In The Republic, Emerson wrote, “One man’s justice is another’s injustice”, a dictum that pervades discussions of conflict. Indeed, perceptions of justice and fairness are subjective and exist in the eye of the beholder. As such, the vast majority of research in the justice literature has focused on understanding the perception and promotion of fairness. However, as a consequence of this subjectivity, regardless of how objectively “fair” a decision is, feelings of injustice and unfairness are unavoidable and ubiquitous in group and organizational contexts.
Despite the inevitability of injustice, surprisingly few theoretical developments in the field have focused specifically on restoring justice after a perceived wrongdoing, particularly from the victim’s perspective. My research addresses this need for theoretically grounded research on victimization and justice restoration. Specifically, my work focuses on the social psychological concerns underpinning an individual’s feelings of threat, injustice, and outrage. Under what conditions are the deviant attitudes and behaviors of others threatening to an individual’s sense of self and identity, and when do those threats elicit feelings of injustice, indignation, and/or a desire for some sanctioning response? Considering how deviance affects one’s self-concept is critical for understanding the experience of injustice, as well as how to repair it.
Due to the inherent difficulty of studying the experience of victimization, the majority of psychological research on injustice focuses on third-party observers and administrators while often discounting the perspective of the victim. To address this gap in the literature, my research has developed a broad and inclusive theoretical framework for understanding feelings of injustice following victimization. What underlies a victim’s desire to seek justice, and what is the meaning of “justice” to that victim? In my work I assert that there are two symbolic threats that are fundamental to the experience of injustice: feelings of diminished status and power, and concern over the perceived violation of shared values (Okimoto & Wenzel, 2008; Wenzel, Okimoto, Feather, & Platow, 2008). Any offense has the potential to elicit uncertainty over both status/power and shared values, and justice is not restored in the eyes of victims until their salient psychological insecurities have been addressed. Furthermore, the relative salience or importance of addressing these two concerns depends on the victim’s oppositional versus shared identity with the offender. My continuing work at the intersection of injustice and identity attempts to better understand these psychological concerns as they exist at the interpersonal-level (between the victim and offender), the intragroup-level (between the victim and the group in which the injustice occurred), and/or the intergroup-level (between different social groups). I am continuing to develop this program of research to examine these justice-restoring motives as they differ between parties (e.g., victims, observers, administrators) and as they change over time (see forthcoming chapter by Okimoto, Wenzel, & Platow, 2010).
My work on the psychological concerns that incite feelings of injustice is important because it reveals novel and important implications for conflict management in social, organizational, and legal contexts. Specifically, my research delineates when and why various justice-restoring interventions are able to speak to the psychological needs of victims and observers. My current and continuing investigations have explored the psychological concerns underlying reactions to and preferences for punishment, revenge, compensation, apologies, forgiveness, and restorative justice conferencing. Restorative justice conferencing is an alternative approach to restoring justice that has received recent attention for its success with juvenile criminal behavior, school bullying, and as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. In contrast to traditional, punitive approaches to justice, restorative justice emphasizes bilateral discussion in an attempt to reach a consensus about the meaning of the offense. My research on restorative justice represents the first attempt in both social psychology and organizational behavior to understand and systematically test for key antecedents and consequences of restorative justice, both in the application of restorative conferencing and attitudes regarding restorative justice as a moral philosophy (Okimoto, Wenzel & Feather, 2008, under review; Wenzel, Okimoto, Feather, & Platow, in press).
My theoretical approach to understanding injustice has also revealed a number of assumptions commonly made by both researchers and practitioners when providing prescriptive guidelines for managing conflict. These assumptions fuel misconceptions stemming from prevailing beliefs about what victims want following injustice. This is important because these misconceptions may lead decision-makers to rely on interventions that are inadequate for speaking to injustice victims’ most pressing concerns. For example, my dissertation research challenges the assumption that material concerns underlie favorable reactions to the provision of monetary compensation as an administrative response to injustice. Rather, I show that reparations from group authority figures are satisfactory to victims partly because compensation addresses injustice victims’ concern over their intragroup status (Okimoto, 2008). Other work shows that a victim’s desire for punishment is also partly motivated by intragroup status concerns (Okimoto & Wenzel, under review), an underlying psychological motive that represents a breakthrough in the understanding of punishment. Finally, my research on interpersonal and intergroup forgiveness also presents a fresh perspective to the literature, conceptualizing forgiveness not as a sentiment as it is typically understood, but as an act itself that has psychological consequences for the forgiver (Wenzel & Okimoto, in press).
Notably, deviant acts do not always violate formalized rules of behavior and are not always deemed “unjust”. Regardless, even minor deviations from normative expectations can elicit negative reactions. The final theme in my research examines affective reactions to deviance more broadly. Much of my ongoing research in this area examines how deviations from stereotype-based expectations can elicit evaluative bias. For example, gender stereotypes shape expectations of women as being warm and nurturing, but not dominant and assertive. My research shows that in absence of disconfirming evidence, the content of these stereotypes leads people to assume a woman is deficient in the attributes necessary for success in masculine domains such as management or politics, particularly when she is prototypical of her gender category (Heilman & Okimoto, 2008). However, stereotypical expectations also function as prescriptive norms to be fulfilled. Thus, in light of evidence that a woman’s behavior deviates from those stereotypical expectations, she is disliked and deemed interpersonally offensive (Heilman & Okimoto, 2007; Okimoto & Brescoll, under review). I am also interested in the attitudes and behavior of the deviant individuals themselves. For example, my recent research has investigated how an individual’s perceived prototypicality in a group affects engagement in that group. This research suggests that feeling different from other group members heightens belongingness concerns which may serve as motivation for individual task effort in group contexts (Okimoto & Wrzesniewski, under review).
Taken as a whole, my research strives for a better theoretical understanding of the psychological experience of injustice, and deviance more broadly. Advancing our knowledge of how injustice threatens an individual’s sense of self and identity is crucial for identifying the actions necessary to alleviate the psychological concerns that underpin injustice.