Kees van den Bos and colleagues at Utrecht University report an intriguing study where they found that mundane aspects of the environment, like, for instance, the mere presence of blinking lights, can lead us to make quicker and more extreme judgments of fairness. In one experiment, the researchers asked pedestrians shopping along the streets of the Netherlands to mentally simulate a scenario whereby a coworker received either the same or a greater job bonus than they did. The (very neat!) manipulation in this study was that half of the participants were asked to imagine this scenario while standing next to a flashing road-work light. Their results are shocking! – When asked to judge the fairness of this unequal bonus distribution, participants standing next to the blinking light generated more extreme judgments than those who were not in its presence. The researchers suggest that this happens because environmental stimuli detected as a potential threat (such as the blinking light) initiates what they refer to as the ‘human alarm system’, which, when activated, leads to the production of quicker and more extreme justice-related judgments (among others). The implications for this research are many and include application to judicial systems and public policy decision-making.
