Open AccessResearch Article

Not General Belief in a Just World But Injustice Perception of Concrete Situations Is Associated With Embitterment

Beate Muschalla

Beate Muschalla, Psychotherapy and Diagnostics, TU Braunschweig, Humboldtstraße 33, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany

[email protected]

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5285-6618

Psychotherapy and Diagnostics, TU Braunschweig, Germany

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and

Helena Grove

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5301-6821

Psychotherapy and Diagnostics, TU Braunschweig, Germany

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Published Online:March 19, 2024https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000419

Abstract

Abstract: Several aspects contribute to whether a person reacts embittered after an injustice or not: the individual basic beliefs (respective life values) of the person, the degree of belief in a just world, the perception of the injustice situation itself, and coping capacities in the form of wisdom. The present study explores to which degree these core aspects contribute to embitterment reaction after a confrontation with injustice. An experimental investigation was conducted in a convenience sample of 228 young persons from the general population (age 28, 68% females). Participants gave sociodemographics, and their wisdom attitudes, life values, and belief in a just world. Then an example of an injustice situation was presented in the form of a short text vignette, followed by a short assessment of the person’s embitterment reaction. The more the participants perceived the situation as unjust, the higher their embitterment reaction. Higher self-enhancement value was associated with higher embitterment after exposure to the injustice situation. In contrast, general belief in a just world, wisdom attitudes, and other life values were not associated with the strength of embitterment reaction. Also, the type of problem (private or work injustice) and sociodemographic characteristics of the participants were not predictive of the embitterment. Not the general belief in a just world, but the interpretation of a concrete situation as unjust is associated with an emotional reaction (here: embitterment) and potentially following behavior. Concluding from comparison with other research, the type of situation and life values of persons may have different and not linear impacts on embitterment reaction.

Embitterment is a feeling that most people have experienced at least slightly in some life situations (Linden & Maercker, 2011). Basically, embitterment represents a normal affective reaction to unjust or humiliating situations (Znoj, 2011). Even the Bible begins with the story of Cain and Abel and the description of an embitterment reaction. Everyone knows this emotional state, there is no need to explain what embitterment feels like.

In the general population, about one in two people can remember an event in the recent past that triggered embitterment in them (Linden et al., 2009). But, a quarter of people experience the feeling of embitterment to a greater extent, and about three to five percent suffer from severe and life-disrupting states of embitterment (Kühn et al., 2018; Linden et al., 2009, Muschalla, 2023; Znoj et al., 2016). During the social upheaval, unrest, or crisis, embitterment may increase in the general population, rates of 16–45% have been found internationally (Linden, 2020; Muschalla et al., 2021).

Embitterment often occurs after negative, stressful, unjust life events (Linden et al., 2009; Znoj et al., 2016). These events are not always perceived as severe from the outside, but their triggers may evoke a strong sense of injustice or grievance in the affected person (Linden, 2020). The violation of personally important and central life values by a critical event is a core mechanism in reactive mental health problems and embitterment (Janoff-Bulmann, 1989; Linden et al., 2009; Znoj, 2011).

Core aspects have been identified that contribute to whether a person reacts embittered after an injustice or not: the individual basic beliefs (respective life values) of the person (Linden & Arnold, 2021), the degree of belief in a just world (You & Ju, 2020), the perception of the injustice situation itself (does it touch the persons areas of interest and strengths or not?), and complex coping capacities in form of wisdom (Linden et al., 2011, 2019).

The present study explores to which degree these core aspects – belief in a just world, injustice perception, life values, and wisdom – contribute to an embitterment reaction after a confrontation with injustice.

Life Values

Strong basic beliefs (respective life values) can be potential vulnerabilities for embitterment. This may be the case when individual basic beliefs or life values are hurt, for example, by an injustice (Linden & Arnold, 2021). Since people are different, there may be a broad variety of what might be hurtful for one, but not for another person. Being dispensed from a leading position may be a very hurtful injustice for a manager after a life-long engagement for the company, who lives according to values of self-enhancement, that is, power and achievement.

