Cross-cultural comparison of engagement in ultimate and immanent justice reasoning

We investigated direct cross-cultural differences in individuals' immanent and ultimate justice reasoning about others' misfortunes, focusing on deservingness as a mediating variable. Participants from the United States and Japan read a scenario describing a subject's misfortune. The target subject's moral worth was manipulated as that of a respected person or a thief. After reading the scenario, participants completed questionnaires containing items on immanent and ultimate justice reasoning as well as deservingness of receiving the misfortune and of future restitution. The analysis revealed that Japanese respondents tended to engage more in immanent justice reasoning than did American respondents when the target subject was of low moral worth, while American participants overall engaged more in ultimate justice reasoning compared with Japanese. Our hypotheses on the mediation effect of deservingness on the relationship between country and justice reasoning were partly supported. These findings suggest that an exploration of cultural differences in justice reasoning, incorporating the role of deservingness, can contribute to extending and strengthening the theory of justice reasoning.