THE ADOLESCENT'S CONSTRUCTION OF PROCEDURAL JUSTICE AS A FUNCTION OF AGE,FORMAL THOUGHT AND SEX*

The adolescent's understanding of procedural justice and its possible relationships with age, formal thought and sex were investigated. Based on social cognition literature, four predictions were tested: (1) juridical understanding develops along a number of levels; (2) it is fully, partially, or not dependent on formal thought; (3) its dependence, if any, is limited to some of the abilities composing formal thought, i.e., the experimental abilities; (4) no sex differences exist. A battery of formal tasks and a questionnaire tapping juridical understanding were addressed to 120 adolescents, equally sampled from grades 8, 10, and 12, in order to test these predictions. Qualitative analysis showed the understanding of justice developed on four levels: naive realism, integrated realism, inquisitive thinking, intersystemic thinking. ANOVA applied on justice scores and the regression of justice on the formal scores validated predictions 2(b), 3, and 4. The kind of formal and postformal thought contributions to social cognition and the relationships among various social cognition domains were discussed.