The Effect Of Construal Level On Justice Judgments: The Moderating Role Of Justice Sensitivity

Construal level which depend on psychological distance, can affect cognition, such as judgement, evaluation etc. Some surveys found that construal level can affect moral judgement, which contains justice judgement. Based on it, this article will discuss the influence of construal level on justice judgement, and the moderation effect of justice sensitivity.Study 1 which use the scenario method, is single factor design (contain two levels). This study which contains 4 experiments, discusses the effect of construal level (manipulated by temporal distance) on justice judgement. Experiment la (114 participants) and 1b (93 participants) are unfair scenario, while experiment lc (107 participants) and 1d (91 participants) are fair scenario. The result show that, in unfair scenario (experiment la and lb), high construal level participants’ justice judgement index (low to high means unequal to equal) are significantly lower than low construal level participants. While in fair scenario, high construal level participants’ justice judgement index are significantly higher than low construal level participants. Therefore, the 4 experiments reflect that, high construal level participants’ justice judgement are more serious, when evaluate unfair affair, they judge it more inequitable, while evaluate fair affair, they judge it more equitable.Study 2 discuss the moderation effect of justice sensitivity when construal level affect justice judgement. This study which use scenario method, is two factor mixed design (construal level is between-subject factor, justice sensitivity is within-subject factor), containing two experiments. Experiment 2a (105 participants) and 2b (94 participants) both showed that, justice sensitivity has significant moderation effect in the mechanism that construal level (manipulated by temporal distance) affect justice judgement. And the higher the justice sensitivity is, the lower the influence of construal level is.Study 3 and study 4 are the same with study 2, which are two factor mixed design, and all are discussing the moderation effect of justice sensitivity when construal level affect justice judgement. While, the construal level in study 3 is manipulated by spatial distance, the construal level in study 4 is manipulated by social distance.In study 3, the two experiments, experiment 3a (108 participants) and experiment 3b (93 participants), showed that high construal level participants (manipulated by spatial distance) judge the unfair affair more inequitable than low construal level participants. Besides it, the result showed that, justice sensitivity has the significant moderation effect when construal level affect justice judgement. And it will decrease the influence of construal level when degree of justice sensitivity increases.In study 4, experiment 4a (107 participants) and 4b (96 participants) also found that, construal level (manipulated by social distance) can affect justice judgement as well, high construal level participants judge the unfair affair more inequitable. As well as study 2 and study 3, this study found that justice sensitivity significantly moderated the effect of construal level on justice judgement, and the higher the justice sensitivity is, the lower the influence of construal level is.