Styles of Social Justice Judgments as Portrayed by Partial-Order Scalogram Analysis: A Cross-Cultural Example

This study proposes a typology of adolescents' social justice judgments (SJJs) as assessed by their attribution of importance to various distribution rules representing two generic principles of justice (egalitarian and equitarian). Four basic styles of SJJ are identified: I. Ecumenical (emphasis on both egalitarian and equitarian justice); II. Pure Egalitarian (emphasis on egalitarian justice); III. Pure Equitarian (emphasis on equity rules); and IV. Withdrawn (emphasis on neither). This proposed typology is empirically supported by POSAC (Partial-Order Scalogram Analysis with base Coordinates), which is used to analyse SJJs among adolescents in Israeli and East German samples. The typology is also found useful in discriminating between adolescents in these two countries; the proportion of the Ecumenical and Pure Egalitarian styles is higher among East Germans than among Israelis, while the proportion of the Pure Equitarian and Withdrawn styles is higher among Israelis.