Sensitivity to befallen injustice and reactions to a real life disadvantage

Examined the construct validity of a self-report questionnaire for dispositional sensitivity to befallen injustice (SBI). The four subscales of the SBI instrument (frequency, anger, intrusiveness, and punitivity) are described as they relate to an example situation. Internal consistency coefficients, as well as analyses of convergent and discriminant validity, show that SBI is sufficiently different, yet meaningfully related to other important psychological constructs. 57 college students were assessed regarding SBI, attitudes toward principles of distributive justice, belief in a just world (BJW), anger proneness and expression (AX), and self-assertiveness. Later, subjects participated in a lottery to determine teaching resources, and reported their retrospective feelings regarding the procedure. SBI correlated highly with perceived fairness of the lottery procedure, and intrusiveness of thoughts correlated with experienced demotivation. Significant interaction effects between BJW and objective disadvantage on retrospective anger were also observed. Overall, the results support the notion that SBI plays an important role in how persons react to social inequality.