Just World Phenomenon Analysis

This eventually leads her to challenge her self concepts to extreme levels, causing her to either liberate herself from the façade she created or sink into the role. Easy A describes many genuine psychological phenomena and I am going to focus on three of them; Cognitive dissonance theory, how societal and cultural norms dictate our attitudes and thoughts, and different ways of persuasion. The cognitive dissonance theory is the feeling of unease that is felt when we act in opposition to our attitudes, which causes a shift of attitude in order to be consistent with our behavior. Easy A depicts strongly the theory of cognitive dissonance on numerous occasions.

"We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we appeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational." - T. S. Eliot Personal bias is a strong motivator, whether we are aware of it or not. It can change the way we view a situation or event, just because of what we choose to pay attention to.

To understand a problem in our society, people must get past stereotypes and learn to understand what is unjust. For example,

Roberto Bolaño is quoted as stating, “People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth.” This quote is related to the novel All American Boys written by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely because the novel includes negative societal perceptions from various characters. Based on their own biases and perspectives of a situation, members of society create negative judgments about others, leading to discrimination and developing racist thinking. Stereotyping, needing to see something to believe it, and jumping to conclusions are all prime examples of negative thinking. By these three effects, personal biases and opinions on others are formed, resulting in the unjust categorization of one community.

Most bias shows itself very discreetly hiding behind walls : ideas we may not know we have a bias about. While other biases are very up front and obvious, these are the prejudgments seen in everyday life. “While you judge me by my outward appearance I am silently doing the same to you, … there's a ninety-percent chance that in both cases our assumptions are wrong.” (Richelle E. Goodrich) Our preconceived notions about others' appearance limit our ability to read people in the correct way because we are stuck seeing one thing.

The just desert is that the punishment is deserved and that criminal sentencing holds criminal offenders morally blameworthy and deserve punishment. This means that moral balance is restored to society wronged by crime. The fourth goal is deterrence (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Deterrence discouragement or prevention of crimes through the fear of punishment.

Often, the way we perceive something is altered or controlled by someone/something. Like mentioned earlier, we have our more ordinary influences, like social norms/expectations. But in many cases our perception is tailored. In Brave New World, the Government had complete control over the society's perception. The Government did this by only allowing people to see what they wanted them to see, and not really supporting personal perception.

Within this framework, individuals are considered to make rational choices, equally capable of reason and therefore shall be deemed responsible for their actions and deterred through potential threat. Today, classical thinking is evident in sentencing via the “just deserts” approach. This approach to sentencing assures that someone who is found guilty of a crime must be punished for the crime. The just deserts approach rejects individual discretion and rehabilitation – insisting “justice must be

Comparable to Mowat, people who are unfamiliar with a subject believe stereotypes that often result in harm to others. Nevertheless, after Mowat crawls into the seemingly empty wolf den to find two wolves watching him, he recognizes his instinct to harm them. Mowat recalls, “If I had had my rifle I believe I might have reacted in brute fury and tried to kill both wolves” (Mowat 245). Thoroughly ashamed of himself for his behavior in this situation, Mowat understands that one’s instincts will always be superior to his or her mind. In this sense, once a person is exposed to a certain stereotype, it is

Everybody has unconscious bias. But what role does it play in our daily lives? And how does it affect us? In the TED talk “What Does My Headscarf Mean to You”, speaker Yassmin Abdel-Magied aims to encourage the audience to acknowledge that everyone has unconscious bias, and to look past their own bias in order to promote equal opportunity, particularly when it comes to the workplace. “We all have our own biases.

Homeless people don’t have the choice that normal people have. They must live a life of poverty and try to rise from the ruins, but it seems so impossible. The story, “What Do Fish Have To Do With Anything?,” by Avi and the problem solution essay “Homeless,” by Anna Quindlen, show how stereotypes affect homeless people. People develop stereotypes by assumptions on homeless people acting differently, causing society to treat homeless people as a group not individuals. Both texts show stereotypes, but in different ways.

Therefore, we interpret further information only to benefit our conception. Furthermore, we consider external information—ones which oppose our conception-- as false. This phenomenon is called confirmative bias. It is a constructive and irrational partiality which is also exhibited by various officers, and it is what may induce corruption. Confirmation bias of police is observable, mainly, within court rulings.

Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, in his book Justice, refers to the “pain of sympathy” felt by many “tenderhearted souls” when they are faced with poverty, on the streets and elsewhere, and how they wish that there was something being done to stop it (35-36). He also speaks about the reaction of “hardhearted folk” who feel “the pain of disgust” upon seeing homelessness in their own communities and have no sense of pity for them (Sandel 36). In pondering human welfare, it is easiest to solve widespread problems by thinking of overall, hypothetical solutions. The issue of poverty in America (in many cases) comes from the socioeconomic class system that traps people in the class from which their parents came. A just society does everything it can to level the metaphorical scales that create this trap so that its people’s accomplishments and welfare reflect their talent and effort in the field.

Just deserts claims that it is the offender’s choice to commit a crime, using the classical theory founded by Cesare Beccaria that states, “It asserts that a person is a rational individual with the free will to make a moral choice whether or not to engage in conduct known to be prohibited” (Starkweather, 1991, p.855). The offender made his choice and therefore must be punished for his act of crime. However, just deserts fails to acknowledge that factors in a child’s upbringing can affect their life choices as an adolescence and adult. As noted by Alley, Minnis, Thompson, Wilson and Gillberg (2014), adults who were “psychically, sexually, and emotionally abused as children were three times more likely than were non-abused adults to act violently as adults” (p.290). Consequently, giving punitive sentences and failing to help them psychologically will not help offenders when they are released back into the community.

Therefore, finding an explanation through psychology, for the different specific reactions that human beings exhibit is important. Social psychology is an important sector of psychology that takes interpersonal relationships into consideration. Over the years, many theories have been developed to aid in explaining human behavior, especially ones that administer social experiences. The main focus of this assignment is the analysis of the cognitive dissonance theory in social psychology. Cognitive dissonance theory attempts to explain the human behavior through cognition, in which individuals always look for stability in their attitudes and behaviors (Festinger, 1985).