Empathy as an Antecedent of Social Justice Behavior

This paper examines empathy as an antecedent to perceptions of societal fairness as measured by four different business variables. These include concern for the Occupy Wall Street movement, social justice fairness, corporate social responsibility, and socially responsible attitudes. Previous research on empathy has consistently demonstrated that empathy is an antecedent to both altruistic and prosocial behavior. In addition, research has demonstrated that empathy is related to ethical behavior in business students. Building upon this foundation, this study examines empathy as a construct and the hypothesis that empathy is an antecedent for social justice fairness perceptions. Demonstrating that empathy is linked to social justice variables would have important implications in the selection and development of business students and business academic programs. Moreover, after the recent business scandals in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, selecting