Less Emotional People Are More Concerned With Justice

Psychologists from the University of Chicago have linked high
“justice sensitivity”—how individuals react to experiences of
injustice and unfairness—to lower emotional sensitivity. For
the study, published in The Journal
of Neuroscience, researchers relied on both brain scans
and questionnaires that assessed justice sensitivity and cognitive
and emotional empathy.

“We were interested [in]… the contribution of emotion and
cognition in moral judgment,” said lead researcher Jean
Decety. 

Justice is obviously a very broad concept—social justice differs
from vigilante justice differs from criminal justice. But at its
most basic, justice is simply “the quality of being just,
impartial, or fair,” according to
Merriam-Webster. Emotions are anything but impartial, so it’s
not surprising that highly emotional people would perhaps fail at
assessing justness. But it’s strange that they may be less
concerned with justice or its execution.* A deep concern
for fairness seems to me like a pretty emotional
proposition. 

Nonetheless, brain scans administered while study participants
viewed videos of “good” and “bad” behavior showed people with high
justice sensitivity also had less activity in parts of the brain
linked with emotional processing. Meanwhile, they showed greater
than average activity in parts of the brain linked to higher-order
cognitive processing such as planning, decision making, abstract
reasoning, interpreting social cues, and distinguishing between
different perspectives.

“Individuals who are sensitive to justice and fairness do not
seem to be emotionally driven,” said Decety. He noted that this
goes against conventional wisdom about the “sentimental
motivations” of those involved with human rights and social and
criminal justice causes.  

For more on the scientific basis of political and moral
disposition, check out social psychologist Jonathan
Haidt’s May 2012 story for Reason. According
to Haidt (and ample research), genetics explains between one-third
and one-half of the variability among people in their political
attitudes.

* To be clear, that’s not precisely what this study
says.