Social Psychology and Justice [1 ed.] 9780367432898, 9780367432904, 9781003002291

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of contributors
1. The Study of Justice in Social Psychology and Related Fields
Motivating versus Motivated Justice Processes
Paradigms in the Social Psychology of Justice
Applications of the Social Psychology of Justice
The Next Frontiers
References
2. The Biology of Fairness
The Evolution of Fairness
Responses to Inequity in Primates
Responses in Other Species Support the Hypotheses from Primates
Responses in Young Children
The Evolution of Fairness
Where to from Here?
Notes
Literature Cited
3. Justification and Rationalization: Causes, Boundaries and Consequences of Motivated Justice Perceptions
Motivated Cognition
Why Are People Motivated to See the World as Just?
When Do People Use Motivated Cognition to Rationalize and Justify?
What Are the Consequences of the Justice Motive?
Conclusion
References
4. Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Psychology of Fairness
Origins of Fairness Heuristic Theory
Elements of Fairness Heuristic Theory
Moderation of the Fairness Effects
Is Fairness Heuristic Theory Too Cognitive?
Fairness Heuristic Theory Revisited
References
5. Integrating Three Theoretical Traditions in Distributive Justice and Social Exchange Research
Introduction
Compare and Contrast
Future Directions and General Discussion
Author Contributions
Conflict of Interest Statement
Notes
References
6. A
Fairness Theory Update
A
Fairness Theory Update
Perceived Fairness: It Is All Relative
Referent Cognitions Theory
From RCT to FT
Research Related to FT
FT, Justice, and the Construct of Deonance
Conclusion
References
7. Procedural Justice and Policing
Introduction
Policing and Crime Control
Popular Legitimacy
Does the Public Trust the Police?
Procedural Justice and Policing
Why Procedural Justice?
Why Does Legitimacy Matter?
What Shapes Legitimacy? The Centrality of Procedural Justice
The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice
Procedural Justice in Management
Procedural Justice in the General Criminal Justice System
Summary: Procedural Justice Outside Policing
Procedural Justice in Policing
Objective Coding of Police Behavior
The Nagin-Telep Critique
What Is Procedural Justice?
Internal Department Dynamics
Officer Safety
Self-Legitimacy
Implications for Policing
References
8. Injustice and Violent Extremism: Methodological Directions for Future Justice Research
Radicalization by Means of Injustice Judgments
Towards Violent Extremism
Future Directions in Psychological Research
Coda
References
9. New Directions of Research in Fairness and Legal Authority: A
Focus on Causal Mechanisms
Everyday Policing
Why Might Prior Levels of Fairness and/or Legitimacy
Play a Role in Fairness Perception?
Identity and Power as Mechanisms for the Procedural Justice-legitimacy Relationship
Statistical Tools to Estimate Causal Mechanisms
Discussion
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
10. Organizational Justice is Alive and Well and Living Elsewhere (But Not Too Far Away)
Chapter Overview
Additional Evidence that Organizational Justice Is Alive
and Well and Living Elsewhere
Discussion
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
11. Organizational Justice and Workplace Emotion
Overview of Organizational Justice
Justice and Emotion
Question #1: What Are Emotions?
Question #2: How Are Emotions Created?
Question #3: How Does Affect Change Justice Behaviors?
Question #4: What are the Implications of Emotional States for Entity Justice?
Conclusion
Note
References
12. The Psychology of Perceived Justice in Shared Health Care Decision Making
Introduction
The Shared Decision-making Movement in Health Care
How Does Perceived Justice Work in Health Care?
Procedural Organizational Justice in Health Care Services
The Psychology of Voice in Health Care (How Much Does
a Procedure Allow Patients to Express Their Ideas?)
Implications for Shared Decision-Making Research in Health Care
References:
Index

Citation preview

Social Psychology and Justice

This ground-breaking new volume reviews and extends theory and research on the psychology of justice in social contexts, exploring the dynamics of fairness judgments and their consequences. Perceptions of fairness, and the factors that cause and are caused by fairness perceptions, have long been an important part of social psychology. Featuring work from leading scholars on psychological processes involved in reactions to fairness, as well as the applications of justice research to government institutions, policing, medical care and the development of radical and extremist behavior, the book expertly brings together two traditionally distinct branches of social psychology: social cognition and interpersonal relations. Examining how people judge whether the treatment they experience from others is fair and how this effects their attitudes and behaviors, this essential collection draws on theory and research from multiple disciplines as it explores the dynamics of fairness judgments and their consequences. Integrating theory on interpersonal relations and social cognition, and featuring innovative biological research, this is the ideal companion for senior undergraduates and graduates, as well as researchers and scholars interested in the social psychology of justice.

E. Allan Lind is a professor emeritus at Duke University. He has been engaged in research and theory development on the social psychology of justice for almost 50 years. He has been on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of New Hampshire, and Duke University. He also served as a research scientist at the Federal Judicial Center, the American Bar Foundation, and the RAND Corporation. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Frontiers in Social Psychology Series Editors: Arie W. Kruglanski, University of Maryland at College Park Joseph P. Forgas, University of New South Wales

Frontiers of Social Psychology is a series of domain-specific handbooks. Each volume provides readers with an overview of the most recent theoretical, methodological, and practical developments in a substantive area of social psychology, in greater depth than is possible in general social psychology handbooks. The editors and contributors are all internationally renowned scholars whose work is at the cutting edge of research. Scholarly, yet accessible, the volumes in the Frontiers series are an essential resource for senior undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, and practitioners and are suitable as texts in advanced courses in specific subareas of social psychology. Published Titles Social Psychology and Justice E. Allan Lind Measurement in Social Psychology Blanton, LaCroix, & Webster Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction James E. Maddux Positive Psychology Dana S. Dunn The Politics of Social Psychology Crawford and Jussim Computational Social Psychology Vallacher, Read, & Nowak For continually updated information about published and forthcoming titles in the Frontiers of Social Psychology series, please visit: www. routledge.com/psychology/series/FSP

Social Psychology and Justice Edited by E. Allan Lind

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, E. Allan Lind; individual chapters, the contributors The right of E. Allan Lind to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-43289-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-43290-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00229-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK

