Justice Without Borders

Abstract

The present research examines how psychological distance influences the weight given to individuating information about targets of justice judgments. Drawing on construal level theory, which links psychological distance to levels of construal, we hypothesize that increasing psychological distance from justice judgments reduces people’s sensitivity to specific features of targets, thereby minimizing the extent to which applications of justice are influenced by target-specific information. Psychological proximity, by contrast, enhances the salience of targets’ idiosyncratic characteristics, thereby leading to applications of justice that are more sensitive to targets’ identity. Six studies, examining various justice principles, support these conclusions. Studies 1 to 3 show that psychological distancing reduces the weight of target-specific features in justice judgments. Supporting the role of construal level in driving these results, Studies 4 to 6 demonstrate parallel patterns when construal level is manipulated directly. This work offers a novel outlook on the role of construal and target characteristics in moral exclusion.

Keywords

justice judgments moral exclusion psychological distance construal level

One of the, maybe the most, elementary of moral principles is that of universality, that is, if something’s right for me, it’s right for you; if it’s wrong for you, it’s wrong for me. Any moral code that is even worth looking at has that at its core somehow.

—Noam Chomsky

On the afternoon of August 22, 2010, a group of people gathered in Lower Manhattan at the intersection of West Broadway and Park Place to protest the construction of a new Islamic Community Center. Holding aloft signs saying, “No Clubhouse for Jihadists” and “Don’t Glorify Murders of 3,000,” they argued that building the center would be tantamount to “spitting on the graves of those killed in 9/11” given its proximity to the World Trade Center.

Allowing an Islamic religious center to be built near the site of the attacks could be construed as a point of pride for Americans as it would signal the continued vitality of just those principles of religious freedom and tolerance the attackers had targeted in the first place. However, the protestors’ sentiment, far from being disavowed by the American public, was echoed in the opinions of Americans nationwide, 68% of whom opposed the building project, according to a CNN (2010) poll. At the same time, however, another poll (Ethics and Public Policy, 2010, see in Barna & Barton, 2014) revealed a striking ambivalence in the attitudes of the American people: 95% of the respondents agreed with the statement, “One of the main reasons America was founded was to enable people of all faiths to have the freedom to believe and practice whatever religion they choose.”

These statistics reveal a pervasive and well-documented tension in people’s moral cognition. In the abstract, people often agree with the notion that principles of justice should be universally applied, regardless of the personal attributes of their recipients. At the same time, however, once faced with the complex realities in which justice judgments occur, people tend to be influenced by just these personal attributes, calculating their administration of justice on the basis of recipients’ idiosyncratic characteristics, including race, gender, ethnicity, and perceived deservingness.

In this article, we explore the conditions under which target-specific features are more or less likely to influence people’s administration of justice. We propose that the weight given to the characteristics of moral targets will be moderated by psychological distance and corresponding levels of mental construal. Building on a well-documented relationship between psychological distance and construal level (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010), we argue that psychological distance (and the ensuing high-level construal) from a justice situation sensitizes people to the justice principle being applied, thereby leading to a more consistent application of justice across targets. By contrast, psychological proximity (and the resulting low-level construal) sensitizes people to individuating information about targets, thereby leading to an application of justice driven by target-specific features. In the next sections, we present the rationale leading to these propositions and explore research on which they are built.

How Target Characteristics Influence Justice Decisions

While traditional theories conceive of justice as a universal right (Kant, 1785/1981; Kohlberg, 1969, 1981; Van Bavel, Packer, Haas, & Cunningham, 2012), research in psychology has long noted that, in practice, people tend to place limits on their “scope of justice”—defined as the social domain within which people believe justice matters. “Moral values, rules and considerations of fairness apply only to those within this boundary” (Opotow, 1993). Several factors have been shown to influence people’s scope of justice. For instance, people tend to grant greater justice protection to ingroup members and close others in comparison with outgroup members or strangers (see Boeckmann & Tyler, 1997; Brockner, 1990; Hafer, Conway, Cheung, Malyk, & Olson, 2012; Loewenstein & Small, 2007; Wenzel, 2001). Relatedly, perceived interpersonal similarity leads to greater moral inclusion (Hafer & Olson, 2003). Furthermore, targets who are dehumanized (Bar-Tal, 1990), marginalized (Deutsch, 1990), seem threatening (Staub, 1990), or lack utility (Leets, 2001; Opotow, 1993) are less likely to be included in one’s scope of justice. Furthermore, situational factors such as the existence of intractable intergroup conflict can also exacerbate moral exclusion, particularly when outgroup members are dehumanized and seem unworthy of justice protection (see Bar-Tal, 1990; Bar-Tal & Teichman, 2005).

Although scope of justice research suggests that target-based disparities in the application of justice stem from moral exclusion (the notion that justice does not apply to targets outside of its scope), other research suggests that these seemingly exclusion decisions in fact reflect a valid moral calculus of deservingness (see Hafer & Olson, 2003). This line of work has cast a critical light on scope of justice research arguing that people may receive differential treatment not because they are excluded from the scope of justice but because they may seem less deserving to the full privileges of justice. Consider, for instance, the case at the beginning of this article of people denying religious liberties to Muslims seeking to build a mosque close to the 9/11 site. It is conceivable that those who restrict religious liberty from Muslims are not withholding justice from Muslims per se but are rather engaging in the direct application of it by assessing Muslims’ deservingness to pray in this specific site.

Importantly, what both scope of justice perspective (which posits that withholding justice from certain targets is typically rooted in moral exclusion) and the deservingness perspective (which posits that withholding justice from certain targets is typically rooted in judgments about their deservingness) have in common is that both agree that individuating information about justice targets tends to influence people’s justice judgments. Such individuating information regarding justice targets stands in contrast to the abstract and nonindividuating nature of justice principles. In the present work, we explore a novel psychological phenomenon that may modulate the extent to which people rely on individuating information regarding targets in the application of justice principles. Specifically, we suggest that one key feature that will determine how much people attend to specific features of the target is their psychological distance from the justice situation. While target-specific features will be more salient when people are psychologically proximal, these attributes will diminish in salience in favor of a more general consideration of justice principles when people become more psychologically distant. The reason for this prediction is rooted in construal level theory (CLT), which posits an inherent psychological association between psychological distance and mental abstraction.