In contrast, being let down by the partner might be hurtful for a person who has invested all their life into the well-being of the family, and for whom “security and sociality and trust in relationships” is the most important life value. Research on life values and embitterment has until now found no consistent relations between specific values and specific proneness to embitterment, except slightly higher openness in persons with lower embitterment (Muschalla & von Kenne, 2020). In this present study, we aim to test again – with another sample and other injustice topics – whether or not any of the three life value dimensions have an impact on embitterment reaction after a confrontation with an injustice situation.

Belief in a Just World (BJW)

The Just World Theory postulates that people have the fundamental need to believe in a just world, in which everyone gets what they deserve and deserves what they get (Lerner, 1980). This justifies the assumption that one will get what one deserves and the pursuit of long-term goals. If the world is perceived as just, it is possible to act in the social environment as if it is stable and orderly. Thus, the BJW fulfills adaptive functions for the individual (Dalbert & Donat, 2015). The formation of the BJW occurs in childhood along with the development from immediate satisfaction of spontaneous impulses to investment in long-term goals and rewards (Lerner, 1977).

Research until now investigated belief in a just world and its relations with behavior, for example, dishonest behavior (Wenzel et al., 2017), or employee voice (Cheng et al., 2019). Belief in a just world was found to be associated with behavior, which means that people with a high belief in a just world are prone to become behaviorally active in situations where belief in a just world is challenged. This may be, for example, helping a person who has suffered an injustice. High belief in a just world was also found to be associated moderately with lower embitterment (You & Ju, 2020). The question is whether belief in a just world has a predictive value for embitterment reaction with respect to a concrete injustice situation.

Wisdom

Wisdom is a concept that has accompanied mankind for millennia and is often regarded as the pinnacle of knowledge about human life and coping with difficult questions and situations in life (Baltes & Smith, 1990). Wisdom has also found its way into psychological research (Ardelt, 2004; Baltes & Smith, 1990) and clinical practice (Linden et al., 2019): wisdom enables one to “solve unsolvable problems,” to deal with difficult, complex, and ambiguous life situations, and helps to overcome negative experiences (Linden et al., 2011). Such life situations are not atypical or avoidable. Wisdom is therefore relevant for everyone, with regard to problems at work (job loss, injustice), in private life (divorce or family conflicts), or in everyday situations (“Shall I buy the cheap juice and safe money for visiting the zoo, or shall I buy the expensive bio-oranges for my child getting more vitamins?”). Wisdom can especially be of relevance in coping with injustice and negative, complex, and insecure life events. There are some basic wisdom attitudes, and general life coping ideas, which people may – more or less – agree to. People must be aware of such wisdom-related coping strategies to be ready to apply them in real-life contexts. Only then it may come to actions that can be recognized by others as wise behaviors. It is of interest, whether general wisdom attitudes have an impact on a persons’ (embitterment) reaction after being confronted with an injustice situation.

Research Aim and Hypothesis

The present explorative study aims to investigate the predictive values of

–
general belief in a just world,
–
injustice perception in a concrete situation,
–
different life values,
–
wisdom, and
–
the type of injustice situation

in respect to the embitterment reaction after an injustice situation.

Until now it is known that no special topics or life domains are associated with embitterment, but rather process aspects, that is, injustice perception as such (may it be in work or private situations). We expect that the degree of perceived injustice of the situation will be explanative for embitterment perception in reaction to a fictive injustice situation (work or life problem). Since not everybody who perceives injustice reacts embittered, we expect that injustice perception and embitterment reaction should be moderately (not highly) correlated.

Earlier studies did not find any specific life value being especially embitterment-prone on a sample level (Muschalla & von Kenne, 2020). Thus, we do not expect that life values will be specifically predictive for embitterment in this present study as well.

Since wisdom is a capacity to cope with difficult and unjust life events, and higher wisdom is associated with lower embitterment (Linden et al., 2011, 2019), we expect that higher agreements to general wisdom attitudes will be associated with lower embitterment after the in sensu exposition.

Perceived injustice may be especially hurting for persons who believe that the world should be just. Thus, it could be that a high belief in a just world is associated with a higher embitterment reaction after injustice. On the other hand, high belief in a just world was found to be associated with lower embitterment (You & Ju, 2020). Thus, it must be an open explorative question in this present study, whether or not general belief in a just world will be associated with embitterment after the imagined injustice situation.