To Rosey

Contents

List of contributors 1 The Study of Justice in Social Psychology and Related Fields

ix 1

E. ALLAN LIND

2 The Biology of Fairness

21

SARAH F. BROSNAN

3 Justification and Rationalization: Causes, Boundaries and Consequences of Motivated Justice Perceptions

46

HOLLY R. ENGSTROM, ADAM ALIC, AND KRISTIN LAURIN

4 Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Psychology of Fairness

75

E. ALLAN LIND

5 Integrating Three Theoretical Traditions in Distributive Justice and Social Exchange Research

93

ROBERT J. MACCOUN AND SARAH POLCZ

6 A Fairness Theory Update

110

ROBERT FOLGER AND JIGYASHU SHUKLA

7 Procedural Justice and Policing

134

TOM R. TYLER

8 Injustice and Violent Extremism: Methodological Directions for Future Justice Research KEES VAN DEN BOS

162

viii Contents 9 New Directions of Research in Fairness and Legal Authority: A Focus on Causal Mechanisms 181 JONATHAN JACKSON AND KRISZTIÁN PÓSCH

10 Organizational Justice is Alive and Well and Living Elsewhere (But Not Too Far Away)

213

JOEL BROCKNER AND BATIA M. WIESENFELD

11 Organizational Justice and Workplace Emotion

243

RUSSELL S. CROPANZANO, MAUREEN L. AMBROSE AND PHOENIX VAN WAGONER

12 The Psychology of Perceived Justice in Shared Health Care Decision Making

284

DIANA PÉREZ-ARECHAEDERRA

Index

295

Contributors

E. Allan Lind Duke University Sarah F. Brosnan Departments of Psychology and Philosophy, Neuroscience Institute and the Language Research Center, Georgia State University and UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Holly R. Engstrom, Adam Alic, and Kristin Laurin University of British Columbia Robert J. MacCoun Stanford Law School and Freeman-Spogli Institute, Stanford University Sarah Polcz Stanford Law School, Stanford University Robert Folger and Jigyashu Shukla University of Central Florida Tom R. Tyler Yale Law School Kees van den Bos Utrecht University Jonathan Jackson Department of Methodology, LSE Krisztián Pósch Department of Methodology, LSE Joel Brockner Columbia University Batia M. Wiesenfeld New York University Russell S. Cropanzano Leeds School of Business University of Colorado at Boulder Maureen L. Ambrose University of Central Florida College of Business Administration Phoenix Van Wagoner Leeds School of Business University of Colorado at Boulder Diana Pérez-Arechaederra ESCP Business School. Management Department. Madrid Campus

1

The Study of Justice in Social Psychology and Related Fields E. Allan Lind

The social psychology of justice and fairness is a topic that lies at the core of our lives as social beings. Perceptions of fairness are quintessentially social because they address judgments of how one is treated by or relative to other people. As will be seen in the various chapters of this book, the social psychology of justice lies at the intersection of two major subdisciplines of our science—social cognition and interpersonal relations/group processes: judgments of fairness are profoundly affected by, and also themselves have profound effects on, a variety of cognitive and group dynamic processes. Perhaps a good place to begin is with a few comments on terms and distinctions used in the social psychology of justice. First, by and large scholars in this field use the terms “justice” and “fairness” interchangeably, and they generally use both terms to refer to subjective assessments of fairness. Occasionally a distinction is made between “justice” as referring to formal allocations or processes and “fairness” as referring to informal or everyday interactions, but most often there is little distinction made between the two words. Thus, it is not unusual to see scholars talk of research on “justice judgments” when these judgments are in fact assessed with survey items asking about “fairness.” As Mikula (2005) notes, we sometimes fail to point out that we are studying what people perceive to be fair, not what is fair in some objective or absolute sense. We are almost always talking about perceptions of fairness. A distinction that is often used is that between “distributive justice” (or “outcome justice”) and “procedural justice.” I will return to this distinction later in the chapter, but for the moment it is sufficient to note that people can experience fair or unfair treatment both in terms of the outcomes they receive and in terms of the way they are treated by formal procedures or informal social process. Distributive justice was the first aspect of fair treatment to receive substantial attention in social psychology (see, e.g., Adams, 1963, 1965), and the outcome fairness issues that are at the core of distributive justice correspond more closely with the meaning of fairness in everyday language. However, judgments

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E. Allan Lind

of the fairness of procedure and process, which engaged the attention of social psychologists a bit later (see, e.g., Lind & Tyler, 1988; Thibaut and Walker, 1975; Walker, LaTour, Lind, & Thibaut, 1974), have been found to be just as powerful—and often more powerful—in their psychological consequences.

Motivating versus Motivated Justice Processes Another fundamental distinction in work on the psychology of justice concerns the overall direction of causality between fairness beliefs and other cognitions. Within the social psychology of justice there have been, from the very beginning, two distinct causal patterns that have engaged our attention. Many justice scholars have explored how various experiences affect perceptions of fairness and how those perceptions of fairness then cause changes in subsequent behavior or attitudes. Other scholars have looked at how other psychological factors—especially balancerelated desires for a “just world” or the need to protect one’s social identity—cause the perceiver to distort fairness judgments. Consideration of both directions of causality is seen in one of the earliest theoretical works on the psychology of justice, Stacey Adams’ Equity Theory (Adams, 1963, 1965). Equity theory proposed that unfair outcome distributions could cause changes in behavior, but it also suggested that changes in attitudes could be undertaken to make the unfairness more palatable. Equity distress from overpayment, for example, was seen as something that could prompt people to perform better as they attempted to deserve previously unfair positive outcomes, but the perceived inequity could also, according to the theory, be rationalized away by adjusting assessments of the value of one’s work upwards to make the overly positive outcomes seem fair. On the one hand, some of us have studied how experiences (encounters with outcomes or processes) affect feelings of fair treatment and how these fairness judgments in turn affect things like the acceptance of rules or decisions (see, e.g., Lind, Kulik, Ambrose, & Park, 1993; Thibaut and Walker, 1975; Tyler, 1990; Walker et al., 1974). Others have looked at how fairness-related beliefs are distorted by other cognitions (e.g., Lerner, 1980; Jost & Banaji, 1994, Jost & Kay, 2005). The first of these lines of work could be termed “motivating justice processes”; the second could be termed “motivated justice processes.” Both lines of work have a great deal of empirical support and both have prompted credible theories, so there is little doubt that justice both affects and is affected by other social psychological dynamics. As I will mention at the end of this chapter, where I will describe my views of what the next frontiers of justice research will be, research and theory that integrates and reconciles these two lines of work seems to me key to the continued advancement of our understanding of the

