Psychology Department

Who's bothered by an unfair world? The emotional response to unfairness scale

Publication Date

Who's bothered by an unfair world? The emotional response to unfairness scale

Prof George Bizer published a paper entitled "Who's bothered by an unfair world? The emotional response to unfairness scale" in Personality and Individual Differences. The paper describes a new personality measure that assesses the extent to which people feel anger and frustration when unfair events happen. To validate the scale, he demonstrated that, among other things, Democrats and those who voted for Hillary Clinton feel higher negative emotion in the face of unfairness than do Republicans and those who voted for Donald Trump. The paper helps us understand which types of people are more bothered by unfairness, allowing us to make predictions about human behavior and cognition in a world in which people aren't always treated fairly.