ABSTRACT
The social psychology of justice has attracted my research interest from the early seventies of the last century to the present time, although with different foci. More recently, I have become involved in studying justice-related issues of the division of family work, and household labor in particular. My interest in that topic originated in the fact that the division of household labor provides an opportunity to study the role of justice evaluation with respect to the distribution of negatively valued outcomes and conditions, such as burdens and duties. This was of interest because previous justice research has nearly exclusively focused on the distribution of positively valued outcomes and conditions. In the meantime, I have become also interested in the division of family work as a research topic in itself because it is a pressing and challenging topic, both at the micro level of close relationships and families and the macro level of society. The present account discusses some benefits and costs of bridging social psychological theory and research on justice with the study of the division of family work between the sexes, and the social issue of reconciling family and professional work. Two kinds of bridging are in the focus of the discussion. First, bridging between theory-driven or “fundamental” research and problem-driven or “applied” research. Second, bridging between a micro-level perspective dealing with intrapersonal and interpersonal processes and a macro-level perspective dealing with societal structures and processes.