The Study of Justice in Social Psychology 3 social psychology of justice. Both lines of work are represented among the chapters in this book, and at least three—the chapters by Jackson and Pósch and by Brockner and Wiesenfeld, and my own chapter on the fairness heuristic—describe work that might well contribute to that reconciliation. Motivating justice processes are illustrated well by what is called the “fair process effect” (Folger, 1977). A great many studies show that perceptions of fair treatment lead to greater trust in and perceived legitimacy of authorities (e.g., Tyler, 1990, 1997; Tyler & Huo, 2002; Tyler & Jackson, 2014; Tyler & Lind, 1992), more acceptance of authorities’ decisions (e.g., Lind et al., 1993; Walker et al., 1974), greater feelings of social identity (e.g., Tyler & Blader, 2000, 2003), the expenditure of greater effort in support of the group, and enhanced cooperative behavior (Moorman, 1991; Tyler & Blader, 2000, 2003). Perceptions of unfair treatment have been found to diminish trust and legitimacy and to produce resentment toward, exit from, and even retaliation against the group linked to the unfair treatment (e.g., Lind, Greenberg, Scott, & Welchans, 2000; Van den Bos, 2018). It is arguable that this capacity to motivate changes in other attitudes and to drive behaviors is one of the reasons that fairness research has spread to a variety of applied disciplines. A great deal of research on the psychology of justice has been and is being done in such areas as organizational behavior and marketing, judicial and police studies, and government policy studies. The interest in these areas in studying the antecedents and consequences of fairness judgments is driven often by findings that perceptions of fairness can have profound effects on the functioning of these areas of social life. While it is certainly desirable in and of itself that people feel fairly treated at their jobs, by those they buy from, and by those who govern them, there is little doubt that the downstream effects of fairness perceptions—the capacity of feelings of fair treatment to make people engage more fully and cooperatively with employers and government—provides a substantial incentive for scholars (and managers and policy makers) to pay attention to the social psychology of justice. The other direction of causality—the motivated cognition effects that can drive or bias fairness judgments and related beliefs and attitudes, sometimes in unexpected ways—is seen in what are termed “just world” and “system justification” effects. Adams’ (1965) suggestion that “inequity distress” motivates perceptual distortions of inputs or outcomes, distortions to make inequitable situations seem fairer, is an early example of motivated fairness cognition. Lerner and his colleagues (e.g., Lerner, 1980; Lerner & Goldberg, 1999; Lerner & Simmons, 1966) proposed that people become uncomfortable when they observe events or situations that violate their desire to see the world as a fair place and suggested that this discomfort can be alleviated by changing

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perceptions of deservingness. Lerner’s “just world” hypothesis explains phenomena like “blaming the victim” for his or her misfortunes. Jost and his colleagues (see Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) have described and analyzed motivated justice effects in System Justification Theory. The chapter in this volume by Engstrom, Alic, and Laurin describes our current understanding of these justice processes.

Paradigms in the Social Psychology of Justice There are at least three very good recent accounts of the history of psychological study of justice-related phenomena. Colquitt, Greenberg, and Zapata-Phelan (2005) traced the development of justice studies from the early studies of Stouffer and his colleagues in the 1940s (Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Starr, & Williams, 1949), through second half of the twentieth century, up to the empirical and theoretical work that took place in the first years of the 2000s. Bobocel and Gosse (2015) provide a history of research and theory in procedural justice and Ambrose, Wo, and Griffith (2015) describe research and theory on overall justice judgments; both works include more recent work than that available to Colquitt et al. These three works together give a detailed account and insightful analyses of the development of our field. (The fact that all three of these chapters appear in collections on “organizational justice” should not be a source of concern for readers; all three chapters describe the relevant empirical and theoretical work in core social psychology as well as in organizational psychology per se.) In the following paragraphs I will provide, in broad strokes, a description of what seem to me to be the major directions and conceptual developments in the study of the psychology of fairness over the past six or seven decades. First, let us consider the development of work on motivating justice judgments. Colquitt et al. (2005) organize their history of justice research into “waves,” the first of which they term the “distributive justice wave.” I think it might be more useful here to employ the terminology of Thomas Kuhn (1962) and to speak of two paradigms that have provided the intellectual infrastructure of scholarship on the social psychology of justice. The first of these paradigms, which I term the “outcome-focused paradigm” in justice studies, was based the assumption that people are mostly driven by their individual outcomes, an assumption underlay both interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) and equity theory (Adams, 1963, 1965). In the middle of the twentieth century theory and research in the psychological, social, and economic sciences were for the most part founded on the assumption that self-interest drove almost all actions and indeed most cognition. Early research like that of Stouffer et al. (1949) on relative deprivation might in retrospect be said to involve both outcome and process fairness, but at the time the reactions to unfair treatment they studied were viewed as reactions

The Study of Justice in Social Psychology 5 to receiving outcomes that did not comport with norms of fair distribution. The justice and equity concepts that were introduced into sociology and psychology by scholars like Homans (1961), Adams (1963), and Blau (1964) focused on distributive justice, on the psychology of what made rewards and costs fair or unfair. Initially, work on the psychology of justice saw fairness as defined by proportional payment or punishment, and reactions to equitable or inequitable distributions in exchange relationships were the primary target of inquiry. An experiment by Adams and Rosenbaum (1962; Experiment 2) gives a good feel for the origins of and support for outcome-focused work on the social psychology of justice. In this experiment, the undergraduate participants in all conditions were paid well to conduct interviews, but approximately half of the participants were led to believe that this payment was more than was equitable, while the remainder were led to believe that the payment was equitable. (There was a second manipulation that had to do with whether the payment was hourly or piece-rate. I will only describe the findings for the hourly rate participants; the piecerate participants behaved differently, though their performance differences also supported Adams’ equity theory.) The participants who felt that they were being unfairly overpaid worked harder and produced more than did the control condition participants who received the same hourly payment but who had been convinced that it was fair. Figure 1.1 shows the mean productivity scores for both groups. Adams (1963, 1965) argued that the increased performance of those who thought they were being overpaid was the result of their effort to make their inputs proportional to their rewards by raising the overall level of input.