Construal Level Theory

CLT (see Liberman & Trope, 2008, 2014; Trope & Liberman, 2010, for reviews) proposes that any event or object can be represented at different levels of construal. Low-level construals are concrete, relatively unstructured, and contextualized representations that include subordinate and incidental features of events. High-level construals are abstract, schematic, and decontextualized representations that extract the gist from the available information; they emphasize superordinate, core features of events, omitting specific features that may vary without significantly changing the meaning of events. For example, representing an object as a “communication device” as opposed to a “mobile phone” omits information about the object’s size but communicates information about its core features. Similarly, representing an action as “caring for the environment” as opposed to “putting a plastic bottle in the recycle bin” omits information about the objects involved in the action (the bottle, the bin) but communicates its core meaning.

People traverse psychological distance by using high-level construals because high-level construals are more likely than low-level ones to remain unchanged as one moves closer or farther away from an object (Amit & Greene, 2012; Bar-Anan, Liberman, & Trope, 2006). For example, the higher level goal of caring for the environment is more stable over time and space than the more concrete goal of putting a plastic bottle in a recycle bin: A plastic bottle may not feature in another situation in which we would be concerned about the environment. From a distant perspective, it is therefore more useful to represent the goal at a higher level. Consistent with this view, research has shown that framing the same action as distant rather than near leads people to represent it in terms of higher-level goals and values that convey its relatively invariant essence, rather than in terms of concrete, more incidental, and potentially changeable means (Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010; Maglio, Trope, & Liberman, 2013; Rim, Hansen, & Trope, 2013).

Similarly, research shows that distant objects are classified into fewer and broader categories, whereas near objects are classified into a relatively large number of narrow categories (Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002; Wakslak, Trope, Liberman, & Alony, 2006). Just like higher level goals, broader and more abstract categories are more likely to remain applicable across specific variations, and hence are conducive to traversing psychological distance (Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope, & Liberman, 2006).

Psychological Distance, Construal Level, and the Application of Justice

Applying the CLT typology to the domain of justice decision making, we propose that psychological distance and levels of mental construal provide different sensitivities to general justice principles versus the specific and individuating features of their recipients. Justice principles are by definition abstract and are often conceived as universal rules critical for distinguishing between good and bad (see Kohlberg, 1969, 1981; Van Bavel et al., 2012). As a result, they are effectively captured by high-level representations, and consequently, should be more likely to guide judgments when people are psychologically distant from the justice situation. Conversely, the features of the targets to which justice principles are applied are a part of the specific context in which justice operates, and thus constitute lower level information. As a result, we argue that target-specific features should become more salient in situations of psychological proximity. In other words, a person needs to first decide as to whether or not he or she believes in freedom of speech as a guiding justice principle before going about assessing the specific targets to which this principle would pertain.

Because of this basic difference between the higher level features of justice principles and the low-level features of their recipients, we suggest that justice rules are more likely to guide justice judgments in psychologically distant situations, and target-specific features are more likely to guide justice judgments in psychologically proximal situations. To be clear, we do not argue that the question of who gets to enjoy justice is an external consideration to justice judgments. Specific assessments of justice recipients are an important part of many justice principles. In fact, a criticism on scope of justice research argues that differential moral treatment to different people is not a dismissal of justice but rather a manifestation of the justice principle of deservingness: People are not equally deserving to be held by the same justice standards. Notwithstanding these arguments, in this work, we make the claim that justice can be thought of in terms of its general principle (i.e., people in democratic societies are entitled to free speech) or in terms of its specific recipients (i.e., Citizen K is entitled to free speech). We claim that the former is likely to occur under a higher mind-set, resulting in diminished influence of target-specific information in justice judgments.

Several lines of research in CLT and justice theory support this line of reasoning. First, as noted above, people categorize objects pertaining to temporally distant (vs. near) situations into broader, more inclusive categories (Liberman et al., 2002; Wakslak et al., 2006). We propose that the same process may be at work in the application of justice. Namely, temporal distance and higher level of construals may lead people to see targets typically subjected to differential moral treatment as belonging to a unified category.

Other research conducted within the CLT framework has found that social values, political ideology, and fairness concerns are more salient in distant situations or under a high-level construal mind-set. Eyal, Sagristano, Trope, Petrinan, and Chaiken (2009), for example, argue that due to their inherently abstract nature, moral values are more strongly activated when people are making judgments about psychologically distant (vs. proximal) situations. In line with this argument, they show that individuals’ behavioral intentions are more consistent with their values when the intentions pertain to temporally distant (vs. near) situations (Eyal et al., 2009). Similarly, Ledgerwood et al. (2010) find that a temporal distant perspective and a high-level mind-set enable people to disregard the opinions of incidental strangers and act more in line with their political ideology. In addition, research by Luguri, Napier, and Dovidio (2012) shows that a high-level mind-set leads political conservatives to display more positive emotions toward non-normative group members (i.e., racial and religious minorities, gays and lesbians) because under a higher level mind-set conservatives are more sensitive to issues of fairness.

The idea that abstract construal of justice is conducive to increased sensitivity to the justice principle itself in comparison with information about its recipients is also consistent with works on social justice. In his work on principles of distributive justice (which is widely defined as the allotment of society’s goods, duties, and privileges), Cohen (1987) distinguishes between what he terms “nonindividuating” and “differentiating” construals of justice rules. Nonindividuating construals of justice do not aim to distinguish between different recipients of justice and thus overlook specific information about them. Differentiating construals of justice, on the other hand, are focused in the recipients of justice, and thus are more sensitive to information that can better differentiate between justice targets. Cohen’s conceptualization dovetails with the main argument of this article: Like Cohen, we argue that justice judgments can be made with more or less sensitivity to information about their recipients. Moreover, we suggest that the more justice is perceived through deindividuating lens, the more it is likely to be applied equally and consistently across targets, regardless of available differentiating information about them. We expand on Cohen’s work by positing that the deindividuating outlook on justice is more likely to occur in psychologically distant situations, whereas differentiating outlook on justice is more likely to occur in psychologically proximal ones.

The notion that justice can be thought of in more concrete or abstract terms in ways that may affect its application is also central in the analysis of micro- and macro-level justice (Brickman, Folger, Goode, & Schul, 1981). In this analysis, Brickman builds the case that justice judgments can be influenced by both macro- and micro-level concerns. Micro-level justice concerns reflect, among others, the characteristics of the targets to whom justice is applied, whereas macro-level concerns focus on the substantive realization of a general justice principle. Building on this typology, we claim that high- (vs. low-) level construals of a justice situation will be more conducive to adopting a macro-level perspective.

