Study On The Development Of The Concept Of Procedural Justice Among Children

As the development of the times, people's awareness of seeking freedom and sense of justice is gradually increased, the fairness of the process of events has caught the public's attention. Procedure justice means the justice existing in the method, mechanism and procedure that lead to the final result. In this study, according to our children's real life, we refer to the methods in moral psychology to explore and study the development of our children's concept of procedural justice. We hope to rich the empirical material in the area of children's procedural justice.In this study, we selected preschool and elementary school children as subjects. The questionnaire presented scenario reflecting procedural justice in children's real life. Experimenter narrated the story to each child who then was asked to make responses after every story in the side of cognitive, affective and behavioral tendency.Study 1 examined the early stage of our children's view of procedural justice. The results showed: Kindergarten and first grade children make different cognitive judgments on the injustice event. Subjects'understanding of procedural justice could be classified as five categories: peer-orientation, authority-orientation, equality-orientation, principle-orientation and others. First grade children's perception of procedural justice levels made greater progress than the preschool children. The age difference on the emotional experience to the protagonist is significant. Subjects'behavior intentions in procedural injustice situation could be classified as four categories: authority-orientation, equality-orientation, empathy-orientation, principle-orientation and others. The age difference on the categories is significant. In the second study, the elementary school children were selected as our subjects, and we add two variables of context and unjust type. The context includes school, family and society. One of the unjust types is about the principle, and the other is about the process. The results showed: (1) Elementary school children's cognitive attribution of procedural justice could be classified as seven categories: authority-orientation, equality-orientation, empathy-orientation, principle-orientation, self-orientation, and contradiction-orientation. In the different contexts and types, there is significant grade difference on the cognitive attribution. (2)Children's emotion attribution of the protagonist in the unjust event could be classified as three categories: result-orientation, process-orientation and empathy-orientation. In the different contexts and types, there is significant grade difference on the categories. (3) Subjects'behavior intentions in procedural injustice situation could be classified as five categories: authority-orientation, equality-orientation, empathy-orientation, principle-orientation and self-orientation. In the different contexts and types, the age difference on the categories is significant. (4) In every type of the three contexts, children's cognitive attribution, emotion attribution of protagonist jia and behavior intentions under the two unjust types showed a highly significant difference. For protagonist jia ,the correlation between unjust type and emotion attribution is extremely significant. In the context of family and society, children's emotion attribution of protagonist yi under the two unjust types showed a highly significant difference, in the context of society, the correlation between unjust type and emotion attribution is highly significant. In the school context, the correlation between unjust type and behavior intention is highly significant.