Average ProductivityÑHourly Wage Participants 0.28 0.27 0.26

0.25 0.24 0.23 0.22 0.21

0.2 Average Productivity Scores Believed Overpaid

Believed Equitably Paid

From Adams and Rosenbaum, 1962, Experiment 2, hourly rate participants

Figure 1.1 Average productivity—hourly wage participants

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E. Allan Lind

From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, the outcome-focused paradigm was the background for most theorizing and research on the social psychology of justice. Adams’ work on inequity distress was a departure from “pure” exchange or interdependence theories because it posited that people would act in ways that were not in their strict objective self-interest—for example by working harder—in order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling that would result from inequitable outcomes, but the relevant psychology still focused on reactions to immediate outcomes. During the next decade scholars elaborated the concept of distributive justice to include other norms of allocation, especially norms that mandated distributing outcomes equally or in terms of need (see, e.g., Deutsch, 1975). Research and theory on justice in this outcome-focused paradigm was so influential that in 1976 Berkowitz and Walster (1976; see also, Walster, Berscheid, and Walster, 1973; Walster, Walster, and Berscheid, 1978) entitled an edition of Advances in Experimental Social Psychology that they edited, “Equity Theory: Toward a General Theory of Social Interaction.” But even as Walster, Berscheid, and Walster (1973) and Berkowitz and Walster (1976) advanced the argument that distributive justice could supply a unifying construct for much of social psychology, research was underway that would shift the paradigm of justice research. One experiment in particular, conducted in the early 1970s, marks a turning point. This study showed the impact that non-outcome factors have on fairness judgments and in doing so it began some lines of research that ultimately undermined the view of fairness in the outcome-focused paradigm. By introducing the concept of “procedural justice,” this work and later studies would upend our understanding of what fairness means and how fairness impacts behavior and attitudes. Productive, indeed exciting, work on outcome distribution topics has continued—as evidenced by the chapter in this volume by MacCoun and Polcz, which looks at different outcome distributions and their links to different forms of interpersonal relationships—but by the 1980s the attention of justice scholars had widened to include both experienced outcomes and experienced social process as key issues in fairness and to consider the implications of fairness for relationship status as important reasons for why fairness matters. (In fact, Deutsch (1975) anticipated the change in paradigms when he proposed that different relational goals might be best served by different allocations rules.) This widening of interest in the social antecedents and consequences of fairness judgments almost by necessity gave greater attention to what fairness meant in terms of experienced relationships with other people, organizations, and social institutions. For this reason, I term this new approach to the psychology of justice the “relationship-focused paradigm.” Work on outcome distribution fairness would devote more and

The Study of Justice in Social Psychology 7 more attention to the relationships within which the distribution occurs —again the MacCoun and Polcz chapter is a good example—and explanations of the newly-discovered procedural justice effects would focus on what fair or unfair treatment told people about their relationship with other individuals, organizations, institutions, and governments. The new paradigm ultimately gave rise to theories of the psychology of justice that blend both outcome interdependence and social identity processes in order to explain how fairness works (e.g., Lind, 1995, 2001; Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Blader, 2000, 2003; Tyler & Lind, 1992). The experiment that began the paradigm shift deserves some consideration here, because it illustrates how factors other than outcomes can influence justice judgments. In 1974, Walker et al. (1974) published a study revealing that fairness judgments were profoundly affected not just by the outcome of a social interaction but also by the processes experienced by those involved. The Walker et al. experiment was undertaken not to test any point of social psychological theory but instead to see if research methods from experimental social psychology could productively address psychological assumptions in law (see generally Thibaut and Walker, 1975). Laurens Walker, a law professor, and John Thibaut, a social psychologist, along with two graduate students working with Thibaut (including the author of this chapter) conducted the experiment to examine the psychological underpinnings of the legal concept of procedural justice—the idea that fairness exists not just in the outcome of legal trials and hearings but also in the process used to arrive at the verdict. In the context of an elaborate business simulation, participants in the Walker et al. study were informed that their team had been accused of violating a rule. Their teammate (who was actually a confederate of the experimenter) was accused by another team of stealing ideas for a creative task on which the teams were competing. The rules of the simulation provided for a brief trial to resolve such accusations, with the case to be adjudicated by a law student from the university where the study was being conducted. The trial procedure, the participant’s knowledge about whether his or her team was guilty of the transgression, and the outcome of the trial were all manipulated as between-subjects factors. The procedure manipulation is of particular interest here: it involved high or low levels of what Thibaut and Walker (1975) termed “process control,” a procedural variable similar to what is termed “voice” (Folger, 1977) in later justice work. In the high process control conditions, a representative of the participant’s team presented evidence directly to the adjudicator; in the low process control conditions, an independent investigator was said to decide what evidence would be presented. In fact, the content of the evidence presentations was identical in all conditions.

8

E. Allan Lind Ratings of Fairness of Procedure and Satisfaction with Verdict

9

Satisfaction with Verdict

Fairness of Procedure

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Innocent verdict

Guilty verdict

Innocent verdict

High Process Control

Guilty verdict

Low Process Control

From Walker, LaTour, Lind, and Thibaut, 1974, Participant role data

Figure 1.2 Ratings of fairness of procedure and satisfaction with verdict

The experiment produced a remarkable finding. The trial procedure did matter, and it mattered a great deal, both as a driver of fairness judgments and as a determinant of satisfaction with the outcome of the trial. Figure 1.2 shows the average fairness and satisfaction ratings of participants in the trials. Whether the verdict was favorable or unfavorable, the participants who had received high process control thought the procedure was fairer than did those who received low process control procedures. This difference carried over to reactions to the verdict itself and to the judge: Participants who experienced high process control rated themselves as more satisfied with the verdict and as trusting the judge more than did those who experienced low process control procedures. Thibaut, Walker, and their colleagues replicated and extended the key findings of this first procedural justice experiment (see, e.g., Lind, Kurtz, Musante, Walker, & Thibaut, 1980; Thibaut and Walker, 1975), and others soon demonstrated procedure effects on perceived fairness and on acceptance of outcomes in other contexts, such as work settings (e.g., Folger, 1977). The impact of procedural and process variations on perceptions of fairness, which is termed a “procedural justice effect,” and the impact of differences in perceived procedural fairness on various downstream beliefs and behaviors, termed the “fair process effect” (Folger, Rosenfield, Grove, & Corkran, 1979), were replicated both in the laboratory and in the field. Many of the chapters in this book describe fair process effects of one type or another. The relationship-focused paradigm gathered a great deal of momentum from the work of Tom Tyler and his colleagues (e.g., Tyler, 1990;

