Justice vs. justification: Divergent responses among Whites to anti-Black injustice

The Universal Context of Fairness (UCF) is an accessible cultural frame for Whites that maintains the belief in fair opportunity and places the individual at the center of an explanatory framework. Three studies examined how variability in Whites' construal of fairness influences their cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses to racial injustice. Overall, it was predicted that placing a personal importance on fairness (UCF 2) would lead to justice-enhancing responses that promote minority rights and recompensatory policies; conversely, experiencing (UCF 1) and perceiving the U.S. as a fair place (UCF 3) would lead to justification responses that maintain the status quo and attenuates moral emotions and prosocial actions. In Study 1a and 1b, a conceptual model of White's responses to racial injustice was validated, suggesting that when primed with racial injustice the UCF predicts cognitive and emotional processes that either enhance (UCF 2) or diminish (UCF 3) prosocial behaviour. In Study 2, the generalizability of the model was assessed across various injustice contexts. Results suggest that UCF 2 is universally responsive to a generalized context of injustice whereas UCF 3 is specific to injustice contexts that implicate the in-group (Whites/Americans) as perpetrators. Utilizing an experimental approach, Study 3 found that priming Whites to be schematic on UCF 2 caused justice-enhancing responses, whereas priming Whites to be schematic on UCF 3 caused justification responses. In all three studies, the UCF was found to explain variance in the model beyond that of White in-group identity (Study 1b), Belief in a Just World (Study 2), System-Justifying Beliefs (Study 2), and Political ideology (Study 3), suggesting that the UCF is a unique construct that captures divergent tendencies among Whites.