Finally, work conducted by Wenzel (2001, 2004) suggests that not only justice principles, but also justice recipients may be flexibly construed in a way that affects justice judgments. Wenzel shows that the construal of justice recipients is affected by social identity and social categorization motivations. The more a sub-group of potential recipients appears similar (or prototypical) to the decision maker’s primary category of recipients, the more likely it is to receive full justice concerns. For example, in one study conducted on German participants, Wenzel demonstrated that the more participants categorized Turks (vs. Germans) as the prototypical Europeans, the more likely they were to grant Turkey European Union (EU) membership and privileges (Wenzel, 2001). The current research tests the possibility that not only social identity motives but also psychological distance can potentially affect justice judgments. In line with CLT research, we claim that psychological distance (and the resulting high-level mind-set) facilitates a less individuating and more inclusive construal of justice categories and thus promotes greater consistency of justice application across targets.

The Present Research

The current research examines the prediction that psychological distance reduces the weight assigned to target-specific features in justice judgments. In six studies, we observe the effect of psychological distance or of abstraction directly on participants’ willingness to apply a fundamental justice principle to targets with varying features (i.e., differences in group membership, similarity, status, and physical appearance). Studies 1 to 3 use a manipulation of psychological distance: Study 1 examines whether increasing temporal distance reduces discrepancies in justice judgments concerning several targets that vary in their closeness of the relationship with participants. Study 2 tests whether a social (rather than temporal) manipulation of distance increases consistency in making distribution decisions (i.e., pay cuts) among targets. Finally, Study 3 examines whether greater psychological distance increases not only evaluative consistency but also behavioral consistency in participants’ actual treatment of close (i.e., ingroup members) versus remote (i.e., competing group members) targets.

Studies 4 to 6 explore the role of level of construal in producing these effects. Study 4 replicates Study 1 with a construal level mind-set manipulation, exploring whether high-level construal mind-set increases consistency in the application of freedom of speech rights to a range of targets, regardless of their target-specific features. Study 5 uses a Trolley Problem paradigm to examine whether construal level moderates the weight given to idiosyncratic information about targets in moral dilemmas. Finally, Study 6 examines whether high-level construal mind-set reduces the impact of incidental, justice-neutral features of targets’ physical appearance.

Study 1

Study 1 seeks to establish the fundamental prediction of this article, namely that psychological distance moderates the weight given to idiosyncratic characteristics of various justice targets. In Study 1, we manipulated temporal distance from a fundamental justice principle of freedom of speech and asked participants to whom they believed this principle should apply. The list involved multiple targets ranging from oneself and one’s close others, to outsiders and terrorists. We tested whether heightened temporal distance increased consistency in the application of freedom of speech privileges across these different targets, regardless of their specific features.

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited to a study titled “Social Attitudes” from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. To be eligible for participation, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk workers had to have an IP address originating in the United States, had to complete at least 50 studies prior to this one, and had an approval rate of above 95%. Ninety-five participants (66 female, M age = 35.82, SD = 12.29) were recruited for the study for a payment of $0.25. Power analysis conducted using G*Power computer software (Erdfelder, Faul, & Buchner, 1996) indicated that this sample size was sufficient to capture small interaction effect sizes (f = .13) in this design (i.e., mixed-design ANOVA with seven repeated measures and two independent groups) with power of 95%.

Procedure

Participants were asked to imagine that the U.S. congress was going to vote on a legislation to further secure and extend the protection of the freedom of speech to adapt it to the Internet era and to recent technological developments. The legislation was described as due to take place either “tomorrow” or “a year from now.” Participants were then asked whom they wanted to include in the application of the law. Targets included, “Yourself,” “Your family,” “Your local community,” “U.S. citizens,” “People in the U. S. who are not citizens,” “People outside US,” and “People who have committed crimes against the U.S. (terrorists).” Participants’ responses were given on a scale of 1 (not at all to apply) to 7 (strongly apply).

Results and Discussion

Participants’ willingness to grant freedom of speech rights was submitted to a 2 (psychological distance) × 7 (target identity) mixed-design ANOVA. The results of this analysis are presented in Figure 1. Results indicated a main effect of target identity, F(6, 558) = 32.2, p < .001, η²p = .257 (f = .59). Not surprisingly, participants were more willing to grant freedom of speech privileges to targets closer to them, which included themselves, their family, their community members, and U.S. citizens, compared with remote targets, which included non-citizens (inside and outside the United States) and terrorists. There was no main effect of the psychological distance condition, F(1, 93) = 0.015, p = ns. However, the effect of target identity was qualified by a significant psychological distance-by-target identity interaction, F(6, 552) = 2.30, p = .034, η²p = .024 (f = .17). As seen in Figure 1, the tendency to apply freedom of speech only to close targets was less pronounced in the distant condition. In other words, psychological distance lowered the weight given to targets’ characteristics in driving justice judgments.

Figure 1.

Participants’ application of freedom of speech privileges to different targets as a function of psychological distance (Study 1).

Simple effects analysis showed that target identity significantly affected participants’ application of freedom of speech in the psychological near condition, F(6, 282) = 72.38, p < .001, η² = .61. Target identity remained significant in the psychological distal condition, F(6, 270) = 44.54, p < .001, η² = .49, but was significantly less pronounced. Pair-wise comparisons indicated that the psychological distance manipulation marginally affected the terrorists condition, t(92) = 1.77, p = .08, but did not significantly affect willingness to give freedom of speech rights to the rest of the targets—t(92) = 0.88, p = ns, for the self; t(92) = 0.8, p = ns, for one’s family; t(92) = 1.12, p = .26 for one’s local community; t(92) = 1.04, p = .30 for U.S. citizens; t(02) = 0.45, p = ns, to people in the United States who are not citizens; t(92) = 1.04, p = .30 to non-citizens. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that, as hypothesized, the impact of targets’ individuating features such as closeness to participants significantly weakened in the psychological distance condition. Although psychological distance did not completely erase the weight given to target information in the application of justice, it significantly attenuated it.

Study 2

Study 2 seeks to provide additional support for the main thesis of this article by using a different manipulation of psychological distance and a different type of justice principle. Study 2 examines how a manipulation of social distance affects judgments regarding the equity principle (or its violation). The study utilized a bogus New York Times article, which described an instance of payment discrimination between local and foreign workers who conducted the same job and yet were paid differently. This violation of the equity principle was described as taking place in Abu Dhabi (high social distance) or in the United States (low social distance). The study examined whether (and how) social distance influenced participants’ judgments of the incident. Our prediction was that in the socially remote condition, participants’ sensitivity to the identity of the targets (i.e., local vs. foreign workers) would diminish and thus participants would cast less discrepant judgments about discrimination against foreign versus local workers. In the socially near condition, we expected participants to be more affected by the targets’ features and thus to judge more harshly discrimination against local rather than foreign workers.

