The Social Justice Values (SJV) scale, as presented in this work, was developed to assess individuals’ attitudes and behaviors towards the values of social justice. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis were employed to ascertain the validity and reliability of the SJV instrument. The investigations revealed that the scale consists of 17 items across three factors, namely, instrumental values of social justice, social terminal values of social justice, and personal terminal values of social justice. The Cronbach alpha coefficient for the entire scale was 0.893. The nomological validity of the proposed scale was assessed by testing its association with two relevant scales: Distributive Justice and Multidimensional Belief in A Just World. Although the investigations indicated that this scale is a reliable instrument for assessing social justice through values among university students, further studies are required to confirm its validity with other samples.

Religiosity and empathy have been identified as two key variables that may significantly influence an individual’s social justice attitude and behavior. Despite their significance, studies addressing the relationships between these variables are rare. Thus, the present study aims to explore the associations between interpersonal empathy, instrumental religiosity, and social justice values using the conceptual framework of motivated information processing theory. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to assess the hypothetical relationships between these variables. The findings indicate that personal instrumental religiosity, social interaction, and cognitive behavior are positively associated with the level of adherence to both instrumental and social terminal values of social justice. In contrast, social instrumental religiosity exerts only a direct influence on the instrumental values of social justice. This study also revealed the role of social interaction and cognitive behavior as mediators between personal instrumental religiosity and the instrumental and social terminal values of social justice. The findings underscore the imperative for researchers to devise educational programs that acknowledge and promote the significance of religion and empathy in fostering a more equitable and compassionate society.