Ecology of Sites of Confinement: Everyday Life in a Detention Center for Illegalized Non‐citizens

Drawing on almost 3 years of fieldwork, comprising qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations, this study provides an exploration into the detention of illegalized non‐citizens in Italy. Taking the largest detention center as a case study, the fabric of everyday life and the lived experiences of people, both detainees and professional actors, are the focus of examination. An ecological community psychology framework, with a focus on justice, guided the data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Findings highlight the oppressive qualities of detention, and its ripple effects on people's life spaces. Scarcity of resources, activities, and information created a very distressing environment for detainees, also enhancing feelings of powerlessness and frustration in professionals willing to assist them. Uncertainty and instability, rather than coercion or discipline, emerged as modes of governing and dominating. Bound in a different space and time, detainees were turned into unwanted and expendable others, their confinement becoming a means to extract profit from them. Yet, people languishing in these sites displayed an extraordinary ability to cope with, resist, and challenge the persisting conditions of injustice they endured. We conclude by highlighting the potential of the proposed framework, and discussing broader implications of our findings and avenues for research and action.     

Retrospective Analysis of Gender Differences in Reaction to Media Coverage of Crisis Events: New Insights on the Justice and Care Orientations

We surveyed 2,125 men and 3,735 women (N = 5,860) across the USA to test hypothesized relationships regarding women’s and men’s use of justice and care orientations when they confront crisis events with moral implications. Consistent with previous research, we found that women were more likely than men to adopt a care orientation. Contrary to expectations, however, women also adopted a justice response to a greater degree than did men. We found that, in response to a crisis, women, unlike men, were more likely to believe they would connect with others and take action. Implications for explaining inconsistencies in prior research findings on the justice and care orientations, and for conceptualizing these important constructs in a new way, are discussed.     

Reply to Wilkinson

In his review of my book Whose Body is It Anyway, Wilkinson criticises the view (which I defend) that confiscating live body parts for the sake of the needy is (under some circumstances) a requirement of justice. Wilkinson makes the following three points: (a) the confiscation thesis is problematic on its own terms; (b) there is a way to justify coercive resource transfers without being committed to it; (c) the thesis rests on a highly questionable approach to the status of the body. Wilkinson’s paper is challenging, and some of his points are well taken. On the whole, however, it does not constitute an insurmountable challenge for my thesis.

Histoire et tendances de la psychologie critique en Amérique du Nord

Critical psychology in the United States and Canada identifies psychology as inherently a political enterprise. It has developed along three overlapping but distinct lines that diverge in history, focus, and purpose: (a) building on psychology's empirical research methods, employing them to help reduce injustice and advance progressive or radical social change; (b) rejecting mainstream psychology's positivist and individualistic theoretical and empirical underpinnings and developing emancipatory theory and practices in their place; and (c) challenging psychology's institutional power over individuals, especially mentally and emotionally troubled individuals whose behavior strikes others as problematic. This article first describes each approach's history, influences, and roles in academic scholarship and institutions and in professional and nonacademic organizations. It then details recent efforts to expand and institutionalize a critical psychology presence despite mainstream North American psychology's strong resistance, while noting the central intertwining of personal networks, political leanings, and psychological theory. Finally, it briefly considers the implications and consequences of the lack of consensus about what critical psychology is and should become.     

Justice, Holism and Principles

Some moral theorists defend a holistic account of practical reasons and deny that the possibility of moral thought depends upon the existence of moral principles. This article explores the implications of this position for theorising about justice, which has often aspired to provide us with an ordered list of principles to govern our institutions and practices.

Self-construal level and voice procedures: The individual self as psychological basis for procedural fairness effects

In the current article, we investigate the influence of self-construal level on procedural fairness effects, that is, the finding that fair versus unfair procedures influence people’s evaluations of their relation with decision-making authorities. In two experiments, we manipulated self-construal level by activating the individual self (“I”) or the social self (“We”), and we induced a control condition. Furthermore, we manipulated procedural fairness by granting versus denying participants an opportunity to voice their opinion in a decision-making process. Results consistently revealed stronger procedural fairness effects if the individual self is activated than if the social self is activated. It is concluded that sometimes the individual self, rather than the social self, constitutes the psychological basis for procedural fairness effects.     

Taking from those that have more and giving to those that have less: How inequity frames affect corrections for inequity

Most theories of inequity focus on relative inequity. In contrast, this paper provides evidence that individuals infer what people should have (i.e. an absolute standard) from the way inequity is described. In the reported experiment, participants give more to a subordinate actor when inequity is described in terms of “less than” rather than “more than,” and take more from a dominant actor when inequity is described in terms of “more than” rather than “less than,” even though the magnitude of inequity is constant. Mediational analyses suggest that these differences are driven by changes in individuals’ perceptions of what the actors should have (i.e. the standard). We conclude by discussing the implications for motivated perceptions of inequity and redistributive policy attitudes.     

The effects of justice motivation on memory for self- and other-relevant events

We examined whether people might distort and selectively remember the past in ways that enable them to sustain a belief in a just world (BJW; Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press). In Study 1, recall of a lottery prize reflected participants’ justice concerns, such that the average lottery amount recalled was lowest when a “bad” versus “good” person won. In Study 2, an unrelated experience of just world threat (versus affirmation) enhanced biased recall of the lottery prize when the winner was undeserving. In Study 3, participants who experienced a fortuitous bad break selectively remembered more bad deeds from their recent past, whereas participants who experienced a good break selectively remembered more good deeds. Study 4 demonstrates that such selective memory biases specifically serve to portray chance outcomes as more fair. Taken together, these findings offer support for the notion that reconstructing and selectively recalling the past can serve to sustain a BJW.     

What makes revenge sweet: Seeing the offender suffer or delivering a message?

The present article investigates the conditions under which vengeful episodes are satisfactory for the victim/avenger. Two hypotheses are tested simultaneously: (1) victims are satisfied if they see the offender suffer, even if this suffering was imposed by fate (“comparative suffering” hypothesis) and (2) victims are satisfied if the offender signals that he understands why revenge was imposed upon him (“understanding” hypothesis). A laboratory experiment is described in which the source of the offender’s suffering (revenge vs. fate) and the offender’s understanding for the cause of his suffering were varied. As an implicit measure of goal fulfillment, participants completed a lexical decision task that measured the relative accessibility of aggression-related words (compared to non-aggressive words). The results corroborate the understanding hypothesis: Participants showed higher levels of implicit goal fulfillment if they decided to take revenge and if the offender signaled understanding for the vengeful response. The findings are discussed with regard to the question what people hope to achieve when they take revenge.     

Accidental Rightness

In this paper I argue that the disagreement between modern moral philosophers and (some) virtue ethicists about whether motive affects rightness is a result of conceptual disagreement, and that when they develop a theory of ‘right action,’ the two parties respond to two very different questions. Whereas virtue ethicists tend to use ‘right’ as interchangeable with ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ and as implying moral praise, modern moral philosophers use it as roughly equivalent to ‘in accordance with moral obligation.’ One implication of this is that the possibility of an act being right by accident does not pose a problem for consequentialism or deontology. A further implication is that it reveals a shortcoming in virtue ethics, namely that it does not—yet needs to—present an account of moral obligation.