Justice Sensitivity and the Processing of Justice-related Information ANNA BAUMERT 1 * , MARIO GOLLWITZER 2 , MIRIAM STAUBACH 1 , and MANFRED SCHMITT 1 1 Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany 2 Department of Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany Abstract: We investigated how Justice Sensitivity (JS) shapes the processing of justice-related information. We proposed that due to frequently perceiving and ruminating about injustices, persons high in JS develop highly accessible and differentiated injustice concepts that shape attention, interpretation and memory for justice-related information. Three studies provided evidence for these assumptions. After witnessing injustice, persons high in JS attended more strongly to unjust stimuli than to negative control stimuli (Study1) and interpreted an ambiguous situation as less just than persons low in JS (Study2). Finally, they displayed a memory advantage for unjust information (Study3). Results suggest that JS involves the availability and accessibility of injustice concepts as parameters of cognitive functioning and offer explanations for effects of JS on justice-related behaviour. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: personality-congruent information processing; social justice research; attention; interpretation; memory INTRODUCTION As personal experience tells us, people differ in how strongly they react towards witnessed injustices. Whereas some may not take notice at all, others are outraged. Social justice research confirms the existence of stable and cross- situationally consistent individual differences in sensitivity to justice issues (Dar & Resh, 2001; Lovas & Wolt, 2002; Schmitt, 1996; Schmitt, Gollwitzer, Maes, & Arbach, 2005; van den Bos, Maas, Waldring, & Semin, 2003). Thus, Justice Sensitivity (JS) may be considered a personality trait that reflects the importance of justice issues in people’s everyday lives. Persons high in JS tend to perceive injustice more frequently, ruminate about it, and react to it with stronger emotions compared to persons low in JS (Schmitt, Neumann, & Montada, 1995). These persons also tend to take steps to restore justice such as protesting against injustice (Mohiyeddini & Schmitt, 1997; Schmitt, 1996; Schmitt & Mohiyeddini, 1996) and punishing perpetrators even at their own expense (Fetchenhauer & Huang, 2004). These studies have focused on describing the emotional and behavioural effects of JS. Further studies have shown the convergent and divergent validity of JS vis-a `-vis general personality factors (e.g., non-significant or low correlations with neuroticism) and personality facets (e.g., low corre- lations with modesty and tender-mindedness as facets of agreeableness), as well as more specific prosocial traits (e.g., moderate correlations with empathy and role taking) and antisocial traits (e.g., low to moderate correlations with paranoia and jealousy; Schmitt et al., 2005; Schmitt, Baumert, Gollwitzer, & Maes, 2010; Schmitt, Baumert, Fetchenhauer, Gollwitzer, Rothmund, & Schlo ¨sser, 2009). Describing the correlates and effects of JS is important for locating JS in the personality space, for establishing its uniqueness, and for determining the construct validity of instruments used for its assessment. However, those descriptions tell us little about the psychological mechan- isms underlying these correlations and effects: How do these personality effects actually come about? In order to move from a merely descriptive to an explanatory approach, it is necessary to investigate the social-cognitive processes connected to JS that may be responsible for translating this personality trait into behaviour. Social-cognitive approaches to the explanation of individual differences conceptualize personality as a complex system of cognitive structures and processes that account for both stable behavioural differences between persons and coherent patterns of intra-individual variability in behaviour (Caprara, Steca, Cervone, & Artistico, 2003; Cervone, 2004; Cervone & Shoda, 1999; Fleeson, 2001; Mischel, 1973). The general assumption of the present approach was that personality, information processing and behaviour are causally interconnected. Information process- ing is believed to be systematically shaped by the pattern of traits and states that characterize the person in a given situation. Specifically, information processing such as (a) attention, (b) interpretation, and (c) memory is assumed to be personality-congruent (Rusting, 1998). This approach has produced important results in various areas of personality research. For example, trait anxiety has been shown to selectively guide attention towards threatening information (e.g., MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986; Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996), facilitate threatening interpretations in ambiguous situations (e.g., Mathews & MacLeod, 1994; European Journal of Personality , Eur. J. Pers. 25: 386–397 (2011) Published online 10 November 2010 (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/per.800 *Correspondence to: Anna Baumert, Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Fortstrasse 7, Landau 76829, Germany. E-mail: baumert@uni-landau.de Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 19 March 2010 Revised 17 September 2010, Accepted 24 September 2010