The Study of Justice in Social Psychology 9 Tyler & Caine, 1981; Tyler, Rasinski, & Spodick, 1985). This research demonstrated in real-world settings that people did indeed form coherent and measurable impressions of procedural fairness in these contexts and that there were substantial psychological consequences of feeling that one had been treated fairly or unfairly. This body of research showed that acceptance of and obedience to political authorities were much more likely if the authority or state entity in question was thought to have made decisions following fair procedures. The effects seen by Tyler and his colleagues were very strong indeed, stronger in most cases than were the procedural fairness and fair process effects seen in laboratory studies. It was not unusual to find process and procedure effects that were stronger than the impact of outcome or expected outcomes, even when the outcomes involved were quite substantial. Tyler’s work is reviewed in part in his chapter in this book. I will provide an example of a strong fair process effect from one of my own papers. Lind et al. (1993) report a series of field studies on the role of outcome and process perceptions on decisions to accept arbitrated judgments in civil lawsuits in several U.S. Federal District Courts. The lawsuits, which involved tort and contract cases, were required to undergo a nonbinding arbitration before the litigants could go to trial. The program (see Lind, 1990, Lind & Shapard, 1981, for details about the program) offered an interesting opportunity to examine procedural justice and fair process effects in the context of real-world decisions. Each litigant had the right to accept the arbitrator’s decision as the final outcome of his or her lawsuit or to reject the award and demand a trial, and this provided a behavioral measure of acceptance of the decision. Because we surveyed the litigants about their perceptions of the process and outcome and because we had objective data on the arbitrators’ decisions, litigants’ perceptions of the fairness of the process and their real and relative outcomes could be correlated with their decisions to accept or reject the arbitrators’ rulings. Summary findings across all of the studies reported in the Lind et al. (1993) paper are presented in Figure 1.3, which shows the results of a path analysis of the strength of direct and indirect factors affecting acceptance of the arbitrator’s decision. Three points are especially noteworthy. First, the impact of judgments of the fairness of the process on acceptance of the decision was very strong indeed, more than twice as strong as the impact of the objective outcomes the litigant received. Second, the impact of impressions of the process on perceived procedural justice (i.e., the link between process impressions and procedural justice judgments) was twice as strong as the impact of subjective outcome judgments on the procedural justice judgments. And third, the total effect of process impressions (via their impact on procedural justice judgments) on decision acceptance was approximately the same as the total effect of both objective and subjective outcomes. Clearly the

10 E. Allan Lind

Figure 1.3 Fairness judgments, outcomes, and the acceptance of arbitration awards

fair process effect in these cases was very strong indeed—if litigants thought the process was fair, they were much more likely to accept the outcome than if they thought the process was unfair. The shift from the outcome-focused to the relationship-focused paradigm had a number of other effects. Given that a hitherto unsuspected cause of variation in fairness (voice) had been demonstrated, researchers started looking for other new antecedents of fairness judgments. Once the idea that fairness judgments could address social behavior other than allocating outcomes, some fascinating research was done using open-ended questions to ask people what they found to be fair or unfair about their behavior or experiences (e.g., Adler, Hensler, Nelson, & Rest, 1983; Messick, Bloom, Boldizar, & Samuelson, 1985; Mikula, 1993, 2005; Mikula, Petri, & Tanzer, 1990). Mikula, Petri, and Tanzer (1990) mapped out examples of situations that prompted felt injustice, using examples offered by various student participant groups. Their work, and that of Messick et al. (1985) and Alder et al. (1983), showed that perceptions of fair or unfair treatment could indeed arise from a variety of experiences, including not only allocations of outcomes as seen in distributive justice research or the provision or denial of voice as seen in the Thibaut and Walker and Folger studies, but also rulebreaking behavior (lying and cheating), obvious bias in treatment or decision-making, arbitrary or corrupt use of power, disloyalty in friendships, impolite and undignified treatment, and lack of adequate explanations or information to guide behavior. Within social psychology (e.g., Crosby, 1976; Folger & Martin, 1986; Lind, 2001; Tyler & Blader, 2000, 2003; Van den Bos, 2003; in

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press; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002; Van den Bos, Lind, & Wilke, 2001; see also Ambrose et al., 2015; Lind & Tyler, 1988, Chapter 10; Mikula, 2005), these factors have been viewed as antecedents of either procedural justice or general fairness judgments. Organizational scholars (e.g., Bies, 2015; Bies & Moag, 1986; Colquitt, 2001; Greenberg, 1993) have tended to label these factors as independent forms of justice, speaking of undignified treatment and other informal violations of norms as “interactional injustice,” and lack of information or explanations as “informational injustice.” The difference in whether one speaks of a justice consideration as an antecedent or a peculiar form of justice probably reflects one’s scholarly context. Psychologists generally seek to explain cognitions and behavior with relatively few constructs and processes, and parsimony is valued in our field; organizational scholars seek clear connections between organizational practices and organizational behaviors and are often more concerned with clear empirical connections than with the psychological dynamics that might exist between the connections. The discovery that fairness is affected by process as well as outcomes also opened the door for work on how process fairness effects might be affected by different levels of outcomes. Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996) began the exploration of how and when fairness × outcome interactions might occur, a moderation effect that has generated a great deal of subsequent research, both basic and applied. Their chapter in this book explores the way justice studies have entered organizational behavior scholarship and spread out to address new topics. We may well be on the verge of another paradigm shift in the study of motivating justice processes. Work in biology (e.g., Brosnan, 2006, 2011; Brosnan & de Waal, 2003, 2003, 2014) and social neuroscience (e.g., Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003; Tabibnia, Satpute, & Lieberman, 2008) suggest that fairness reactions are not just questions of cognitive balancing processes (as Adams suggested) nor are they prompted solely by human allocation or interaction norms. As can be seen from Brosnan’s chapter in this volume, other social mammals and birds show reactions that are very similar to human reactions to distributive and procedural injustice. The work of Eisenberger, Lieberman, and others points to close connections between the human brain’s responses to fair or unfair treatment and its response to physical pleasure and pain. Work using traditional social psychological methods also suggests that we might be moving into a “fundamental-justice” paradigm, with fairness-related processes seen as a basic aspect of being a social animal. Van den Bos’ work on uncertainty management and disinhibition effects on fairness judgments (e.g., Van den Bos, 2001; 2010; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002; see also Hulst, Van den Bos, Akkermans, & Lind, 2017), in particular, demonstrates the connection between justice

12 E. Allan Lind processes and basic psychological dynamics such as the human alarm system (e.g., Murray, 2005; Murray, Holmes, MacDonald, & Ellsworth, 1998) and the behavioral inhibition system (e.g., Carver & White, 1994). As I note in my chapter later in this volume, we may well have been too cognitive in our theorizing about the psychology of fairness. Reactions to injustice appear to be far more visceral than we have thought. Turning to research and theory on motivated justice cognitions, there has also arguably been a paradigm shift in that part of social justice studies. Much of the research on motivated justice processes during the twentieth century, with the exception of Adams’ (1963, 1965) equity theory work, focused on person perception in one form or another. Lerner’s Belief in a Just World theory (Lerner, 1980; Lerner & Goldberg, 1999; Lerner & Simmons, 1966) and the research that it prompted focused on issues like blame and reactions to victims of crime or poverty. One might term this the “person-perception paradigm” in motivated justice research. Later Jost and his colleagues (e.g., Jost et al., 2004; Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002) pointed out that motivated justice processes might exist in beliefs about social systems, introducing System Justification Theory. System Justification Theory applied the idea of motivated cognition not just to person perceptions but also to perceptions of qualities, including justice-related qualities, of systems such as governments and organizations (see the chapter by Engstrom et al. in this volume; see also, Kay et al., 2009). Work on motivated justice processes might now be said to be in a new “system-perception paradigm.”

Applications of the Social Psychology of Justice The application of social psychological work on justice and fairness to real-world problems has been remarkable from the very outset of research in our area. Stouffer et al. conducted their research to understand not abstract issues but the specific psychology of reactions among American soldiers in the 1940s. Adams developed his ideas about inequity distress in the context his work at General Electric, asking how psychology might inform the ways organizations pay and motivate workers. Thibaut and Walker began the study of procedural justice with a study of reactions to judicial procedures and the legal concepts that drive them. Lerner’s work often addressed questions of judicial and policy blaming, and Jost’s work has quite frequently looked at policy and political beliefs. It would be difficult to identify another area of social psychology where basic science and application are so intertwined. In disciplinary terms, to date the most numerous applications of the social psychology of justice and fairness are in organizational psychology, political psychology, and psychology and law. There are other relatively new applications to professional relationships—for example,

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the chapter in this volume by Pérez-Arechaederra describes how fairness judgments are affected by experiences with doctors and other healthcare providers and how these judgments in turn affect important attitudes and behaviors. The chapters in this volume on organizational justice (those by Brockner and Wiesenfeld and by Cropanzano, Ambrose, and Van Wagoner) give a good overview of the very substantial literature on fairness and fairness-related effects in the workplace. It may well be the case that there are more studies on organizational justice than on any other justice context. The interplay of basic social psychological research and research on organizational justice has benefited both types of work and has improved theory on the psychology of fairness. One example among many is seen in the way organizational researchers picked up on the concept of procedural justice and the way their research in organizations in turn informed the development of justice theories within social psychology. Early work on the effects of procedural justice in organizations, including the finding that fairness judgments appeared to affect such things as trust in management and harmony in the workplace (Alexander & Ruderman, 1987) as well as organizational citizenship behavior (Moorman, 1991; Organ, 1990; Organ & Moorman, 1993) served as inputs to the development of relationship-centered theories (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Lind, 1992) of fairness. The application of psychology of justice concepts in the judicial and political realms is also remarkable. The example above of procedural fairness effects on decisions to accept nonbinding arbitration decisions is only one of many examples of applications of fairness research to issues in law. The chapter in this volume by Jackson and Pósch is the latest in a long line of work, dating back to Tyler’s early studies of reactions to the perceived fairness of law-making processes (Tyler, 1988, 1990; Tyler & Caine, 1981; Tyler, Rasinski, & Griffin, 1986) through recent work showing that fairness-enhancing procedures and policies improve citizen perceptions of the legitimacy of governments (Jackson, 2018; Lind and Arndt, 2016; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Tyler’s chapter here addresses the application of fairness-enhancing measures to the problems of enhancing legitimacy and trust and increasing cooperation with the police, clearly a critical area for the development of new policies and practices (Tyler, Goff, & MacCoun, 2015). Among the newest application of the psychology of justice is that seen in Van den Bos’ work on radicalization and the development of extremist behavior (Van den Bos, 2018, in press), described in his chapter in this book. This work makes clear that feelings of unfair treatment can have profound effects on the lives of individuals and on the fabric of the state. It would be hard to find an application of social psychological knowledge that is more relevant to the state of the world today.

14 E. Allan Lind

The Next Frontiers Writing an introduction for a volume in a series entitled Frontiers of Social Psychology invites one to offer some thoughts not only about where we are on the frontier of our knowledge of the topic but also to think about what the next frontier might be. Where might we hope to be in our understanding of the psychology of fairness and justice in five, ten, or 20 years? What are the most intriguing unresolved issues in our science? I will not pretend to be able to answer these questions in any definitive fashion, but there do seem to me to be two emerging issues or challenges that our field will face. I suspect that each has the capacity to create changes as important as the paradigm shifts described above. I have hinted at both challenges in the text above, but both deserve some more discussion. The first of these “next frontier” issues has to do with the challenging of integrating and expanding what has previously been a very cognitive analysis of the psychology of justice as we seek to include the biological and social neuroscience findings on justice and fairness. Without a doubt we humans rely a great deal on our learned understandings and on cultural norms and abstract symbols when we process fairnessrelevant information. But it is equally clear from work in biology and neuroscience that we have some “hard-wiring,” shared with other social animals, that drives justice- and fairness-related behavior. The traditional model of human fairness reactions as being rather malleable in terms of which stimuli provoke feelings of fair or unfair treatment, and the belief that fairness reactions are quite susceptible to cognitive balancing processes is difficult to reconcile with findings of similar response patterns in other species. While the work of Eisenberger, Lieberman, and others show quite clear activation of parts of the brain associated with damping down resentment and explaining away apparent unfairness, the impression one receives is that these cognitive processes are intervening to control a more fundamental reaction to unfairness or inclusion, not driving the initial brain reaction. Both of these literatures are outside my area of expertise; indeed, I suspect they are outside the areas of expertise of many social psychologists who study justice. But then, it is arguable that the substantial literature on the social psychology of justice is outside the area of expertise of many biologists and neuroscientists who do research on fairness and inclusion processes. Justice has come to be a topic that lies not just deep inside psychology, but one that clearly has roots in biology—I suspect that this frontier will be most profitably explored by teams of scholars with training in, and perspectives from, more than one discipline. The second “next frontier” is the potential for integrating the two lines of scholarship—motivating and motivated justice processes—that

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are described above. Each line of scholarship has a great deal of research support and theoretical development. There is no doubt that people do in fact respond to some experiences by labeling them unfair and by reacting very strongly indeed. In fact, as Van den Bos (2018) has documented, sometimes perceptions of unfair treatment drive people not only to leave a social system but even to oppose it in word and deed. That said, it is also clear from work such as that described in the Engstrom et al. chapter in this volume that sometimes people distort their judgments to try to make their world or their system seem fair, even when there is substantial objective evidence to the contrary. Each of these lines of work is undeniably valid, yet both cannot be always valid. We have empirical findings and theoretical analyses that identify situations where motivating fairness effects will be relatively stronger and weaker (e.g., Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Hulst et al., 2017; Van den Bos, 2001), and research on System Justification Theory (e.g., Jost & Banaji, 1994; Kay et al., 2009) has examined factors that increase or decrease the distortion of justice-related cognitions. But there is no real match in these moderating effects—there is no pattern that would allow us to conclude that justice judgments are motivating in these situations but become motivated cognitions in those other situations. If we could find the mechanisms that switch from one modality of the psychology of justice to the other, we would have an integrated theory of the psychology of social justice. That would certainly be an accomplishment!

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16 E. Allan Lind Bies, R. J. (2015). Interactional justice: Looking backward and looking forward. In R. S. Cropanzano & M. L. Ambrose (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of justice in the workplace (pp. 89–107). New York: Oxford University Press. Bies, R. J., & Moag, J. F. (1986). Interactional justice: Communication criteria of fairness. In R. J. Lewicki, B. H. Sheppard, & M. H. Bazerman (Eds.), Research on negotiations in organizations (Vol. 1, pp. 43–55). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Blau, P. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New York: Wiley. Bobocel, D. R., & Gosse, L. (2015). Procedural justice: A historical review and critical analysis. In R. S. Cropanzano & M. L. Ambrose (Eds.), Oxford library of psychology. The Oxford handbook of justice in the workplace (pp. 51–87). New York: Oxford University Press. Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 189–208. Brosnan, S., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature, 425(6955), 297–299. doi:10.1038/nature01963 Brosnan, S. F. (2006). Nonhuman species’ reactions to inequity and their implications for fairness. Social Justice Research, 19, 153–185. Brosnan, S. F. (2011). A hypothesis of the co-evolution of cooperation and responses to inequity. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 5. doi:10.3389/fnins.2011.00043 Brosnan, S. F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2014). Evolution of responses to (un) fairness. Science, 346(6107), 1251776. Carver, C. S., & White, T. L. (1994). Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The BIS/BAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 319–333. Colquitt, J., Greenberg, J., & Zapata-Phelan, C. P. (2005). What is organizational justice? A historical overview. In J. Greenberg & J. Colquitt (Eds.), Handbook of organizational justice (pp. 3–56). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 386–400. Crosby, F. (1976). A model of egoistical relative deprivation. Psychological Review, 83, 85–113. Deutsch, M. (1975). Equity, equality, and need: What determines which value will be used as the basis of distributive justice? Journal of Social Issues, 31(3), 137–149. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, 290–292. Folger, R. (1977). Distributive and procedural justice: Combined impact of “voice” and improvement of experienced inequity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 108–119. Folger, R., & Martin, C. (1986). Relative deprivation and referent cognitions: Distributive and procedural justice effects. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 531–546. Folger, R., Rosenfield, D., Grove, J., & Corkran, L. (1979). Effects of “voice” and peer opinions on responses to inequity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(12), 2253–2261.

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Greenberg, J. (1993). The social side of fairness: Interpersonal and informational classes of organizational justice. In R. Cropanzano (Ed.), Series in applied psychology. Justice in the workplace: Approaching fairness in human resource management (pp. 79–103). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Homans, G. C. (1961). Social behaviour: Its elementary forms. London: Routledge and Kagan Paul. Hulst, L., Van den Bos, K., Akkermans, A. J., & Lind, E. A. (2017). On the psychology of perceived procedural justice: Experimental evidence that behavioral inhibition strengthens reactions to voice and no-voice procedures. Frontiers in Psychological and Behavioral Science, 6, 1–12. Jackson, J. (2018). Norms, normativity and the legitimacy of legal authorities: International perspectives. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 14, 145–165. Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1–27. Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the Status Quo. Political Psychology, 25(6), 881–919. Jost, J. T., & Kay, A. C. (2005). Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender stereotypes: Consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(3), 498–509. Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Peach, J. M., Laurin, K., Friesen, J., Zanna, M. P., & Spencer, S. J. (2009). Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to see the way things are as the way they should be. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(3), 421–434. Kay, A. C., Jimenez, M. C., & Jost, J. T. (2002). Sour grapes, sweet lemons, and the anticipatory rationalization of the status quo. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(9), 1300–1312. Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations: A theory of interdependence. New York: Wiley-Interscience. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Springer. Lerner, M. J., & Goldberg, J. H. (1999). When do decent people blame victims? The differing effects of the explicit-rational and implicit experiential cognitive systems. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories in social psychology (pp. 627–640). New York: Guilford Press. Lerner, M. J., & Simmons, C. H. (1966). Observer’s reaction to the “innocent victim”: Compassion or rejection? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 203–210. doi:10.1037/h0023562 Lind, E. A. (1990). Arbitrating high-stakes cases: An evaluation of court-annexed arbitration in a United States district court. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Lind, E. A. (1995). Social conflict and social justice: Some lessons from the social psychology of justice. Leiden, the Netherlands: Leiden University Press. Lind, E. A. (2001). Fairness heuristic theory: Justice judgments as pivotal cognitions in organizational relations. In J. Greenberg & R. Cropanzano (Eds.),

