Procedural fairness, outcome favorability, and judgments of an authority's responsibility

Fairness theory (R. Folger & R. Cropanzano, 1998, 2001) postulates that, particularly in the face of unfavorable outcomes, employees judge an organizational authority to be more responsible for their outcomes when the authority exhibits lower procedural fairness. Three studies lent empirical support to this notion. Furthermore, 2 of the studies showed that attributions of responsibility to the authority mediated the relationship between the authority's procedural fairness and employees' reactions to unfavorable outcomes. The findings (a) provide support for a key assumption of fairness theory, (b) help to account for the pervasive interactive effect of procedural fairness and outcome favorability on employees' attitudes and behaviors, and (c) contribute to an emerging trend in justice research concerned with how people use procedural fairness information to make attributions of responsibility for their outcomes. Practical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research also are discussed.     

The effects of young children's affiliations with prosocial peers on subsequent emotionality in peer interactions

Preschoolers’ (60 boys and 64 girls, M age = 50.73 months) affiliations with prosocial peers were observed in naturally occurring interactions and then examined in relation to positive and negative emotionality within their peer interactions one semester later. Greater affiliation with prosocial peers in the fall was related to enhanced positive emotionality (especially for girls) and decreased negative emotionality (especially for boys) in later peer interactions. These findings held when initial levels of the emotion were controlled and were found above and beyond variations in classroom levels of prosociality. The findings suggest that peers exert influence in early childhood and that these effects can positively affect the quality of young children's later peer interactions.     

Toward understanding why fairness matters: the influence of mortality salience on reactions to procedural fairness

This article focuses on the question of why fairness matters to people. On the basis of fairness heuristic theory, the authors argue that people especially need fairness when they are uncertain about things that are important to them. Following terror management theory, the authors focus on a basic kind of human uncertainty: fear of death. Integrating these two theoretical frameworks, it is proposed that thinking about their mortality should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of three experiments support the authors' line of reasoning: Asking participants to think about their mortality led to stronger fair process effects (positive effects of perceived procedural fairness on subsequent reactions) than not asking them to think about mortality. It is argued that these findings suggest that fairness especially matters to people when they are uncertain about fundamental aspects of human life such as human mortality.     

A longitudinal analysis of organizational fairness: an examination of reactions to tenure and promotion decisions

Most organizational justice research takes a cross-sectional approach to examining the relationship between perceived fairness and individuals' attitudes. This study examines the effect of procedural and distributive justice over time. It is suggested that individuals acquire more information and experience with procedures and outcomes over time. These changes in information and experience affect the influence of procedural and distributive justice on organizational attitudes. Faculty perceptions of tenure and promotion decisions were assessed 3 times (preallocation, short-term postallocation, long-term postallocation) over a 2-year period. Results generally supported the hypotheses. Procedural justice was most influential prior to and soon after outcome decisions were made. Distributive justice was most influential 1 year later.     

The role of fairness perceptions and accountability attributions in predicting reactions to organizational events

Researchers have found that fairness perceptions relate to many different outcomes (e.g., J. A. Colquitt, D. E. Conlon, M. J. Wesson, C. Porter, & K. Y. Ng, 2001). However, they cannot predict when an employee will react against a specific individual or against the organization itself. To address this question, the authors integrated the fairness and blame-attributions literatures. They predicted that blame attributions would strengthen the relationship between fairness perceptions and reactions to specific organizational agents. They surveyed 48 employees who believed there were inaccuracies in their most recent performance appraisals. Employees reported perceptions of fairness and attributions of blame to both their supervisor and the organization and rated their commitment to both targets. Supervisors simultaneously rated each employee's citizenship behavior toward each target. For supervisor reactions and organizational citizenship behavior directed at the organization, blame and fairness perceptions interacted; unique positive reactions were elicited only when the supervisor was perceived as blameless and fair.     

Some effects of exposure to a heat stressor upon the rat's subsequent reactions to that stressor

In six experiments, rats were placed on a heated plate on two occasions (test and retest), and the latencies with which they licked their paws were taken as an index of their sensitivity to nociceptive stimulation. Experiment 1 provided evidence that rats were selectively analgesic on retest depending upon the intensity of the heat experienced on the initial test. Experiment 2 showed that this analgesia was recruited rapidly and was long-lasting, as it was observed when retest was scheduled as early as 0.2 and as late as 48 h after the initial exposure to the hot-plate. Experiment 3 documented a role for conditioning processes, as this analgesia was removed by an extinction-like procedure conducted between test and retest. Experiments 4 and 5 provided evidence for a non-opioid mechanism of pain control, because the analgesia was not diminished by the opioid antagonist, naloxone, nor by a history of morphine injections. These experiments also revealed that the analgesia observed on retest was enhanced and reduced when rats were given naloxone and morphine, respectively, on the initial test. Finally, Experiment 6 showed that the analgesia on retest summated with that produced by morphine. The results were taken to mean that the hot-plate assay for analgesia can itself activate endogenous mechanisms of pain control, and some speculations were offered as to how this occurred.     