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to a study titled “Reading the News.” Terms of eligibility were identical to Study 1. Sixty-two participants (35 female, M age = 40.02, SD = 13.71) were recruited for the study for a payment of $0.25. Power analysis conducted using G*Power computer software (Erdfelder et al., 1996) indicated that this sample size is sufficient to capture interaction effect comparable in size with those found in Study 1 in this design (i.e., mixed-design ANOVA with two repeated measures and two independent groups) with power of 90%.

Procedure

Participants were given a bogus newspaper article that was graphically manipulated to appear like a New York Times article (see online supplement for the materials that were used). The article described a tech company (Sinergististics, Inc.) that was determined to make significant pay cuts. The company decided to cut by 50% the salaries of contract workers who were brought from India to work in the company’s headquarters. To emphasize the equity violation, the article brought a quote from a foreign contract worker who complained about being paid significantly less for conducting the same job as his local peers. To manipulate social distance, we described the company as operating in the United States versus Abu Dhabi, and thus the local workers as Americans or Abu Dhabians. The contract workers were described as originating from India in both conditions. It is worth noting that our goal was to test an identical instance of discrimination taking place in different societies; however, because we indeed used different societies, spatial distance was also manipulated (i.e., the event took place in Abu Dhabi that is more spatially remote to participants located in the United States). Nevertheless, this spatial distance manipulation was operating in the same direction as the social distance one (i.e., the Abu Dhabi condition was both socially and spatially remote relatively to the U.S. condition). Because our goal in this study was to examine other manipulations of distance (other than temporal distance), both spatial and social distance appropriately served this purpose.

After reading the bogus article, participants were first asked how they judge the payment discrimination between the local and the foreign workers using two items: “To what extent do you think that the cuts Sinergististics, Inc. implemented for contract workers were fair?” (answers ranged from to 1 = not at all fair, to 7 = very fair, but answers were reversed coded to be consistent with the second item). And, “To what extent do you think that the contract workers are entitled to the same payment as their American/Abu Dhabi peers” (answers ranged from to 1 = not at all entitled, to 7 = very entitled). The two items were positively correlated (r = .85) and were thus averaged to a scale, where high scores represent greater perceived unfairness of the disparate payment to the contract workers.

Furthermore, to examine with finer resolution how participants would make salary cuts allocations themselves between local and foreign workers, we also asked participants, “If it were up to you, how much in percentage would you cut from the salaries of Sinergististics foreign workers?” and “If it were up to you, how much in percentage would you cut from the salaries of Sinergististics American/Abu Dhabi workers?” Both questions were given in a sliding percentage scale, and participants could indicate any percentage cuts they chose from zero to 100.

Results and Discussion

First, we examined whether perception of discrimination between foreign and local workers varied as a function of the social distance manipulation. Comparisons between the high and the low social distance condition yielded that, as expected, participants in the social distance condition judged the disparate payment to foreign versus local workers by Sinergististics as less fair (M = 5.77, SE = 0.3) compared with participants in the low social proximity condition (M = 4.86, SE = 0.32), F(1, 60) = 4.45, p = .04.

Second, we examined the effect of the social distance manipulation on participants’ judgments of the salary cuts they would enact to the foreign and local workers. A 2 (identity of the workers: local or foreign) × 2 (social distance: high vs. low) mixed-design ANOVA analysis revealed a marginally significant main effect of target identity, F(1, 60) = 3.45, p = .07, η²p = .054, indicating that participants were less likely to implement cuts on local (M = 15.78%, SE = 1.77) compared with foreign (M = 19.79%, SE = 1.79) workers. There was no main effect of the social distance manipulation, F(1, 60) = 0.42, p = ns. However, these patterns were qualified by a significant psychological distance by target identity interaction, F(1, 60) = 5.57, p = .02, η²p = .085. The results of this interaction are plotted in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Salary cuts (in percentage) participants enacted for local and foreign workers (Study 2).

As can be seen in Figure 2, in the low psychological distance condition (when the event was described as taking place in the United States), people differentiated between local and foreign workers, and enacted more cuts to foreign (M = 23.25%, SE = 2.63) than to local workers (M = 14.1%, SE = 2.66), t(27) = 2.8, p = .009. This trend was eliminated in the high psychological distant condition, where there were no significant differences between the cuts participants enacted on local (M = 17.34%, SE = 2.41) versus foreign (M = 16.32%, SE = 2.38) workers t(33) = −0.38, p = ns. The results indicate that similar to the temporal distance manipulation, social distance also significantly reduces target-based discrepancies in the application of justice. The features of the target influenced justice judgments only in socially near situations but lost all influence in socially distant ones.

Study 3

So far, we have shown that psychological distance results in ascribing less weight to target characteristics and in lesser discrepancies in the application of justice across different targets. However, it remains to be shown that differences in distance can influence not only judgments, but also actual behaviors. Such behavioral evidence would not only provide converging support to the main thesis of this article but would also demonstrate the real-world consequences of this research on people’s treatment of others. Thus, Study 3 examines how distance affects real-world allocation decisions between ingroup and outgroup members in a performance-based contest. In this study, participants signed up for a “Trivia Game” according to which the best performing group should win a monetary prize. At some point, participants were given the opportunity to take or give points to a member of their team versus the competing team. Because giving points to one’s member and taking them from an opponent violate the notion of equity in a contest that is based on performance, we predicted that these tendencies would be attenuated in psychologically distant (vs. near) situations.

Method

Participants

Forty-five participants were recruited to the study using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Four participants expressed suspicion about the veracity of the manipulation and were hence removed from further analyses. The remaining 41 participants had a mean age of 35.63 (SD = 9.83), 52.5% were females. Power analysis indicated that this sample size is likely to capture small-medium effect sizes (f = .3) with 95% power.

Materials and procedure

Participants were invited to participate in a study called “Trivia Games.” The study was presumably about how people perform and make decisions in a group context. The study had three stages: In the first stage, participants were told that a computer would assign them to one of two groups: a red group and a blue group. In fact, all participants were assigned to the blue group. The two groups were presented as competing about a monetary prize of $100 to be divided between all group members. Importantly, participants were told that the winning group should be the group scoring more points in a general knowledge trivia game, hence that the prize should be given on the basis of performance. To increase the salience of the equity principle, the message that the prize is aimed to be given on the basis of performance appeared several times throughout the instructions. In the second stage, to add to the experimental realism, participants played the trivia game themselves, and were told that their score of right responses would be added to their group score. At the third stage, participants were told that the computer randomly picked two people—one from the red group and one from the blue group—that had already completed the study, and were given the opportunity to add/subtract points on a scale ranging from −3 to 3 (including 0) from the score of these red and blue members.

