part of, and has a unique place in, social justice research.

Procedural Justice Concerns and Technologically Mediated Interactions with Legal Authorities

The use of surveillance technologies by legal authorities has intensified in recent years. As new data collection technologies expand into law enforcement spaces previously dominated by interpersonal interactions, questions emerge about whether the public will evaluate interpersonal and technologically mediated interactions with legal authorities in the same ways. In an analysis guided by procedural justice theory, we examine whether and how legal authorities’ use of decision-making technology affects public evaluations of an authority-subordinate interaction and its outcome in the context of airport border crossings. Using an experimental vignette design (N = 278), we varied whether an encounter between a traveller and border security “agent” that produced a secondary search was described as interpersonal (conducted by a human agent) or technologically mediated (conducted by a machine agent). We also varied the traveller’s group membership relative to the nation-state, describing the traveller as either born in the country in question and a member of the nation’s most common racial group (in-group) or not born in the country and a racial minority (out-group). Both encounter type and group membership independently affected perceptions of the interaction (procedural justice judgements) and its outcome (distributive justice judgments). Technologically mediated encounters improved perceptions of procedural and distributive justice. Further, procedural justice judgments mediated the relationship between encounter type and distributive justice, demonstrating how perceptions of interactions influence perceptions of the outcomes of those interactions. Out-group members were evaluated as having worse experiences across all measures. The findings underscore the importance of extending tests of procedural justice theory beyond interpersonal interactions to technologically mediated interactions.

The Effects of Justice Judgments on Police Legitimacy Across Urban Neighborhoods: A Test of the Invariance Thesis

The invariance thesis posits that the effects of procedural justice judgments on police legitimacy beliefs are consistent across a variety of contexts, including urban neighborhoods. An alternative argument, one steeped in the relational model of authority, holds that procedural justice effects are weaker in high-crime communities where residents do not identify with the police and where they place more weight on instrumental concerns. This study used survey data from 1,000 adults in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The regression models showed that the association between procedural justice and police legitimacy was stronger in low-risk neighborhoods. In high-risk areas, distributive justice was a stronger correlate of legitimacy. Overall, the findings highlight how neighborhood context can moderate the influence of fairness judgments on supportive beliefs.

‘External’ Case Law as a Source of Inspiration for the Court of Justice of the European Union

Whilst the other contributions to this book focus on the extent to which the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is taken into account in EU neighbouring countries, notably by the national courts of these countries, this chapter deals with the reverse situation; that is, the extent to which the CJEU pays attention to the case law of both international courts and national courts of third countries. This is done mainly by looking at explicit references to such extraneous sources to be found in CJEU judgments and orders. The main focus is on the case law of the Court of Justice, but some information is also provided concerning the case law of the General Court. In the context of references to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law contained in Court of Justice judgments, some examples are also given of references to CJEU judgments which can be found in the case law of the Human Rights Court.

Demeanor and police culture

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to revisit classic theoretical arguments regarding the broad effects of civilian demeanor on policing and extend associated findings. Design/methodology/approach The theoretical framework draws on insights from the literatures on police culture, the group engagement model and fairness heuristic theory. The authors argue that demeanor is best conceptualized as the degree of procedural justice exhibited by civilians toward police. Theoretically, procedurally just cooperation should influence officers’ adherence to police culture by affecting their social identification and assessments of civilians’ motives and moral deservingness. To test the hypotheses, the authors surveyed sworn officers from a large metropolitan police department in the southeastern USA in the Fall of 2016. Findings Results reveal that officers use their procedural justice judgments as heuristics to assess civilians’ trustworthiness, dangerousness, and moral deservingness, and these judgments influence their policing style. Officers who perceive greater procedurally just cooperation by civilians feel less threatened by the public, are more willing to use procedural justice themselves, and are less supportive of a “tough cop” policing style. Originality/value The authors propose that: civilian demeanor is best conceptualized as the extent to which civilians exhibit procedural fairness toward the police; and in order for meaningful police reform to occur, it is important to acknowledge the role of civilian demeanor in shaping officers’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

Dehumanization Effects on Agency Attributions, Retributive Justice judgments, and Resocialization Attitudes towards Former Perpetrators in Post-conflict

Previous research has evidenced the effects of dehumanization on observers’ attributions, social categorizations, and retributive judgments, towards different kinds of perpetrators. Colombia is currently facing a peace process with the FARC, the largest guerrilla force in the country, and this post-war context becomes ideal for studying these effects. The current study evaluated the effects of a media dehumanizing discourse towards former perpetrators on observers’ agency attributions, retributive judgments, and resocialization attitudes towards them. Each participant read two different web news articles about the capture of a FARC member which were manipulated to be framed in humanizing and dehumanizing speech respectively. Then, they answered an agency attribution scale, retributive justice and resocialization attitudes measures, and a social distance scale about the news’ main character. Results show that when FARC members were framed in a dehumanizing context, observers significantly attributed them less agency, endorsed more severe retributive judgments, showed more negative attitudes towards their resocialization, and showed greater social distance. The implications of these findings for a Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reincorporation (DDR) process in a post-conflict scenario are discussed.

Justice and Immigration: The Effect of Moral Exclusion

Numerous media news items suggest on a daily basis that people tend to use harsher criteria when they judge immigrants than members of their own in-group. In the present research project, we were interested in studying individual justice judgments of a violation of a law by an Italian (in-group) or an immigrant (out-group) member and the influence of moral exclusion processes on the assessment. In particular, we examined whether those people who tend to exclude out-groups from their scope of justice will give such biased judgments and will adopt double standards, while inclusive people will not. A total of 255 people evaluated the seriousness of a crime in two different law-breaking scenarios in which the offender’s and the victim’s nationalities were systematically changed (either Italian or Romanian). Moreover, participants completed a scale measuring the moral inclusion/exclusion of other social groups. As hypothesized, participants who tended to exclude some groups from their moral community judged the Romanian more harshly than the Italian culprit. On the contrary, those people that tended to have a more inclusive moral community did not show any difference in evaluation. In conclusion, the present research highlights the importance of considering the effect of moral inclusion/exclusion processes on the evaluation of justice events, especially in an intergroup context.