The developmental roots of fairness: infants' reactions to equal and unequal distributions of resources

The problem of how to distribute available resources among members of a group is a central aspect of social life. Adults react negatively to inequitable distributions and several studies have reported negative reactions to inequity also in non-human primates and dogs. We report two experiments on infants' reactions to equal and unequal distributions. In two experiments, infants' looking times and manual choices provide, for the first time, converging evidence suggesting that infants aged 12 to 18 months (mean age 16 months) attend to the outcomes of distributive actions to evaluate agents' actions and to reason about agents' dispositions. The results provide support for recent theoretical proposals on the developmental roots of social evaluation skills and a sense of fairness.     

The effects of control on perceived fairness of procedures and outcomes

On the basis of Thibaut and Walker's theory of procedural justice, it was predicted that subjects who experienced control through choosing a trial decision rule would be more satisfied with the outcome of a dispute and the conflict resolution procedure than would yoked subjects who were not given control. Two additional conditions were added to the design in order to investigate the extent to which control had an influence on trial evaluations independent of being allowed to discuss the rules and obtaining a preferred rule in the absence of actual choice. Regardless of role in the dispute (accuser, accused, or no knowledge) and the nature of the rule adopted, those subjects who exercised control through rule choice evaluated all aspects of the trial experience more positively than subjects who did not exercise control through rule choice. The results also revealed that discussion of the rules and obtaining the preferred rule without choice contributed positively to evaluations of the trial procedure and verdict.     

The effects of trust in authority and procedural fairness on cooperation

The present research examined the effect of procedural fairness and trust in an authority on people's willingness to cooperate with the authority across a wide range of social situations. Prior research has shown that the presence of information about whether an authority can be trusted moderates the effect of procedural fairness. If no trust information is available, procedural fairness influences people's reactions. This is not the case when information about the trustworthiness of the authority is present. In the present article, it is argued that information about whether the authority can or cannot be trusted may also moderate the effect of procedural fairness in predicting levels of cooperation. Assuming that the use of fair procedures by authorities that cannot be trusted is less influential than is the enactment of procedures by trustworthy authorities, it is predicted that trust in authority moderates the influence of procedural fairness on cooperation in such a way that procedural fairness has a positive effect on cooperation primarily when trust in authority is high. Results from 4 studies (2 experimental studies and 2 field studies) provide supportive evidence for this interaction.     

Procedural fairness in ultimatum bargaining: Effects of interactional fairness and formal procedure on respondents’ reactions to unequal offers1

Abstract: Ninety‐nine Japanese students received one of three offers in an ultimatum bargaining scenario: unfavorable and unequal; equal; or favorable but unequal. These offers were determined by either the other participant or by a computerized lottery. We also manipulated the arbitrariness of the role assignment procedure. Participants perceived the intentional small offer as more unfair in the interactional sense than the unintentional small offer, while they perceived the same offers as unfair in the distributive sense, regardless of intentionality. The intentional small offer was more likely to be rejected than the unintentional small offer. Participants perceived the arbitrary procedure of the role assignment as highly unfair, whereas the difference of arbitrariness in role assignment procedures had no significant impact on their reactions to the offer. Acceptance of the offer was strongly determined by interactional fairness, as well as by distributive fairness, and these types of fairness were influenced by different situational characteristics, such as intentionality, the size of the offer, and the equality of the offer.     

Uncertainty management: the influence of uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness.

On the basis of fairness heuristic theory, it is argued in this article that people especially need fairness when they are reminded about aspects of their lives that make them uncertain. It is therefore proposed that thinking about uncertainty should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of 3 experiments support this line of reasoning: Asking (vs. not asking) participants 2 questions that solicited their thoughts and feelings of being uncertain led to stronger effects of perceived procedural fairness on participants' affective reactions toward the way they were treated. It is argued that these findings suggest that fairness matters to people especially when they are trying to deal with things that make them uncertain. An implication of the current findings therefore may be that fairness is important to people because it gives them an opportunity to manage uncertain aspects of their lives.     