Method

Procedure

An online investigation on “coping with difficult life situations” was conducted in a convenience sample of younger people mainly aged about 25–35 years from the general population. Most of them were students and young professionals. This sample was approached in order to reach persons who are, due to their life developmental stage, confronted with a variety of different topics in life (career entrance and family/partnership building phase). Distribution of the invitation for study participation was done by snowball system using personal contacts of the authors, mailing lists, and social media sites. Participants were first asked for their sociodemographics and then filled in psychometric questionnaires on wisdom attitudes, life values, and belief in a just world.

After the assessment of these basic and personality data, an in sensu exposition was done: an example of an injustice situation was presented in the form of a short text vignette (either work or private situation). This exposition in sensu was followed by a short measurement of the person’s injustice perception and embitterment affect in reaction to the injustice situation.

In the following, the instruments and injustice situation vignettes are listed in the same order in which they were given to the participants:

Study Assessment

Wisdom

The 12 WD (Wisdom Dimensions) Wisdom scale (Linden et al., 2019) is a self-report questionnaire measuring general wisdom-related attitudes, self-perception, and self-attributions. Each of the twelve wisdom statements (Table 1) stands for one of the twelve theoretical wisdom capacities. Participants were asked to indicate on the 12-WD Wisdom Scale the extent to which they agreed to each of the wisdom statements. Answers were given on a Likert scale from 0 = do not agree at all to 10 = fully agree. The instruction of the 12-WD scale is “In the following you will find very different statements and principles on how people can react to difficulties and significant life stresses. Decide for each statement to what extent it makes sense for you personally.” A global wisdom score can be calculated as an average score across all items. The 12-WD scale measures wisdom attitudes, thus it cannot be derived whether and how people actually apply these ideas in real-life situations. Linden et al. (2019) found the global wisdom score correlated positively with general life satisfaction (r = 0.23; p = .001; Differential Life Burden [DLB] scale, Linden & Ritter, 2007) and negatively with embitterment (Posttraumatic Embitterment Disorder [PTED] scale, Linden et al., 2009). A higher wisdom score came along with a lower tendency to insist on justice (General Belief in a Just World [GBJW] scale, Dalbert et al., 1987). Cronbach’s β of the 12-WD-scale was .81 in the first evaluation (Linden et al. 2019), and α = .657 in this present study. The moderate internal consistency reflects that different content is included and that the scale is rather heterogeneous than homogenous.

**Table 1 Wisdom dimensions and items of the 12-WD wisdom scale (translated from Linden et al., 2019)**
Wisdom context	Wisdom dimensions	Definition of the wisdom dimension and item of the 12-WD scale (Linden et al., 2019)
View of the world	Factual and procedural knowledge	General and specific knowledge about problems and problem constellations, what constitutes problems, and the possibilities of problem-solving.
	Factual and procedural knowledge	Item: Before I react to a problem, it is important for me to first understand what the problem is.
	Contextualism	Knowledge about the temporal and situational nature of problems and the numerous circumstances in which life is embedded.
	Contextualism	Item: What is good or bad depends essentially on the framework conditions.
	Value relativism	Knowledge about the diversity of values and life goals and the need to look at other persons within their value system without losing sight of one’s own values.
	Value relativism	Item: In my opinion, everyone should be happy in his own way.
View to other people	Change of Perspective	The ability to describe a problem from the perspective of other people.
	Change of Perspective	Item: For me, it is interesting to consider what others think about a topic.
	Empathy	The ability to understand and feel the emotional experience of another person.
	Empathy	Item: I always try to empathize with how my counterpart feels.
View to the own person	Relativization of problems and aspirations	The ability to be humble and accept that one’s own problems may not be as important in comparison with many problems in the world.
	Relativization of problems and aspirations	Item: When you are satisfied with what you have, you are better off than when you are crying over what you don’t have.
	Self-relativization	The ability to accept that one is not always the most important individual and that most things do not follow one’s own will or are not oriented towards one’s own interests.
	Self-relativization	Item: I try not to take myself so important if possible.
	Self-distance	The ability to identify and understand the perception and evaluation of oneself from the perspective of other people.
	Self-distance	Item: I can’t expect others to like me if I don’t behave accordingly.
View to the own emotional experience	Perception and acceptance of emotions	The ability to recognize and accept one’s own feelings.
	Perception and acceptance of emotions	Item: I can’t expect to be in a good mood all the time.
	Emotional serenity and humor	The ability to emotional balance, control one’s own emotions according to situations, as well as the ability to look at oneself and one’s own difficulties with humor.
	Emotional serenity and humor	Item: I try not to get upset if possible, because you don’t benefit from getting upset yourself.
View to the future	Long-term perspective	Knowledge about short- and long-term consequences, which can contradict each other.
	Long-term perspective	Item: I am one of those people who say, “It comes as it comes.”
	Uncertainty tolerance	Knowledge and acceptance of the fact that future developments can never be predicted or controlled reliably.
	Uncertainty tolerance	Item: I always see crises as an opportunity for the future as well.

