Features of sense of justice of students with different life style indexes

This paper brings forward findings of the study of features of sense of justice of bachelors of various professional orientations by analyzing their relation to legal regulation of life as a certain personal value. Modern general psychological theory of sense and sense-creation is considered as a theoretical basis of the study. This makes it possible to reveal new aspects of sense of justice for the study and supplement its traditional interpretations. Sense of justice, which is often treated as a form of social consciousness, in fact generalizes the idea of a particular person about what is legal and what is not, and is his/her individual, personal sense revealing when he/she understands legal foundations for the existence in the real life world. Using a specially developed questionnaire the author has carried out an empirical research which has made it possible to reveal levels of the development of sense of justice of respondents: low (the respondent is badly informed about legal regulation of his/her life and does not understand the necessity of the knowledge of law and legislation), average (the respondent understands interpersonal forms of sense in legal norms and regulations offered for an assessment, and can interpret their meaning for his/her own life), high (the respondent understands the meaning of legal norms and legislation for society as a whole and for himself/herself, can give them sense-personal interpretations, compare them with various life contexts, distinguish their general and specific characteristics, and the most important, determine their importance for his/her individual life-world). Further the author has carried out psychometric diagnostics using the “Life Style Index” technique. The level of sense of justice is related to certain defense mechanisms of the person. The mechanism of substitution was expressed most dominantly among psychologists with a high level of the development of sense of justice; it was the mechanism of rationalization for lawyers.