The effects of managerial regulatory fit priming on reactions to explanations

We investigated the interactive effects of regulatory focus priming and message framing on the perceived fairness of unfavorable events. We hypothesized that individuals’ perceptions of fairness are higher when they receive a regulatory focus prime (promotion versus prevention) that is congruent with the framing of an explanation (gain versus loss), as opposed to one that is incongruent. We also hypothesized that these effects are mediated by counterfactual thinking. Three studies revealed that primed regulatory fit (promotion/gain or prevention/loss) led to higher levels of justice perceptions than regulatory misfit (promotion/loss or prevention/gain). Additionally, “could” and “should” counterfactuals partially mediated the relationship between regulatory fit and interactional justice (Study 3).     

The effects of post-acquisition-trial sodium amylobarbitone on subsequent extinction behaviour

In a one-trial-per-day runway task, previously trained rats were injected via temporary intravenous cannulae with Sodium Amylobarbitone (SA) 15 mg/kg, or saline, immediately following each of six acquisition trials, according to one of four regimes. The animals were then extinguished with no further drug or saline treatments. Those that had been consistently reinforced (CR) and consistently treated with saline extinguished faster than those that had been partially reinforced (PR) and consistently treated with saline: the brief PR schedule thus generated a typical PR extinction effect. PR animals that had received SA treatments following nonrewarded trials and saline treatments following rewarded trials extinguished faster than those that had received the opposite treatments. Post-nonreward SA treatment during acquisition thus led to a pseudo CR extinction effect, while post-reward SA treatment in acquisition led to an undistorted PR extinction effect. The results are interpreted as showing that there is a critical period occurring between some tens of seconds and a very few minutes after frustrative nonreward which is vulnerable to SA in a non-state-dependent manner, and on which frustrative nonreward's control of subsequent behaviour depends.     

The effects of humor and depression labels on reactions to social comments

Humor is generally considered to facilitate social relationships, whereas depression has been related to difficulties in relationships. This study investigated the effects of labeling social comments as humorous, as well as labeling the presenter of the comments as feeling depressed, on recipients' reactions to these comments. To this end, 350 university students were presented with vignettes describing four styles of comments (i.e., affiliative, self-enhancing, self-defeating, and aggressive) made by a casual acquaintance. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. These conditions varied in terms of whether the four styles of comments were described as humorous or not, and whether the acquaintance making the comments was described as feeling depressed or not. Findings indicated that humor led to more positive reactions. Labeling the acquaintance as depressed led to more negative reactions than when the acquaintance was labeled non-depressed, particularly when the comments were self-defeating. Interestingly, when the acquaintance was described as feeling depressed, affiliative comments made in a humorous fashion led to more positive reactions than did non-humorous affiliative comments. These findings are discussed in terms of the effects of humor and depression on interpersonal interactions.     

Unprogrammed effects of training high-status peers to interact with severely handicapped children.

We examined the effects of a peer initiation intervention with high- and low-status nonhandicapped students on the behavior of untrained peers toward handicapped students. In the context of a counterbalanced withdrawal design, high- and low-status nonhandicapped students were taught to direct social initiations to eight severely handicapped students during recess activities. The interactions of the high-status students resulted in higher levels of initiations by untrained peers toward the handicapped students than did the interactions of the low-status students. Social response levels were also differentially affected by the status of the peer initiator.     

The effects of objective career success on subsequent subjective career success

We use a sample of working adults (N = 638) to explore the effects of past objective career success (mobility, promotions, and salary change) on current subjective success (human capital assessments by one's managers, core self evaluations, satisfaction with one's career) by gender, across an economic cycle (2004–2011), controlling for career stage. Results support a strong influence of past promotions, and less so for salary changes, on subjective career success. These effects were stronger for men and during the economic contraction, with managers being affected in their assessments based on the employees' past promotions. In contrast, past job mobility did not relate to subjective career success for either gender in periods of economic expansion or contraction. Evidence for an interactive perspective of career success whereby past objective success affects current subjective success is presented, as well as potential implications of the findings.     

The effects of increasing familiarity on infants' reactions to adult strangers

The influence of the presence and novelty of an adult stranger on the reactions of 12-mo-old infants was investigated. Subjects were placed near their mothers in a room containing a new toy and either the same, a different, or no adult stranger for 8 4-min trials. Results indicated that the Same-Adult Group spent more time near the adult, less time near and touching their mothers, and more time near and touching the toys than the Different-Adult Group. These trends emerged as the trials progressed, and evidenced the Same-Adult Group's growing familiarity with the adult. The No-Adult Group spent less time near or touching their mothers and more time near or touching the toys than the Different-Adult Group, but did not differ from the Same-Adult Group on these responses. The findings suggest that fearful or cautious reactions to adult strangers disappear rapidly as the adult becomes familiar and point to the value of studying the process whereby the infant becomes familiar with new people.