Immanent Justice Reasoning by Spatial Proximity

Bibliographic Data

ID21209272
AuthorsMitchell J Callan (0000-0002-6737-8281, University of Bath, corresponding author), Joshua Moreton (0000-0003-2759-0488, University of Essex), Gethin Hughes (0000-0003-1518-9160, University of Essex)
Year2021
Volume12
Issue1
Pages25-33
Publication date2021-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Psychological and Personality Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1948-5506 • E-ISSN: 1948-5514
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1948550619893969
OpenAlexW2995026320
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited23

Immanent justice reasoning involves causally attributing someone’s bad outcome to their prior immoral actions. Building on the idea that causality is mentally linked with spatial proximity, we investigated whether such reasoning might lead participants to spatially bind together immoral actions and bad outcomes. Across four experiments ( N = 553, Mechanical Turk workers), participants positioned sentences describing other people’s bad (vs. good) outcomes closer in space to previous immoral behaviors. This effect was observed both when the position of the initial action remained in a fixed location and when it “chased” the outcome across the screen. Importantly, we also found that this spatial positioning of immoral actions and bad outcomes is mediated by perceived deservingness of the outcome and is not merely due to perceived similarity of events. These findings suggest that perceived deservingness biases the spatial proximity of representations of others’ random bad outcomes and their prior immoral actions

Causal reasoning · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Economic Justice · Cultural Differences and Values · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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