Psychological distance manipulation

In several places during the game (twice in the introduction, and one time before the addition/subtraction points part), whenever the trivia game was mentioned, there was a * and then at the bottom of the page a clarification saying, “*The prizes for best performing group will be granted at the end of the study—about a week from now—and the payments take about 3-4 working days to be processed” (proximal condition) or “* The prizes for best performing group or individual will be granted at the end of the study—about a month from now—and the payments take about 21-24 working days to be processed” (distal condition).

Results and Discussion

We conducted a 2 × 2 mixed-design ANOVA, where psychological distance served as the between-subject factor and point allocation to ingroup and outgroup members as the within-subject factor, the results of which are presented in Figure 3. This analysis yielded a main effect of group, F(1, 39) = 49.39, p < .001, η²p = .56. Participants significantly allocated more points to their group member (M = 1.63, SD = 1.75) compared with a member from the competing team (M = −1.46, SD = 1.58). The psychological distance manipulation did not have a main effect on participants’ allocation decisions, F(1, 39) = 2.09, p = ns. Importantly, these results were qualified by a psychological distance and group interaction, such that participants were more consistent in their treatment of their own group versus an opponent in the psychological distance condition, F(1, 39) = 4.12, p = .048, η²p = .1, f = .33 (see Figure 3). It is interesting to note that the distance manipulation reduced negative treatment against the competing outgroup, F(1, 39) = 5.91, p = .02, η² = .132, f = .39, rather than reducing favoritism toward the ingroup, F(1, 39) = 1.01, p = 0.3, η² = .025, f = .16.

Figure 3.

Points added to/subtracted from an ingroup and an outgroup member in psychologically near versus distal trivia game (Study 3).

The fact that, in this context, greater psychological distance did not fully erase the tendency to take off points from a competing group member can be explained by the fact that not only social identity motivations stood in the way of an equitable application of justice but also participants’ self-interest. If participants wanted to increase their chances to win the prize, they needed to be as biased as they can in favor of their ingroup. Nevertheless, psychological distance mitigated these manifestations of both self-interest and group interest in favor of a more consistent decision making.

Overview Studies 4 to 6

Studies 1 to 3 supported the notion that psychological distance facilitates greater disregard of concrete information about moral targets and promotes a more egalitarian application of justice principles across targets different in personal characteristics and social relations to participants. Studies 4 to 6 seek to test the role of construal level in driving these effects. To this end, all studies in this part directly manipulate levels of construal.

Past research has shown that high-level or low-level mind-sets can be induced by a categories or exemplars generation task (see Fujita & Han, 2009; Luguri et al., 2012; Wakslak & Trope, 2009). In this task, participants are asked to generate a series of categories (e.g., “A bulldog is an example of what?”) or respective exemplars (e.g., “What is an example of a dog?”). The category/exemplar distinction maps onto the high/low-level distinction in action subordination theories and CLT (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987; Trope & Liberman, 2010), such that category generation induces an abstract mind-set whereas exemplar generation induces a concrete one.

Drawing on this framework, Studies 4 to 6 use the category/exemplar generation procedure to directly manipulate mind-set and examine its effect on scope of justice. Study 4 utilizes the freedom of speech context utilized in Study 1 to examine the effect of construal level mind-sets on scope of justice. Study 5 examines whether high construal mind-sets mitigate the weight given to the characteristics of the target (i.e., the person being pushed) in the commonly used Trolley Problem. Study 6 examines whether the manipulation of construal level mind-sets affects the weight given to non-egocentric yet incidental characteristics of the targets (i.e., how similar they are from each other) in making justice judgments.

Study 4

Study 4 uses the exact freedom of speech setting used in Study 1, but instead of manipulating distance, it manipulates directly construal level mind-set. This study examines how adopting a high-level (vs. a low-level) mind-set influences participants’ willingness to grant the basic right of freedom of speech to a range of targets varying in closeness to participants. We predict that—like psychological distance—construal level mind-set will moderate the weight given to targets’ characteristics, such that under a higher level construal mind-set, participants will be more consistent in their application of freedom of speech privileges across these different targets.

Method

Participants

Based on the effect size of Study 1, we conducted a planned power analysis. Using G*Power software, we concluded that a sample of 80 people is likely to detect a similar effect size with a power of 95%. We therefore recruited 80 people using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, for a payment of $4. One participant had incomplete data (in both the manipulation and the dependent measures) and was therefore excluded from the final sample. The final sample was thus comprised of 79 participants, M age = 35.00, SD = 13.75, 46.8% males.

Materials and procedure

Participants were randomly assigned to a high-level or a low-level mind-set condition. The mind-set manipulation used 20 items referring to a category or an exemplar. Namely, participants were asked to generate either a category fitting a given exemplar (“Toyota is an example of . . .”) or an exemplar fitting a given category (“An example of a car is . . .”). The manipulation was presented as an assessment of participants’ cognitive style.

On completion of the manipulation, participants were told,

In the United States, many people believe that freedom of speech is a basic right. There is a debate, however, about who is entitled to free speech protections and to what extent. Please indicate (on a 1-7 scale) the extent to which you think the following deserve a right to free speech.

Participants were then given a list of targets that included, “Yourself,” “Your family,” “Your local community,” “U.S. citizens,” “People in the U. S. who are not citizens,” “People outside US,” and “People who have committed crimes against the U.S. (terrorists).”

Results and Discussion

Like in Study 1, we conducted a 2 (mind-set manipulation) × 7 (target identity) mixed-design ANOVA on participants rating of deservingness to freedom of speech rights. This analysis yielded a significant and strong effect of target identity, F(6, 432) = 45.32, p < .001, η²p = .37, f = .77, suggesting that some targets (i.e., oneself, one’s family, and fellow citizens) were more likely to receive freedom of speech rights compared with others (i.e., outsiders, terrorists). However, similarly to Study 2, these patterns were qualified by a mind-set-by-target interaction, F(6, 432) = 3.3, p = .003, η²p = .05, f = .23 (see Figure 4). The results revealed that, like in Study 1, a high-level mind-set reduced discrepancies in the application of freedom of speech across different targets (particularly with respect to the most demonized category of terrorists).

