Justice, Fairness, and Moral Development: Differences in the Generation of Exemplars

Abstract

Fairness and justice are often used interchangeably in socio-legal research. The goal of this study was to use 157 student-produced examples of either "injustice" or "unfairness" to determine whether differences exist in the content of the stories, and by extension, the definitions of these terms, and on participants' scores on modified versions of Kohlberg and Gilligan's levels of moral development. As hypothesized, the two terms were related, yet significantly different, with "unfairness" stories highlighting violations of equality, and "injustice" stories highlighting legal interactions and violations of equity. Sex differences were also found such that females were more likely to write stories rated high on unfairness and therefore equality, but no sex differences were found in level of moral reasoning reached by this sample. Future research is aimed at developing theory to explain differences, including the possible innate nature of "fairness" and environmental requirements leading to a concept of "justice".