Why the Powerful Remain Powerful in a Not-So-Just World: The Effects of Power and Justice Beliefs on Responses to Distributive Injustice

Abstract

Research suggests that, compared with low-power counterparts, individuals who are afforded power (control over valued resources) exhibit more goal directed and action-oriented behaviour in the face of adversity (Anderson, & Berdahl, 2002). Theoretically, given a power threatening situation in which valued resources are distributed unfairly by other powerful individuals, high-power individuals subjected to the situation will display more action-oriented behaviour. Such a situation also calls into question an individual’s beliefs about justice; research indicates that those who attribute justice in the world to God, nature or others (as opposed to oneself or chance) are more likely to exhibit action-oriented behaviour (Stroebe, Postmes, Täuber, Stegeman, & John, 2015). The current study hypothesized that, given a distributive injustice, high power individuals would be more likely to exhibit action-oriented behaviour than low-power individuals, particularly when they believed that others, God or nature were the ultimate sources of justice. Using a majority-student sample (n = 87), power was manipulated through a previously used recall task (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003), beliefs about the source of justice were measured using the Belief in a Just Treatment Scale (BJT-5; Stroebe et al., 2015), a hypothetical distributive injustice scenario was given (involving the unfair distribution of grades) and the main outcome was assessed using a tailored measure of revenge and compensation requesting behaviours. To test for the main effects of power and the moderating effects of justice beliefs, regression analyses were conducted but yielded no significant results. As such, the discussion covers possible improvements for future research in the area, including the use of a larger sample size or alterations to the current measures used.