Figure 4.

Participants’ application of freedom of speech privileges to different targets as a function of mind-set (Study 4).

Simple effects analysis revealed that under a low-level mind-set, there was a strong effect of target identity, F(6, 432) = 31.02, p < .001, η² = .45, f = .9. This effect remained significant in the high-level mind-set condition, F(6, 432) = 15. 22, p < .001, η² = .27, f = .6, but was significantly reduced. Moreover, a pair-wise comparison of participants’ willingness to extend freedom of speech privileges to all targets as a function of mind-set suggested that the mind-set manipulation had a significant effect in the case of the terrorists condition (high-level M = 4.92, SE = 0.34; low-level M = 3.64, SE = 0.44), t(77) = 2.35, p = .021, η² = .07, f = .27, confidence interval [CI] = [2.36, 0.2]. In the remaining conditions, the mind-set manipulation had no significant influence on people’s willingness to grant freedom of speech privileges to the other targets, t(77) = 0.61 for the self, t(77) = 0.82 for one’s family, t(77) = 0.61 for one’s local community, t(77) = 0.42 for U.S. citizens, t(77) = 0.36 for people in the United States who are not citizens, t(77) = 0.39 for non-citizens.

Taken together, these results show that the effect of a direct manipulation of levels of construal is similar to the effect of psychological distance. Paralleling the effect of temporal distance in Study 1, the present results show that whereas a high-level construal mind-set does not fully erase the effect of target identity on the application of justice, it significantly reduces it. Moreover, like in Study 1, the effect of construal level mind-set in the present study is more pronounced for the targets that appear least deserving of justice protection (i.e., terrorists). These findings suggest that construal level mind-set (high-level vs. low-level), like temporal distance (distant vs. near), leads to greater discarding of target characteristics and to a greater consistency in the application of justice.

Study 5

This study seeks to examine the influence of construal level mind-sets on people’s judgments in the context of a different type of moral judgment captured in the commonly used moral dilemma of the Trolley Problem. In the typical version of this problem, participants are faced with a dilemma in which a trolley is hurtling toward a group of workmen who face certain death unless they halt the trolley’s path by pushing an otherwise unrelated bystander in the way.

The trolley problem is typically used in psychological research to tap into individuals’ moral cognition differentiating between utilitarian and deontological moral judgments (Greene & Haidt, 2002; Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008; Paxton & Greene, 2010). These judgments are not the focus of this article. Instead, in Study 5, we decided to modify the typical version of the Trolley problem such that it would include information about the idiosyncratic features of the target (i.e., the person being pushed). While the identity of the targets is not typically considered in the Trolley Dilemma, scant existing research suggests that the characteristics of the person being pushed can affect participants’ decisions. For example, Petrinovich and his colleagues showed that people are more inclined to sacrifice a stranger over a family member, and an abhorrent person such as a Nazi soldier over a neutral stranger (Petrinovich, O’Neill, & Jorgensen, 1993). Similarly, other research has shown that the willingness to push a target was affected by the target’s race and participants’ political orientation (Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, & Ditto, 2009) as well as by the target group membership (Swann, Gómez, Dovidio, Hart, & Jetten, 2010).

Taken together, the findings above suggest that the characteristics of targets in moral dilemmas can also drive people’s decisions. That likewise suggests that high-level construal may mitigate the weight given to target features in these dilemmas—a proposition that we set to test in Study 5. In this study, we manipulated construal level mind-set, while also modifying the features of the target being pushed in the Trolley Problem such that in one condition, the target was neutrally described as “a man,” whereas in the other condition, the target was described as “a prisoner,” a target previously shown to be seen as less deserving to full moral consideration (see Opotow, Gerson, & Woodside, 2005). We predict that target identity will affect participants’ decisions in the low mind-set condition, leading them to more readily push the prisoner versus the neutral target. However, we expect these target-based discrepancies to be mitigated among participants in the high-level mind-set.

Method

Participants

One hundred three participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Eligibility criteria for participation were identical to previous studies. One person was excluded from the study after indicating a lack of understanding of the moral dilemma (this person wrote in the comment that the five workers would not be saved even if the target was pushed). The final sample was thus comprised of 102 individuals, had a mean age of 35.12 (SD = 12.14), and 62.1% were females. This sample size was comparable with (and in fact, slightly larger than) similar studies looking at the effect of identity in the context of the trolley problem (see Swann et al., 2010).

Materials and procedures

To manipulate mind-set, participants were randomly assigned to either the exemplar (low-level mind-set) or the category (high-level mind-set) manipulation identical to that used in Study 4 but that included 30 (rather than 20) items. Following the mind-set manipulation, participants were asked to answer the classic trolley problem. The problem was presented as follows:

While standing on a bridge you suddenly notice that a runaway trolley is hurtling down the tracks toward five people. These people will be killed if the train proceeds on its present course. Then you suddenly notice that you are standing next to a man on a footbridge spanning the tracks. The only way to save the five people is to push this man off the footbridge and into the path of the trolley .

In the prisoner condition, the word “man” was replaced with the word “prisoner” and the accompanying illustration was altered to reflect this change in identity (see online supplement for the visuals that were used). The dependent variable was whether or not participants decided to push the man/prisoner.

Results and Discussion

We conducted a logistic regression in which the effects of mind-set, target identity, and their interaction were examined on participants’ decision to push or not to push the target. The probability of participants’ agreeing to push the man/prisoner in each of the condition is presented in Figure 5. This analysis revealed a main effect of target identity, suggesting that when the target was described as prisoner, participants were more likely to agree to throw him off the footbridge to save the life of others, B = 1.53, SE = 0.61, p = .012. There was no effect of the mind-set manipulation, B = .87, SE = 0.60, p = .15. However, these results were qualified by an interaction, B = −1.43, SE = 0.83, p = .08, odds ratio (exp. B) = .24, CI = [0.05, 1.22]. In the low-level mind-set condition, participants were significantly more likely to push a prisoner in comparison with a non-prisoner target, B = 1.53, SE = 0.61, p = .012, odd ratio (exp. B) = 4.59, CI = [1.4, 15.11]. This tendency, however, disappeared in the high-level mind-set condition, and participants were equally likely to throw a prisoner as they were to throw a non-prisoner target, B = .095, SE = 0.57, p = ns, odd ratio (exp. B) = 1.1, CI = [0.36, 3.36].

Figure 5.

