Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Predictive Value Of School Climate And Teacher Techniques On Students’ Just World Beliefs: A Comprehensive Brazilian Sample, Kendra J. Thomas, Jonathan Santo, Josafa M. Da Cunha

Psychology Faculty Publications

Substantial research has established the connection between students’ beliefs in a just world (BJW) and their perceptions of and behaviors in the school. While much of that research has acknowledged that the relationship between BJW and school variables must be bi-directional, little empirical evidence exists on how the school climate shapes students’ perceptions of justice. This study draws from a comprehensive sample of Brazilian students from third through twelfth grade (n = 18,514) across 122 public schools in Southern Brazil. Results reveal that school climate variables account for 12.1–19.6% of the variance of students’ BJW, with middle school being …

Fairness, Trust, And School Climate As Foundational To Growth Mindset: A Study Among Brazilian Children And Adolescents, Kendra J. Thomas, Josafa M. Da Cunha, Denise Americo De Souza, Jonathan Santo

Psychology Faculty Publications

Recent research has established the importance of children and adolescents developing a growth mindset for future success and motivation. This research tests believes about fairness, adult trust, and school climate that are theoretically foundational for establishing a cognitive connection between effort and outcome. Regressions and MANOVAS were conducted to understand the direct and indirect relationships between perceptions of justice, adult trust, school climate and growth mindsets.

The first study included 363 children from Brazilian public schools and the findings supported our hypothesis that adult trust partially mediates the relationship between justice perceptions and growth mindset. The second study included an …

Fairness In Animals: Where To From Here?, Sarah F. Brosnan, Frans B.M. De Waal

Psychology Faculty Publications

In the last decade, there has been an explosion of work investigating non-human species’ behavior as it relates to the human sense of fairness and justice. This work has provided a much-needed evolutionary perspective on humans, and highlighted ways in which humans’ behavior is both similar to and different from that of other species. In this concluding paper, we outline the major threads of the work highlighted in this and the previous special issues of Social Justice Research and provide thoughts on future directions for the field. This is a very exciting time in our exploration of the evolution of …

Introduction To “Justice In Animals”, Sarah F. Brosnan

Psychology Faculty Publications

Although much is known about humans’ responses to inequity, little is known about similar responses in other species. The goal of these issues is to bring together researchers focusing on both humans and non-humans to provide a synthesis of our knowledge of non-human responses to inequity to date, and what these data tell us about the evolution of humans’ responses. In this Introduction, I provide a brief background, highlighting both areas in which differences among the related literatures emerge and the ways in which the comparative approach can provide insight in to this question. As becomes clear in these issues, …

The Relationship Between Morality, Popularity And Acceptance Among Children, Jonathan Bruce Santo, W. M. Bukowski

Psychology Faculty Publications

1245 children (mean age = 10.42) participated in the study (681 female). Data collection took place in Montréal, Canada (MO, n = 382) and Barranquilla, Colombia (BA, n = 863), from either high SES (n = 528) or low SES (n = 717). Subjects rated each other for levels of justice, care, popularity and acceptance. Care and justice were found to be strongly related to acceptance (r =0.43 and r = 0.40, respectively) and less strongly related to popularity (r = 0.32 and r = 0.31, respectively). Care and justice were highly positively correlated to each other (r = 0.61) …