What is Psychological Injustice? A Concept Whose Time Has Come

The article was published in Psychology Today November 4, 2022.

What are we owed?

            To each, his, her, or their due. This is how justice is traditionally defined. This, of course, begs the question, what is due people. What are we owed by society, family members, workplaces, friends, teachers, leaders, government officials? This is a very important question that has typically only been answered in political and philosophical terms. For example, distributive justice concerns the fair and equitable allocation of goods, resources, and services. These may include access to health care, housing, and public education. Procedural justice, in turn, relates to fairness in decision-making processes. We typically say that procedural justice requires voice and choice. In the disability rights movement a common refrain is “nothing about us without us.” Thus, the due in procedural justice is representation, participation, impartiality and integrity. Corrective, another important form of justice, pertains to addressing harms inflicted on individuals or entire groups. The due in corrective justice may be financial reparations or apologies (Sabbagh & Schmitt, 2016).

            In addition to these conceptual approaches, there are contextual approaches to justice. These are types of (in)justice that take place in a particular time and place or to a particular group of people. An example of the former is organizational (in)justice, and of the latter racial (in)justice. What are employees owed by employers? What are certain racial and ethnic groups owed by others? One specific type of organizational justice is informational. Employees expect to be treated with respect and be informed about important decisions affecting their lives. We may say that this is a form of procedural justice in a particular context. Certain minority groups, in turn, feel they are owed apologies, reparations, resources, goods and services. These may be regarded a combination of distributive, procedural, and corrective justice. Similar demands may be made regarding gender or disability injustice.

Psychological Injustice: The Missing Link

            There is one fundamental human need that is violated in all cases of unfair treatment, and that is the need to matter (Kruglanski et al., 2022; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky, 2021). Mattering consists of feeling valued and adding value. When we commit an injustice, we are not only depriving individuals of a certain good or service, but we are also depriving them of their humanity, dignity, mattering, respect, and social worth. I argue that the central mechanism in all forms of injustice is a violation of mattering by making people feel devalued and disrespected, and preventing them from adding value and making a contribution, either to themselves or others. When certain minorities are told that they are not good in math or science, we are both devaluing their talents and depriving them of opportunities to excel in these fields (Steele, 2010). The rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement is a response to historical injustices that made Black people feel devalued and prevented them from being full members of society (Taylor, 2016). In fact, for centuries, the struggle for recognition has been about claiming dignity, mattering, and significance (Honneth, 1995).

Psychological injustice is a violation of the fundamental need to matter

            When we violate the basic need to matter, we engage in an act of psychological injustice. Thus, we can define psychological injustice as the violation of others’ fundamental need to matter. The violation can occur by making people feel devalued or by preventing them from adding value. Psychological justice, in turn, is an act that makes other people, regardless of gender, race, class, age, disability, power, employment, or immigration status, feel valued, and affords them an opportunity to add value and to make a contribution to themselves and others.

            I argue that psychological injustice is present in most, if not all, cases of injustice because unfair treatment undermines our social worth, dignity, and respect (Kruglanski et al., 2022). The source of the violation may be our disability or gender, but in either case we are made to feel devalued and even excluded or marginalized. For some individuals the exclusion may be related to their religious identity or body size. Some overweight kids are bullied at school while Muslim or Jewish students are taunted in the playground.

            In the context of families and relationships, power differentials are at the root of psychological injustice. Domestic or child abuse consists of demeaning and even violent behavior against weaker family members. The dominant figure humiliates others by calling them derogatory names or physically restraining or injuring them. In all these cases, many forms of injustice are committed, including legal, religious, gender, developmental, racial, and economic, but also psychological.

The costs of psychological injustice

            The psychological trauma generated by making you feel devalued and depriving you of adding value has far reaching costs in terms of physical and mental health problems, not to mention relational, occupational, and social (Flett, 2022). It can take years of suffering and treatment to overcome the psychological harm occasioned by repeated acts of psychological injustice. To be sure, in response to lack of mattering some people become anxious and depressed, but others become aggressive, with tremendous costs in terms of lives lost and family suffering that can last decades. Some victims of bullying become mass murderers (Leary et al., 2003). Lack of mattering at work leads to disengagement, lack of productivity, and quiet quitting (Clifton, 2022). In financial terms, the cost of disengagement in the United State is approximately $ 500 billion (Gallup. 2017). While the monetary costs of psychological injustice related to disengagement, treatment and rehabilitation of traumatized people are staggering, the emotional suffering is incalculable.

Call to action

            The pain and agony inflicted by psychological injustices can, and must, be prevented. There is an urgent need to address structural, economic, racial, gender, class, and political injustice, but also psychological injustice. Programs, policies, and practices affecting families, schools, workplaces and entire communities must educate participants on ways to make people feel valued and enable them to add value (Cohen, 2022). We must do what we can to create psychologically just relationships, families, workplaces, communities, and societies where everyone feels valued, and everyone adds value (Prilleltensky, 2020). It is a matter of fairness with great consequences for wellness (Prilleltensky, 2012). As studies have demonstrated, the more people benefit from conditions of fairness, the higher their level of worthiness and wellness (Di Martino et al., 2021; Scarpa et al., 2021).

            We can start by building equitable and fair spaces in our homes, playgrounds, schools, communities and jobs. The more we make each other feel valued, and the more we make each other feel seen, respected, and appreciated, the more likely we are to add value to ourselves and others in society. Similarly, the more we promote mattering, the more we prevent suffering, depression, aggression and grandiosity. Psychological justice is a type of justice worth fighting for. We should all be concerned about worthiness because it matters to wellness and fairness.

References

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            Di Martino, S., Scarpa, M., & Prilleltensky, I. (2022). Between wellness and fairness: The mediating role of autonomous human choice and social capital in OECD countries. Journal of Community Psychology. Advance online publication.  https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22822

            Flett, G. L. (2022). An Introduction, Review, and Conceptual Analysis of Mattering as an Essential Construct and an Essential Way of Life. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 40(1), 3–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/07342829211057640

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            Steele, C. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotype affect us and what we can do. Norton.

            Taylor, K. T. (2016). From #BlackLivesMatter to Black liberation. Haymarket Books.