Probability of the decision to “push” the target from the footbridge in each of the experimental conditions (Study 5).

Although the Trolley problem is commonly used to tap into individuals’ deontological versus utilitarian decisions, this study utilized it to examine a different set of predictions. Specifically, we sought to examine when identical individuating information about the targets in moral dilemmas was more or less likely to influence people’s “push” decisions. In line with our predictions, we found that under high-level construal mind-set, targets’ identity no longer influenced participants’ decisions.

Study 6

So far, we have shown that psychological distance and higher construal level mind-set facilitate a more consistent and less target-driven justice decisions. In Study 6, we seek to demonstrate that such effects are not necessarily self-anchored, and that construal level will influence the weight given to idiosyncratic yet incidental target characteristics even when such characteristics have no bearing on egocentric social distance (i.e., the social distance between the targets and the self). To this end, in Study 6, we manipulate targets’ similarity to each other rather than their similarity in relation to participants.

Research has shown that similarity between the targets and the decision maker affects the decision maker’s justice decision (see Hafer & Olson, 2003; Opotow, 1994; Wenzel, 2001, 2004). However, a more recent line of work suggests that similarity of targets affects justice decisions regardless of how similar they are to the decision maker. A series of studies by Alter and Darley (2009) showed that individuals who appear similar to each other were also more likely to be similarly and more consistently treated. In one of their studies (Study 1), for example, participants were asked to ascribe due punishment to a group of criminals who had jointly committed a crime. While holding the information about the committed crime constant, the authors manipulated only how similar the perpetrators appeared to each other (in how they visually looked). Their results showed that target similarity influenced participants’ punishment decisions such that participants assigned less discrepant punishments to perpetrators who appeared visually similar (vs. dissimilar) to each other.

In Study 6, we build on Alter and Darley’s findings, predicting that the effect of target visual similarity (vs. dissimilarity) on justice decisions will only occur under a low-level mind-set. Under a high-level mind-set, participants are hypothesized to apply the same justice standard regardless of how similar the targets are to each other.

Method

Participants

Ninety-six participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for a payment of $25 to $5. The mean age of the sample was 35.15, SD = 14.01; 58.33% of the participants were females. The sample size was determined based on the sample size and effect sizes of the original article (N = 35, f = .42). We decided to recruit a sample that is at least twice as large as in the original article to capture the hypothesized interaction effects.

Materials and procedure

Participants were invited to take part in a study titled “Crime and Punishment,” and were told that the study explored how people sentence criminals for crimes that they had committed. Before reading the crime scenario, participants were randomly assigned to a high- or a low-level mind-set manipulation that was identical to the manipulation used in Study 5.

Next, participants read about a bank robbery committed by a gang of five perpetrators who jointly planned and executed a robbery (materials were identical to those used in Alter & Darley, 2009, Study 1). Participants were then shown a “lineup” of the gang, presented either a homogeneous or a heterogeneous lineup by means of their silhouettes (see online supplement for the visuals used). Participants were asked to assign punishments to the five gang members. As in the original study, we used the standard deviation of the punishment assigned to the five gang members as the principle dependent variable.

Results and Discussion

The standard deviation of the punishments administered to the gang was subjected to a 2 (mind-set: high vs. low) × 2 (lineup: homogeneous vs. heterogeneous) between-subject ANOVA. This analysis revealed a main effect of lineup condition, such that the punishment of homogeneous criminals (M = 0.199, SD = 0.06) varied less than heterogeneous criminals (M = 0.373, SD = 0.066), F(1, 92) = 3.83, p = .053, η²p = .04. These results replicated the findings of Alter and Darley (2009) who also found that similarity facilitates similar (i.e., consistent) treatment. There was no main effect of the mind-set manipulation, F(1, 92) = 0.59, p = ns. However, these patterns were qualified by a significant mind-set-by-lineup interaction, F(1, 92) = 5.47, p = .02, η²p = .056, f = .24.

As can be seen in Figure 6, in the low-level mind-set condition, the results of Alter and Darley (2009) were replicated such that targets’ similarity also induced punishment similarity, F(1, 92) = 8.45, p < .01, η² = .2, f = .5. However, these differences disappeared in the high-level mind-set condition, F(1, 92) = 0.80, p = ns, η² = .001, f = .003, suggesting that how similar the targets appeared to each other no longer influenced punishment decisions.

Figure 6.

Standard deviation (SD) of the punishments assigned to the five perpetrators in each condition (Study 6).

Interestingly, high-level mind-set erased the effect of similarity on punishment variability because it both reduced punishment variability in the heterogeneous lineup condition and increased punishment variability in the homogeneous lineup one. These patterns can be explained by the fact that the criminals were described as playing different roles in the crime (i.e., a driver, a planner, etc.). It is possible that under a high-level mind-set, the reliance on target’s appearance is abandoned in favor of careful application of retribution standards. These standards necessitate giving different punishment to different criminals based on their role (and responsibility), something that can lead to more punishment variation in the homogeneous sample and less punishment variation in the heterogeneous sample. Regardless, these results indicate that how visually similar targets appeared (something that is highly irrelevant to retribution) did not affect punishment decisions under a high-level mind-set condition.

General Discussion

The present research provides support for the claim that psychological distance and construal level moderate the weight given to idiosyncratic individuating information about the targets of justice judgments. More specifically, we found that greater psychological distance and higher construal level mind-sets diminish people’s sensitivity to target-specific features, thus promoting greater consistency in the application of justice. In contrast, psychological proximity and lower construal level mind-sets result in more target-sensitive applications of justice.

The studies reported in this article assess several characteristics of moral targets, all previously linked to differential moral treatment. These include similarity, group affiliation, social status, and physical appearance. In all cases, the manipulation of psychological distance or construal level significantly reduced the influence of targets-specific features. The magnitude of the effects of the psychological distance and the construal manipulations varied across studies. In the context of certain targets (i.e., a groups of criminals more or less similar to each other, a prisoner, foreign or local workers), high-level mind-set and psychological distance completely eliminated the influence of such features. In the other contexts (i.e., terrorists, members of a competing group), high-level mind-set and psychological distance significantly diminished but did not eliminate the weight given to these features. These patterns can be explained by the nature of the targets at hand and the degree to which they necessitate differential treatment. Terrorists, for example, are targets that seem highly undeserving of justice protection to a greater extent than prisoners.

