How Gender and Race Influence Responses to Injustice Associated with Strain

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Strain Theory

Abstract

Gender and race are important factors that condition perceptions of justice and how one responds to injustice associated with strain. Due to the influence of gender on emotional and behavioral responses to injustice and the influence of race on the experience of strain, males and non-whites are more likely than females and whites to respond to strain with criminal behavior. Less is known, however, regarding how the various types of injustice (distributive, procedural, and interactional), combine to affect prosocial responses to injustice by race and gender. A vignette that depicted a distributive injustice and manipulated levels of procedural and interactional injustice was randomly assigned to a sample of undergraduate students. Logit and OLS regressions reveal that the although criminal responses to injustice are moderated by gender and race in that non-whites are more likely to intend to respond violently to injustice, prosocial responses are not. In addition, when a distributive injustice is present, interactional injustice emerged as a stronger predictor of criminal behavior than procedural injustice. Implications for the relationship that gender and race have in affecting justice preferences and behavioral responses to injustice are discussed.

Author

• Heather L. Scheuerman, James Madison University