Table 1 Wisdom dimensions and items of the 12-WD wisdom scale (translated from Linden et al., 2019)

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Short Schwartz’s Values Questionnaire

Life values have been assessed with the short scale of Schwartz’s Values Questionnaire (SSVQ, Boer, 2013). Participants rate how important the values of power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, security, conformity, universalism, tradition, and benevolence are to them on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = not at all important, 3 = rather not important, 4 = rather important to 6 = very important. These values are assigned to higher-order values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994). The values are universal, that is, applicable in different cultures (Schwartz, 1994, 2012). The short scale has good internal consistencies, temporal stability, and replicable factor structure (Lindeman & Verkasalo, 2005). In the present investigation, Cronbach’s alpha was α = .612 for the overall scale, and α = .591 for self-enhancement, α = .563 for openness, α = .568 for conservation, and α = .563 for self-transcendence.

Belief in a Just World

The General Belief in a Just World Scale (GBJW; Dalbert, 1998; Dalbert & Donat, 2015) is a self-report instrument to assess general belief in a just world. The study aimed to investigate the impact of an unjust situation and a person’s basic beliefs about life and the world (general values and belief in a just world expectation) on embitterment. Thus, the GBJW scale was chosen (and not the Personal Belief in a Just World Scale which has a focus on the individual justice expectation only). The GBJW scale contains six items, each to be rated on a 6-point response scale ranging from 1 = do not agree at all, 3 = rather do not agree, 4 = rather agree to 6 = fully agree. An example item is “I think that the world is generally fair.” Good homogeneity coefficients (Cronbach’s α) ranging from α = .56 (Kamble & Dalbert, 2012) to α = .83 (Schmitt et al., 2008) have been reported. In this present investigation, Cronbach’s α was α = .77. The convergent validity of the GBJW scale with some other just-world measures (Lipkus et al., 1996) found moderate to high correlations with other just-world measures ranging from r = .32 (with the BJW scale of Lipkus, 1991) to r = .61 (with the BJW subscale of the World Assumption Scale of Janoff-Bulmann, 1989). The GBJW scale has discriminant validity against the personal BJW (Dalbert, 1999).

In Sensu Exposition to Injustice Situation

For considering different real-life settings, either a fictive work injustice or a private injustice situation was presented to the participants by random selection (Table 2). In both vignettes, the injustice was operationalized by a meaningful loss in contrary to justified expectation. Participants were asked to imagine the situation from the perspective of the “victim”. This technique is an in sensu exposition, a regular technique in behavior analysis and behavior training. The aim is to induce a concrete cognitive and affective reaction towards the imagined situation. The vignettes were taken from a selection of situation vignettes that have been developed and evaluated in earlier studies and which are used to provoke injustice perception for wisdom training purposes (Linden et al., 2011).

Table 2 Descriptions of the exemplary unjust situations in private life or at work

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Ad Hoc Injustice Perception After the Injustice Situation

Participants were asked to imagine that this situation would have happened to themselves. They were asked to which degree they find the situation “unjust” (scale from 0 = not at all unjust to 10 = fully unjust). The item has been checked for content validity, and it is clear and only contains one content.

Ad Hoc Embitterment Reaction After the Injustice Situation

Next, participants were asked to which degree they felt “embittered” versus “at peace with the situation” (scale from 1 = embittered via 4 = neutral to 7 = at peace with the situation). The item has been developed in the same format as items in the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule PANAS which are bipolar and measure contrary poles of a broad range of positive and negative affect (Thompson, 2007). Single-item measures for emotional states are also used elsewhere (Morgantini et al., 2020; Lohmann et al., 2015). The item is content valid and can be expected to measure the degree of embitterment affect. Data from a representative study show that a single item asking how much a person agrees that s/he feels “embittered” after an injustice event has a high item-scale-correlation of r = .928, p < .001) with the rest of the embitterment scale (PTED scale; Linden et al., 2009; representative study Muschalla, 2023).

