Human Values and Their Relation to Justice

This article describes studies that relate justice‐related behavior and experience to the content of human values. The studies are concerned with moral judgment, belief in a just world, distributive justice in the context of allocation decisions, and the nature of deservingness. In each case the focus is on associations between particular values or value types and an aspect of justice. A theoretical analysis of deservingness is presented that takes account of perceived responsibility and the conjunction of positively (or negatively) valued actions and positively (or negatively) valued outcomes. The subjective values (or valences) assigned to the actions and outcomes are assumed to be related to a person's underlying system of values. It is argued that research on justice has tended to ignore the values held by individuals, groups, and cultures, and that this deficiency should be remedied in future research. 1994 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues