Effects of Interpersonal Affect Upon Fairness Judgment

We examined the effect of interpersonal affect on fairness judgment. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to write down fair and unfair behaviors that positive and negative persons performed, giving as many examples as possible within 5 minutes. Participants wrote more fair behaviors for the positive person than for the negative, and wrote more unfair behaviors for the negative person than for the positive. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects rated the perceived frequency of 60 behaviors (30 fair and 30 unfair). In both experiments, they evaluated fair behaviors by the positive person to be more frequent than those of the negative, and unfair behaviors by the negative person to be more frequent than those of the positive. The results indicate that fairness judgment is influenced by the participant's positive and negative affect toward the judged object. The effects of positive and negative interpersonal affect on fairness judgment are discussed.     

Vulnerable Populations in Research: The Case of the Seriously Ill

This paper advances a new criterion of a vulnerable population in research. According to this criterion, there are consent-based and fairness-based reasons for calling a group vulnerable. The criterion is then applied to the case of people with serious illnesses. It is argued that people with serious illnesses meet this criterion for reasons related to consent. Seriously ill people have a susceptibility to “enticing offers” that hold out the prospect of removing or alleviating illness, and this susceptibility reduces their ability to safeguard their own interests. This explains the inclusion of people with serious illnesses in the Belmont Report’s list of populations needing special protections, and supports the claim that vulnerability is the rule, rather than the exception, in biomedical research.     

Fairness

The main body of this paper assesses a leading recent theory of fairness, a theory put forward by John Broome. I discuss Broome's theory partly because of its prominence and partly because I think it points us in the right direction, even if it takes some missteps. In the course of discussing Broome's theory, I aim to cast light on the relation of fairness to consistency, equality, impartiality, desert, rights, and agreements. Indeed, before I start assessing Broome's theory, I discuss two very popular conceptions of fairness that contrast with his. One of these very popular conceptions identifies fairness with the equal and impartial application of rules. The other identifies fairness with all-things-considered moral rightness.     

Event justice and social entity justice: A cross-lagged analysis

IntroductionThe life of organizations is punctuated by a wide range of managerial decisions (e.g., hiring and selection procedure, performance appraisal, new working methods). Facing such events, employees evaluate the fairness of the situation experienced (event justice). They can also examine the fairness demonstrated by a specific entity, such as the organization or the supervisor (social entity justice). So far, little is known about how justice judgments about events vs. entities are related to each other, especially in a context of organizational change.ObjectiveBuilding on decision-making and organizational justice literature, we investigate the directionality of the causal relationships between event justice and social entity justice within a context of organizational change in a Belgian company (a significant reorganization at the level of the organization chart resulting in different changes for employees).MethodsWe used two samples (team leaders and executives) and realized a cross-lagged panel analysis with two measurement times.ResultsThe study shows that, in both samples, employees’ fairness perceptions about their organization (social entity justice) influence their interpretation of the fairness of subsequent events involving the organization (event justice).ConclusionBuilding and fostering a climate of justice is therefore of primary importance to organizations, since global fairness perceptions about the organization may help employees to perceive a specific event, such as an organizational change, as being fair.     

The engineer’s moral right to reputational fairness

This essay explores the issue of the moral rights of engineers. An historical case study is presented in which an accomplished, loyal, senior engineer was apparently wronged as a result of actions taken by his employer in pursuit of legitimate business interests. Belief that the engineer was wronged is justified by showing that what happened to him violated what can validly be termed one of his moral rights as an engineer: the right to reputational fairness. It is then argued that, this right notwithstanding, under certain circumstances it is morally permissible for employers to override it. The paper concludes by identifying two complementary facets of this right, discussing its scope, and indicating what is required of employers obliged to respect it in two types of action contexts. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1993. I am indebted to Stephanie J. Bird, Taft Broome, Deborah Johnson, Carl Mitcham, Walter Vincenti, Vivian Weil, and Caroline Whitbeck for helpful critical comments. Professor of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management and, by courtesy, of Civil Engineering, and in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, School of Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, 94305-2120.     

When does anger evoke self‐interest and fairness motives? The moderating effects of perceived responsibility for needs

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that anger evokes both self‐interest and fairness motives, but it is unclear what factors determine the evocation of these motives. We examined the idea that the type of relationship, indexed by the perceived responsibility for a partner's needs, moderates the effect of anger on self‐interest and fairness motives by constructing the following hypotheses: Participants will be motivated to protect their self‐interests when they feel anger toward an other who they perceive has the responsibility for needs, while this will not be the case when they feel anger toward an other who they do not perceive has a responsibility for needs (Hypothesis 1), and participants will be motivated to restore fairness regardless of whether the target of anger has a responsibility for needs or not (Hypothesis 2). The Japanese participants in this study rated their anger experiences in terms of the intensity of angry feelings, the perception of responsibility of the other for their own needs, the closeness of the relationship prior to the experience of anger, and the motives that were evoked. Regression analysis supported both hypotheses, implying that concerns related to self‐interest in close relationships reflect the desire for the maintenance of these relationships.     

Cross-cultural differences in distributive justice: a comparison of Turkey and the U.S

When allocators make decisions about distributing resources, they face a dilemma if the expectations for consequences that will flow from particular choices are incongruent with each other. For example, a certain allocation choice might be expected to make an allocator appear warm and likable but unfair. Previous research has found that culture can shape these perceptions and, thus, their congruence or incongruence. The present study further investigated these ideas. Differences between Turkish and U.S. students' perceptions of allocators who distributed resources on the basis of merit vs. need were investigated. Results revealed an allocation dilemma among the U.S. but not among the Turkish students. Specifically, the U.S. students perceived greater incongruence among allocation consequences for both merit and need choices than did the students from Turkey for whom perceptions of allocator's fairness were more aligned with perceptions of allocator's warmth.     

Critical notice of Aaron James,Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy

Nobody has offered such a comprehensive philosophical approach to trade. Nonetheless, James's approach does not succeed. First, we explore James's constructivist method, which does less work than he suggests. The second topic is James's take on the different ‘grounds’ of justice. We explore the shortcomings of approaches that focus exclusively on trade. Our third topic is why James thinks trade is such a ground. The fourth topic is how James argues for his proposed ‘structural equity.’ This proposal remains under-argued. Our fifth topic is to explore why structural equity would generate several specific principles. Finally, we discuss James's notion of autarky. Autarky sets the benchmark for James's ideas about how to divide gains of trade. We doubt that it can do so.     

Social Trust: Fairness Matters More Than Homogeneity

This article explores whether homogeneity or fairness better explains generalized interpersonal trust across countries. Although some research suggests that ethnic diversity and income heterogeneity have a negative impact on social trust, I argue that cross‐national variations in social trust are better explained by fairness: fair procedural rules (democracy), fair administration of rules (freedom from corruption), and fair income distribution (relatively equal but also unskewed). This expectation is confirmed by a multilevel analysis of data from the World Values Surveys and European Values Study covering 170,000 individuals in 80 countries.     

最后通牒博弈任务中的印象调控过程

通过操纵最后通牒博弈任务中的提议者方案类型的设计,探索了在连续重复的博弈任务中提议者印象对回应者决策行为的影响,结果表明：（1）在与同一提议者完成的多轮最后通牒博弈任务中,回应者会自发地对提议者印象进行调控,提议者印象影响了回应者的决策思考过程;（2）提议方案影响回应者的决策结果,在过度受益与过度受损两种不公平方案下,回应者的决策行为相反;（3）最后通牒博弈任务中表现出的公平是一种策略性公平,而非真正信念水平的公平。