Participants

Altogether 228 mostly young adults, 67.5% females, participated in the study which was distributed electronically via online sites and personal contacts via snowball system. Half of the participants (50.9%) were at present in a partnership, 18.9% had children. 40.8% had completed a professional education or university studies, the others were still in training or studies. Mean age was 28.26 (SD = 12.64) years. For descriptive data on all study variables, see Table 4, column “All”.

The sample thus represents in majority of young adults who are about to enter professional fields and own life models. They can be expected to have experienced or are about to experience practical life events, including critical life events, may it be in partnership or profession. Concerning gender, women are over-represented, which is a common finding in ad hoc surveys (Lawes et al., 2022; Smith, 2008).

Statistical Analysis

Data have been analyzed with SPSS using descriptive data, regression analysis for exploration of characteristics’ interrelations, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Chi²-Test for comparing degree and distribution of characteristics in subgroups.

Results

Belief in a just world was not very high, but only moderate in the investigated sample (M = 2.64, SD = 0.77, N = 228). Most of the investigated young people reported a high injustice perception after exposition with the injustice situation (M > 8.5 on a scale of 0–10 in n = 169), and a minority had a low injustice perception (M < 5.0 in n = 59). Injustice perception and embitterment reaction after exposition with the unjust situation correlated to a moderate degree (r = −.562**, p < .01, Spearman correlation).

The life value self-transcendence (M = 5.31, SD = 0.73, Table 4) was rated as most important, followed by openness to change (M = 4.73 on a scale from 1 to 6, SD = 0.74) and conservation (M = 4.60, SD = 0.84). Self-enhancement was rated of lowest importance but with higher variance (M = 3.49, SD = 1.03).

Embitterment Reaction After Exposition to Injustice Situation

The more the participants perceived the imagined situation as unjust, the higher their ad hoc embitterment reaction. This can be seen from the regression analysis (Table 3) and in the means level: Those with high injustice perception (Table 4: Js, JS) were nearest to the embitterment pole of the scale.

Table 3 Aspects associated with degree of embitterment reaction (1 = embittered – 7 = at peace with the situation) towards an in sensu experienced fictive injustice situation. Linear stepwise regression analysis. N = 228

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Table 4 Differences between persons with low (j) or high (J) injustice perception and low (s) or high (S) importance of self-enhancement values (power and achievement). Means (standard deviation) and percentages are reported. N = 228.
Characteristics	Low injustice perception, low importance of self-enhancement (js) (n = 33)	Low injustice perception, high importance of self-enhancement (jS) (n = 26)	High injustice perception, low importance of self-enhancement (Js) (n = 59)	High injustice perception, high importance of self-enhancement (JS) (n = 110)	χ² or ANOVA overall and post hoc tests (Bonferroni corrected) p	All (N = 228)
Note. Categorial variables Injustice Perception: 0–6.5 = low/moderate injustice perception; 6.51–10 = high injustice perception. Importance of Self-enhancement (power and achievement): 1–3 = low importance, 3.1–6 = higher importance.
Age	28.24 (12.44)	28.19 (13.71)	30.85 (13.67)	26.89 (11.80)	Overall .291	28.26 (12.64)
Sex (female) %	48.5%	61.5%	69.5%	73.6%	.007	67.5%
Professional certification completed (vs. presently in professional education	45.5%	46.2%	44.1%	36.4%	.623	40.8%
Belief in a Just World (GBJW) 1 = do not agree at all to 6 = fully agree	2.63 (0.78)	2.76 (0.55)	2.47 (0.79)	2.70 (0.79)	Overall .241	2.64 (0.77)

