Distributive Justice

Definition

Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of one's outcomes. When a reward is allocated or a decision is made, people often make a judgment whether or not the outcome was fair. This judgment is referred to as a distributive justice judgment because it has traditionally been an assessment of how resources are distributed, or allocated, to individuals. Scholars have sought to understand both how these judgments are made and, once formed, what the consequences of such judgments are. Distributive justice has received considerable interest in a variety of different academic disciplines including psychology, philosophy, business, and law.

Theoretical History and Background

The notion of justice is a topic that has interested scholars, philosophers, and psychologists for a long time. Great thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates were some of the first to ponder this question of justice. Within the social sciences, the past halfcentury has witnessed considerable attempts to better understand justice. While philosophers speak of justice as an objective truth about what is fair, scholars in the social sciences seek to understand what individuals perceive to be fair. Thus, when psychologists speak of distributive justice, they are concerned with what individuals perceive to be fair as opposed to a logic-based, philosophical argument for whether something is indeed fair or not.

The initial study of distributive justice within psychology began in the late 1940s. The pioneering research involved studying members of the U.S. army during World War II. In examining survey data collected from the troops, an interesting finding emerged. Soldiers' attitudes were influenced more not by objective outcomes received but rather by the relative level of their outcomes compared to others in their unit. Indeed, members of Air Corps had less favorable perceptions about promotion opportunities compared to other units' members despite the fact that they had a much higher chance of being promoted than did members of those other units. After examining the results more closely, it became clear that Air Corps individuals compared themselves to other members of their unit as opposed to individuals in other units with lower promotion rates. Thus, relative deprivation theory was born, the notion that outcomes are not satisfying or unsatisfying in and of themselves but rather the comparison of one's own outcomes to others' outcomes is what matters most.

In the early 1960s, some scholars moved forward with the importance of comparing one's own treatment to that of others' treatment in determining whether outcomes are distributed fairly. A perspective emerged that suggested that, over time, individuals develop expectations in their relationships with others. These expectations are based on the idea that an individual's costs should be proportional to their rewards. People are keenly aware of whether they are putting more into a relationship then they are getting out of it. When individuals feel as if they put more into an exchange relationship than they get out of it, they tend to have negative reactions. A key point is that not all people will perceived distributive (in)justice the same way, because people have different referents (other people individuals compare themselves to) for determining whether there is an imbalance in the relationship.

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