Implications for CLT Research

The current research expands on previous CLT research in at least two ways. First, previous research has looked at individuals’ moral emotions or values, whereas we looked at normatively held justice principles such as equity, retribution, and freedom of speech. Second, past research on CLT and morality mainly looked at people’s moral values and self-relevant judgments. That research examined the extent to which people abided by their own moral values. Past research has not systematically considered applications of justice across a variety of targets, and when (or why) such applications may be more or less affected by the same information about targets. Our research shows that psychological distance and higher level of construal help people disregard target-based characteristics in favor of rule-based applications of justice.

One question that remains open is whether there will always be an affinity between justice rules and high-level construal, and justice recipients and low-level construal. As we noted in the introduction, assessing the identity or other characteristics of justice targets is an important part of our moral calculus. Also, in some instances, assessing such characteristics is an inherent part of the justice rule itself. In the case of the equity principle, for example, assessing the effort or the contribution of targets should be linked to the outcome they deserve. That suggests that in cases such as that of equity, assessing certain features of the targets (i.e., effort, performance) is a primary moral concern, but assessing other features of the target (i.e., country of origin) is more of a secondary concern. This typology suggests that variation in levels of construal can differentially affect the weight given to different aspects of target characteristics, based on their centrality to the justice principle itself. In the equity studies reported in this article, target information pertaining to the primary category of effort and performance was kept constant. The features of the targets that were manipulated concerned only targets’ more incidental features such as group membership and country of origin. It is possible that when features of the target contain information that is relevant to the justice rule itself, the effect of construal level or psychological distance will be different.

Implications for Moral Psychology

The relation between target-based characteristics and moral exclusion has been traditionally examined by research on the scope of justice. Initially, research on scope of justice aimed at examining extreme forms of moral exclusions in which a group of people was denied justice (and often humanity) altogether (Nagata, 1990; Staub, 1990). However, research on the scope of justice also examined more moderate forms of moral exclusion (Boeckmann & Tyler, 1997; Loewenstein & Small, 2007; Olson, Cheung, Conway, Hutchison, & Hafer, 2011; Opotow, 1995, 2001). The studies reported in this article correspond to such more moderate forms of exclusion that involve the selective application of justice protection (rather than the denial of justice altogether, or extreme forms of harm doing). Although both extreme and moderate forms of moral exclusions have often been treated as resting on a continuum, it has also been argued that they involve different psychological processes (see Olson et al., 2011). Therefore, future research will benefit from examining whether psychological distance and level of construal can promote the inclusion of targets that are exposed to more extreme forms of exclusion and harm doing.

The most serious criticism leveled against scope of justice research is that it invokes the term moral exclusion every time justice is differentially applied. Hafer and Olson argued that disparate treatment is not necessarily a consequence of moral exclusion but of a moral consideration of deservingness. The deservingness argument suggests that rather than ignoring or withholding justice (as suggested by the scope of justice account of exclusion), people are in fact carefully applying it by differentiating between targets based on their degree of deservingness. Notwithstanding this criticism, this article argues that disparate moral treatment requires enhanced sensitivity to individuating information regarding moral targets. This sensitivity is reduced in the context of greater psychological distance or under a higher construal level mind-set and is enhanced in the context of shorter psychological distance or under a lower construal level mind-set.

The current work also speaks to ongoing debates in moral psychology. Traditionally, moral psychologists conceived of moral principles as absolute and universal (see Kohlberg, 1969, 1981). More recently, however, several arguments have been put forward against this perspective, claiming that some kind of parochialism is not merely unavoidable but also desirable (e.g., Graham & Haidt, 2010). The present research suggests that people can display greater parochialism or universalism depending on level of construal. High levels of construal, activated either by direct induction (Studies 3-6) or indirectly by psychological distance (Studies 1-3), helped people to attenuate the influence of the characteristics of moral targets and to render moral judgments more in line with the maxim of universalism (Van Bavel et al., 2012).

Implication for legal psychology

A consistent application of the law has a central role in the Western democratic legal tradition, which “connotes the method of achieving justice by consistently applying rules and procedures that shape the institutional order of a legal system” (Shen, 2000, p. 31, emphasis added). Yet, the law is too often differentially applied across people, geographic locations, and social groups (Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, & Davies, 2004). Ample past research has demonstrated that characteristics such as race, class, or religion influence leniency or harshness among jurors and defendants. Eberhardt and colleagues (2004) found that stereotypically Black characteristics of defendants predict their likelihood of being sentenced to death. And Kerr, Hymes, Anderson, and Weathers (1995) found that a similarity between the religious beliefs of juror and defendant predicts leniency in sentencing. While people agree that such biases have no role in justice decisions (Tyler & Wakslak, 2004), these factors are consistently influential in the legal process.

The current research highlights one way of mitigating the influence of these factors on justice decisions. People encouraged to construe justice-related situations in high-level terms are more likely to be successful in reducing the weight of target-based factors in their determination, focusing rather on the gist of the issue. At the same time, if consistency in the application of laws improves when decision makers adopt high-level perspective, it also suggests greater adherence to laws that do not necessarily benefit the target (such as laws that establish mandatory minimum punishments or other punitive measures).

Future Directions

The present findings lead the way for several additional lines of research. First, as we stated at the outset, an important problem remains unresolved: Is construal level’s influence on moral exclusion driven by enhancing the salience of the justice principles, or by diminishing the salience of specific characteristics of the target (or both)? Our research does not provide a definitive answer to this question; however, the results of Study 6 suggest that both mechanisms may be involved. This study showed that while high-level construal attenuated the variance of punishments of heterogeneous defendants, it increased the variance of punishments of homogeneous defendants. Moreover, participants in that study received information about the defendants’ role in the crime in addition to information about their physical appearance of the defendants. These findings suggest, then, that high-level construal may allow people to ignore irrelevant information like physical appearance and also focus on the aspects of a crime that truly are relevant to the principle of retribution—namely, the extent of personal responsibility for the crime. Nevertheless, more research needs to be performed to assess the differential impact of level of construal on the use of relevant versus irrelevant information in punishment decisions.

Another important question that remains to be answered is whether the findings of the current research would hold for conventional or pragmatic rules in addition to moral ones. Although rules, in general, aim to serve as abstract guidelines encompassing a wide range of situations (Kelman, 2001), people deem moral rules as more universal compared with pragmatic ones (Van Bavel et al., 2012). It therefore remains to be shown whether and to what extent people would be more consistent in the application of non-moral, conventional rules as a function of psychological distance. Although it may be particularly pronounced in the case of moral rules, higher construal level may as well increase the consistency of the application of any rules, not just moral ones.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

The online supplemental material is available at

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