Wisdom attitudes (12-WD-scale) 0 = do not agree at all to 10 = fully agree	6.73 (1.75)	7.33 (0.91)	7.51 (0.73)	7.14 (0.86)	Overall .004	7.20 (1.04)
					js vs. jS .147
					js vs. Js .003
					js vs. JS .274
					jS vs. Js 1.000
					jS vs. JS 1.000
					Js vs. JS .137
Values (SSVQ): Self-Enhancement (Power and Achievement) 1 = not at all important to 6 = very important	2.44 (0.56)	4.02 (0.67)	2.54 (0.59)	4.20 (0.65)	Overall < .001	3.49 (1.03)
					js vs. jS < .001
					js vs. Js 1.000
					js vs. JS < .001
					jS vs. Js < .001
					jS vs. JS 1.000
					Js vs. JS < .001
Values (SSVQ): Self-Trancendence (Benevolence, Universalism) 1 = not at all important to 6 = very important	5.08 (0.99)	5.17 (0.87)	5.55 (0.51)	5.28 (0.67)	Overall < .001	5.31 (0.73)
					js vs. jS 1.000
					js vs. Js .015
					js vs. JS .878
					jS vs. Js .151
					jS vs. JS 1.000
					Js vs. JS .121
Values (SSVQ): Conservation (Tradition, Conformity, Security) 1 = not at all important to 6 = very important	3.95 (1.01)	3.99 (0.76)	4.35 (0.78)	4.16 (0.81)	Overall .175	4.60 (0.84)
Values (SSVQ): Openness to Change (Hedonism, Stimulation, Self-direction) 1 = not at all important to 6 = very important	4.40 (0.91)	4.63 (0.61)	4.71 (0.75)	4.86 (0.68)	Overall < .014	4.73 (0.74)
					js vs. jS 1.000
					js vs. Js .352
					js vs. JS .011
					jS vs. Js 1.000
					jS vs. JS .848
					Js vs. JS 1.000
Injustice perception degree towards the situation exposed to in sensu 0 = not at all unjust to 10 = fully unjust	4.36 (1.47)	4.85 (1.86)	8.73 (1.24)	9.16 (1.44)	Overall < .001	7.86 (2.43)
					js vs. jS 1.000
					js vs. Js < .001
					js vs. JS < .001
					jS vs. Js < .001
					jS vs. JS < .001
					Js vs. JS .388
Embitterment reaction after the situation exposed to in sensu 1 = embittered 4 = neutral to 7 = at peace with the situation	3.94 (1.23)	3.50 (1.24)	2.97 (1.16)	2.46 (1.22)	Overall < .001	2.93 (1.31)
					js vs. jS .996
					js vs. Js .002
					js vs. JS < .001
					jS vs. Js .368
					jS vs. JS .063
					Js vs. JS .063

Table 4 Differences between persons with low (j) or high (J) injustice perception and low (s) or high (S) importance of self-enhancement values (power and achievement). Means (standard deviation) and percentages are reported. N = 228.

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In contrast, general belief in a just world and wisdom attitudes were not associated with the strength of embitterment reaction (Table 3). Also, the life values of self-transcendence, conservation, and openness to change were not significantly linearly associated with embitterment reaction (Table 3). An exception was the life value self-enhancement: higher values of self-enhancement were associated with embitterment perception (p = .021).

The type of problem (private or work injustice) and sociodemographic characteristics of the participants were not of importance concerning the ad hoc embitterment degree.

Comparison of Persons With High (j) or Low (J) Injustice Perception and High (S) or Low (s) Self-Enhancement Values

Initially, we did not expect a specific life value to be significantly predictive of embitterment (see research aims and hypothesis). As the regression analysis showed that besides injustice perception also self-enhancement had predictive value for embitterment degree (Table 3), the need for an additional explorative variance analysis emerged: Are there differences between persons with high and low self-enhancement, combined with high and lower injustice perception?

Thus, in order to compare persons with different combinations of embitterment-explanative characteristics, participants were grouped according to high or low injustice perception and their degree of self-enhancement values (Table 4). Persons with high injustice perception (Js, JS) reported a higher embitterment affect in reaction to the imagined injustice situation (M_JS = 2.46, M_Js = 2.97) as compared to those with low injustice perception (M_js = 3.50, M_js = 3.94).

