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First, a synopsis of the major changes of natural science, mathematics and philosophy within the 17th century shall highlight the birth of the new age of science and technology. Based on Fermat's principle of the shortest light‐way and Galilei's first attempt of an approximative solution of the so‐called Brachistochrone problem using a quarter of the circle, Johann Bernoulli published a competition for this problem in 1696, and six solutions were submitted by the most famous scientists of the time and published in 1697, even though the variational calculus was only published in 1744 by Euler for the first time. Especially the analytical solution of Jakob Bernoulli contains already the main idea of Euler's variational calculus, i.e. to vary only one function value at a time using a finite difference method and proceeding to the infinitesimal limit. Also Leibniz' geometric solution is very remarkable, realizing a direct discrete variational method geometrically which was invented numerically much later in the 19th century by Ritz and Galerkin and generalized to the finite element method by introducing test and trial functions in finite subspaces. A new finite element solution of the non‐linear Brachistochrone problem concludes the paper. It is important to recognize that besides the roots of variational calculus also the first formulations of conservation laws in mechanics and their applications originated in the 17th century.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the influence of applicants' justice beliefs (i.e. belief in a just world and belief in tests) on justice expectations with respect to a forthcoming application for the job of prison guard. Further, it aims to study the moderating role of direct experiences on the relationship between beliefs and justice expectations.

A written survey was administered to 803 applicants, just before the start of the selection procedure. Data were self‐reported and collected at one point in time.

Significant positive relationships were found between both beliefs (i.e. belief in a just world and belief in tests) on procedural and distributive justice expectations. Moreover, the relationship between belief in tests and both types of justice expectations was stronger among experienced applicants. Conversely, the relationship between belief in a just world and distributive justice expectations was stronger among inexperienced applicants. This moderation was not found with respect to procedural justice expectations.

Insight into how justice expectations are formed in selection contexts, and consequently, how organizations can influence these expectations, is largely missing. Bell, Ryan, and Wiechmann provided a conceptual model on antecedents of justice expectations but its theoretical underpinning is rather weak and not well‐understood. Construal level theory was used in this study as a theoretical basis to predict how applicants might form justice expectations with respect to future selection procedures.