Distributive justice in Northern Mexico and the US: a cross-cultural comparison

A comparison of distributive justice strategies was made between a collectivistic culture, i.e., Mexico, and an individualistic culture, i.e., the United States. This study is the first to include the effect of ingroup outgroup on the distribution strategies as Fischer and Smith (2003) called for in their extensive meta-analysis of the topic. Distributive justice was operationalized as the monetary rewards given by Northern Mexicans and Americans in sixteen different allocation vignettes. The results showed that the two groups were significantly different in only one of the allocation vignettes. These results indicate a convergence between the cultures of the northern maquiladora region of Mexico and of the United States. Northern Mexicans and Americans were not significantly different in their distributive justice strategies.