All participants, that is, persons with high (J) or low (j) injustice perception, and high (S) or low (s) self-enhancement, reported a similar moderate degree of belief in a just world, ranging between M = 2.47 and M = 2.76 (Table 4). Thereby persons with high self-enhancement (JS, jS) reported slightly higher degrees of belief in a just world as compared to those with low self-enhancement (although not statistically significant). The highest agreement to wisdom ideas was found in the group who perceived the situation as highly unjust, but who had low self-enhancement values (Js).

Statistically significant differences appeared between the group with low injustice and low self-enhancement (js) as compared with those perceiving high injustice perception (Js, JS): The js group reported significantly lower importance for the values openness, self-transcendence, and lowest agreement to wisdom ideas (12-WD scale). The js had on average a neutral affective reaction (M = 3.94 on the dimensional item embitterment-in peace) after the injustice situation exposition.

Discussion

The data show that higher injustice perception regularly came along with higher embitterment (respective lower perception of being at peace with the situation). Although embitterment is an affect that often occurs after injustice perception, injustice perception, and embitterment are two different things: Injustice perception is a cognitive aspect of events or situations, and embitterment is an emotional reaction. Injustice perception can, but must not be accompanied by embitterment. Accordingly, both are moderately but not very highly correlated.

An important main result of the study is that not the general belief in a just world (GBJW), but the ad hoc perception of a concrete situation as unjust had explanative value for embitterment reaction. The GBJW scale measures how strongly a person is convinced that the world should be just, that is, an assumption about how the world should be. This is a basic belief and a rather stable personality or trait aspect. Injustice perception of a concrete situation (as measured here in reaction to the fictive injustice example) is a situational aspect: it can only be assessed with respect to a specific event or situation, not in general.

The transactional stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) suggests that individual cognitive appraisal of a situation is associated with the affective reaction. Accordingly, our data show that the more the situation was perceived as unjust, the higher the embitterment reaction – independent from the general belief in a just world. This finding is somewhat different from what has been observed in a Korean study (You & Ju, 2020): Here a moderate correlation was found between social and individual belief in a just world and embitterment (r = −.31 to −.41). Other research gives a hint that especially the personal, more than the general belief in a just world, is associated with concrete justice experiences and well-being (Kamble & Dalbert, 2012; Nartova-Bochaver et al., 2019). The finding from the present study supports this idea: not the general belief in a just world, but the interpretation of a concrete situation as unjust is associated with an emotional reaction (here: embitterment) and potentially following behavior.

The next important result is that one out of four life values impacted the degree of embitterment reaction, that is, self-enhancement. The more participants valued self-enhancement, the more were they likely to perceive stronger embitterment after the injustice situation. Thereby the type of injustice situation – work or private – did not matter.

This result could be due to the fact, that in both situations facets of self-enhancement are violated: there is an unjust loss in both cases (loss of job, loss of resources). This loss of material aspects may be accompanied by a perception of unexpected loss of power and achievement and thus hurt the value of self-enhancement. Except for the specific association of self-enhancement with embitterment, there was no specific relation pattern for the other values. It could be that if an example situation triggers other values, for example, conservation or openness, there could be associations between embitterment and conservation or openness. This should be tested for other scenarios in further research, for example, a situation in which a significant other person acts against a commitment or rule (conservation values may be hurt), or a situation in which hedonistic or cultural activities become regulated and limited (openness values may be hurt).

Although there were no statistically significant differences in the level of belief in a just world in the four groups, persons with high values for self-enhancement reported the highest belief in a just world. This fits to other empirical findings, for example, belief in a just world correlated with achievement-striving and self-discipline (Nudelman & Otto, 2019).

Similar to the general belief in a just world, wisdom was not associated with lower embitterment in reaction to the injustice situation. A similar explanation may be applicable to this finding: Embitterment is not dependent on the degree of wisdom but on the concrete application of wisdom in a concrete situation. In our study, a wisdom scale was used which measures general agreement to wisdom-related attitudes and strategies for solving life problems (Linden et al., 2019). It may be, that persons agree to such general wise ideas, but not all of them apply them in real-life situations (or even not in a sensu imagined situation). This psychological phenomenon of divergence between attitudes and real reactions in concrete situations is well-known from research on the attitude-behavior gap (Kraus, 1995). The discrepancy of attitudes (here: agreement to wisdom ideas) and behavior (react wisely with reduced embitterment in a specific situation) is partly based on the differences in concreteness: Attitudes were here operationalized as rather general wisdom ideas, but situations were concrete and easily imaginable injustice examples.

