Immanent Justice Reasoning: Theory, Research, and Current Directions Seminar

Immanent justice reasoning involves causally attributing a deserved outcome to someone's prior moral deeds or character, even when such a causal connection is physically implausible. This talk will outline a body of work showing that immanent justice reasoning is (a) motivated, in part, by the need to construe outcomes as deserved; (b) driven by intuitive more than controlled mental processes; and (c) more openly expressed among individuals who believe in supernatural phenomena. The talk will cover additional lines of inquiry exploring assumptions about the nature, origins, and functions of immanent justice reasoning, including immanent justice reasoning for self-relevant outcomes, the social-communicative function of immanent justice reasoning, and immanent justice reasoning by spatial proximity. This talk will highlight how immanent justice reasoning serves important psychological functions in adulthood, and is underpinned by reasoning processes and metaphysical assumptions that are not put away when children become adults.

Speaker information

Professor Mitchell Callan, University of Bath. Prior to working at the University of Bath, I worked at the University of Essex for 8 years. Previously, I undertook my undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Calgary and then was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Western Ontario. My research interests include: •Justice motivation •Belief in a just world •Immanent justice reasoning •Responses to victimisation •Relative deprivation