Multiple levels of perceived fairness and social protests: Effects of the immutability belief, social efficacy, and estimated costs

Abstract

Although public concern about social inequality has increased, Japanese people generally do not appear to be actively engaged in activities for social reform. We hypothesized multiple levels in the perception of unfairness-micro-unfairness based on personal experiences and macro-unfairness based on evaluation toward the whole of society-and predicted that micro-unfairness would lead to more protests compared to macro-unfairness (Hi). We also hypothesized that three psychological variables-immutability belief, low social efficacy, and estimated costs of social changes-would regulate the positive relationship between multiple levels of perceptions of unfairness and protests (H2). The results of the social survey held in Japan in 2009 (n = 1398) not only supported HI but found that the effects of micro-unfairness on protests varied depending on the strength of macro-unfairness. In addition, the results of immutability belief and the estimated costs of social changes basically supported H2, but the results of low social efficacy did not.