The findings concerning the impact of values on embitterment reaction are different from an earlier study (Muschalla & von Kenne, 2020): in the 2020 study, a mixed sample of persons in mid-age and with health problems was investigated, with no differences between embittered and non-embittered in self-enhancement and conservation, but greater openness values in the low embittered persons. Thus, there is until now no consistent pattern to be seen and there is no hint that specific values are systematically more or less related to embitterment. Further research is needed on this seemingly situation-dependent varying relationship between values and embitterment proneness.

It may be possible that depending on the situation (i.e., depending on which life values are hurt), different relation patterns with embitterment may occur. While a person’s life values are stable, embitterment is an affect that varies between situations. Thus, the correlation of situational embitterment and different life values may vary depending on sample characteristics and embitterment triggers (here: example situations) when used in sensu exposition experiments.

Those with low injustice perception and low self-enhancement (js) reacted rather “neutral” than embittered to the injustice situation. They also have comparably low scores in wisdom and values. This may support the assumption that values and wisdom attitudes can only be hurt in case they are important to the person (Linden & Arnold, 2021). In case something is not important to a person, it may be perceived with lower affective reactivity, in the present study this means low injustice perception and rather neutral affect.

Limitations of this study are that the sample is not representative of the general population, but mainly comprises younger persons at the entrance of their professional life and family grounding phase. Therefore, the generalizability of the results is limited. The presented injustice situation was given in the form of an in sensu exposition, the participants were not confronted with real injustice situations. A real-life injustice could be perceived differently, potentially with a more severe affect. However, due to ethical and methodological reasons, real-life injustice cannot be experimentally manipulated. Embitterment was measured with one item only. One could argue, that embitterment is a complex emotion. But, it is also a feeling everybody knows (Linden et al., 2009; Linden & Maercker, 2011). In this study, the aim was to assess the momentaneous affect of embitterment, an ad hoc embitterment affect. This seemed best to be measured with one catchy content-valid item.

In conclusion, this study may be understood as a next example adding evidence to the question of relation pattern between values and situational embitterment reactions. Seemingly, concrete injustice perception of a situation and partly life values may have an impact on embitterment reactions, but differently in different injustice situations. Until now, there is no hint that one specific life value is consistently associated with embitterment.

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Advance Article

History

ReceivedJanuary 12, 2023
RevisedAugust 27, 2023
AcceptedDecember 29, 2023
Published onlineMarch 19, 2024

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Distributed as a Hogrefe OpenMind article under the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)

Keywords

Conflict of Interest:

We have no known conflict of interest to declare.

Publication Ethics:

Ethic approval was granted before the start of the study at the Faculty of Life Sciences, Technische Universität Braunschweig (FV-2019-10).

Open Data

: Data are available from Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/ec53h/?view_only=14caf98b58e9406ab7400ccd7ff3a6dc (Grove & Muschalla, 2024).

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No financial support was provided for this research. Open access publication enabled by TU Braunschweig.

Characteristics (predictors)	Step/model in stepwise linear regression analysis	Change in R²/Significant change in F as compared to previous step/model	Beta coefficient (based on model 5, containing all 11 predictors)	Significance p (based on model 5, containing all 11 predictors)
Sex	1	.020/.208	−.100	.199
Age			.004	.955
Professional certification (none versus any completed professional education)			.016	.839
Belief in a Just World (GBJW)	2	.010/.308	.078	.186
Wisdom (12-WD scale)	2	.010/.308	.087	.189
Values (SSVQ): Self-Enhancement (Power, Achievement)	3	.077/.001	−.143	.021
Values (SSVQ): Self-Transcendence (Benevolence, Universalism)			.005	.944
Values (SSVQ): Conservation (Tradition, Conformity, Security)			.020	.762
Values (SSVQ): Openness to Change (Hedonism, Stimulation, Self-direction)			.054	.399
In sensu exposition to private problem or work problem	4	.001/.671	.020	.732
Injustice perception towards the situation exposed to in sensu (higher values = more injust)	5	.210/< .001	−.501	<.001

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Not General Belief in a Just World But Injustice Perception of Concrete Situations Is Associated With Embitterment