Concern for justice linked with reason

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At least that's what say a science study.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/01/concern-for-justice-linked-with-reason

Typical - my subscription to The Journal of Neuroscience has just lapsed.

Really, though, I would have thought that of course it's linked to reason - every aspect of human thought relies on both reason and emotion/sentiment, and they cannot be divided.

I'd need to be able to have a look at the study itself to actually be able to consider the claims made - it might just be the write up/reporting, but there seem to be a lot of unconsidered assumptions/assertions behind the research. But it seems to be saying, people who thought more about something reacted more strongly to it. Which makes sense.

Though the Reason write up conflates 'reacting more strongly' with 'being more concerned', and I'm not sure that follows. It seems to be begging the question. I shall have to think it through more.

It sounds like the contrasts made between people high in "need for cognition" as opposed to people with a "just-world belief" made in my introductory Social Psychology class. People with a "just-world belief" tend to blame suffering people for their situation in order to maintain that belief system: In a just world, victims must have done something to deserve their plight. Whereas people with a "need for cognition" try to figure out the causes of the suffering and see injustice as injustice and therefore something that they should reduce as much as possible.