18 E. Allan Lind Advances in organizational justice (pp. 56–88). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Lind, E. A., & Arndt, C. (2016). Perceived fairness and regulatory policy: A behavioural science perspective on government–citizen interactions. OECD Regulatory Policy Working Papers, No. 6, Paris: OECD Publishing. Lind, E. A., Greenberg, J., Scott, K. S., & Welchans, T. D. (2000). The winding road from employee to complainant: Situational and psychological determinants of wrongful termination lawsuits. Administrative Science Quarterly, 45, 557–590. Lind, E. A., Kulik, C., Ambrose, M., & Park, M. (1993). Individual and corporate dispute resolution: Using procedural fairness as a decision heuristic. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 224–251. Lind, E. A., Kurtz, S., Musante, L., Walker, L., & Thibaut, J. W. (1980). Procedure and outcome effects on reactions to adjudicated resolution of conflicts of interests. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 643–653. Lind, E. A., & Shapard, J. E. (1981). Evaluation of court-annexed arbitration in three federal district courts. Washington, DC: Federal Judicial Center. Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum Press. Messick, D. M., Bloom, S., Boldizar, J. P., & Samuelson, C. D. (1985). Why we are fairer than others. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21(5), 480–500. Mikula, G. (1993). On the experience of injustice. European Review of Social Psychology, 4, 223–244. Mikula, G. (2005). Some observations and critical thoughts about the present state of justice theory and research. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner, D. P. Skarlicki, & K. Van den Bos (Eds.), What motivates fairness in organisations? (pp. 197–210). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Mikula, G., Petri, B., & Tanzer, N. K. (1990). What people regard as unjust: Types and structures of everyday experiences of injustice. European Journal of Social Psychology, 20(2), 133–149. Moorman, R. H. (1991). Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 845–855. Murray, S. L. (2005). Regulating the risks of closeness: A relationship specific sense of felt security. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 74–78. Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., MacDonald, G., & Ellsworth, P. C. (1998). Through the looking glass darkly? When self-doubts turn into relationship insecurities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1459–1480. Organ, D. W. (1990). The motivational basis of organizational citizenship behavior. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 12, pp. 43–72). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Organ, D. W., & Moorman, R. H. (1993). Fairness and organizational citizenship behavior: What are the connections? Social Justice Research, 6, 5–18. Stouffer, S. A., Suchman, E. A., DeVinney, L. C., Starr, S. A., & Williams, R. M. (1949). The American soldier: Adjustment to army life (Vol. 1). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tabibnia, G., Satpute, A. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2008). The sunny side of fairness: Preference fairness activates reward circuitry (and disregarding unfairness activates self-control circuitry). Psychological Science, 19, 339–347.

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Thibaut, J. W., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York: Wiley. Thibaut, J. W., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural justice: A psychological analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates. Tyler, T. R. (1988). What is procedural justice?: Criteria used by citizens to assess the fairness of legal procedures. Law and Society Review, 22, 103–135. Tyler, T. R. (1990). Why people obey the law: Procedural justice, legitimacy, and compliance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Tyler, T. R. (1997). The psychology of legitimacy: A relational perspective on voluntary deference to authorities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 323–345. Tyler, T. R., & Blader, S. (2000). Cooperation in groups: Procedural justice, social identity, and behavioral engagement. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press. Tyler, T. R., & Blader, S. (2003). Procedural justice, social identity, and cooperative behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 349–361. Tyler, T. R., & Caine, A. (1981). The influence of outcomes and procedures on satisfaction with formal leaders. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41(4), 642–655. Tyler, T. R., Goff, P., & MacCoun, R. (2015). The impact of psychological science on policing in the United States: Procedural justice, legitimacy, and effective law enforcement. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 16(3), 75–109. Tyler, T. R., & Huo, Y. J. (2002). Trust in the law. Encouraging public cooperation with the police and courts. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Tyler, T. R., & Jackson, J. (2014). Popular legitimacy and the exercise of legal authority: Motivating compliance, cooperation and engagement. Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 20, 78–95. Tyler, T. R., & Lind, E. A. (1992). A relational model of authority in groups. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 115–192). New York: Academic Press. Tyler, T. R., Rasinski, K. A., & Griffin, E. (1986). Alternative images of the citizen: Implications for public policy. American Psychologist, 41(9), 970–978. Tyler, T. R., Rasinski, K. A., & Spodick, N. (1985). Influence of voice on satisfaction with leaders: Exploring the meaning of process control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48(1), 72–81. Van den Bos, K. (2001). Uncertainty management: The influence of uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 931–941. Van den Bos, K. (2003). On the subjective quality of social justice: The role of affect as information in the psychology of justice judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 482–498. Van den Bos, K. (2010). Self-regulation, homeostasis, and behavioral disinhibition in normative judgments. In D. R. Bobocel, A. C. Kay, M. P. Zanna, & J. M. Olson (Eds.), The psychology of justice and legitimacy: The Ontario Symposium (Vol. 11, pp. 205–228). New York: 21 Psychology Press. Van den Bos, K. (2018). Why people radicalize: How unfairness judgments are used to fuel radical beliefs, extremist behaviors, and terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press.

20 E. Allan Lind Van den Bos, K. (in press). Unfairness and radicalization. Annual Review of Psychology. Van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2002). Uncertainty management by means of fairness judgments. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 1–60). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Van den Bos, K., Lind, E. A., & Wilke, H. (2001). The psychology of procedural justice and distributive justice viewed from the perspective of fairness heuristic theory. In R. Cropanzano (Ed.), Justice in the workplace: Volume II—From theory to practice (pp. 49–66). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Walker, L., LaTour, S., Lind, E. A., & Thibaut, J. (1974). Reactions of participants and observers to modes of adjudication. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4, 295–310. Walster, E., Berscheid, E., & Walster, G. W. (1973). New directions in equity research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 25(2), 151–176. Walster, E., Walster, G., & Berscheid, E. (1978). Equity: Theory and research. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

2

The Biology of Fairness Sarah F. Brosnan

Humans care deeply about fairness. Not only do we care when we are not treated fairly or justly, but as evidenced by social movements such as Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter, we are willing to pay substantial sums in money, time, and/or energy to rectify inequity, even in situations in which we are not the victim. When a biologist sees a situation in which an individual pays a substantial cost without an immediate direct (personal) benefit, the immediate question is how this came to be. Why are people so interested in fairness and justice when, at least in the short term, there are situations in which it seems to provide little direct benefit? One possible explanation is that our culture has provided strong signals encouraging us to work to make situations fair. Supporting this hypothesis, there is variation across cultural groups in what is considered fair (i.e., Blake et al., 2015; Henrich, 2000). However, at least some focus on fairness appears to be more or less ubiquitous across societies, albeit in different forms. This raises the possibility that there is a biological foundation for the human sense of fairness. Indeed, evolution works on relative outcomes, not absolute ones, so fairness is a relevant metric for natural selection. We can’t go back and ask human ancestors if they had a sense of fairness, but we can address this in two other key ways. First, we can look at how other species react to situations that we would consider unfair (Brosnan & de Waal, 2014). The assumption here is that if the sense of fairness evolved, there should be aspects of it in other species, for instance, responding when they get a less valuable reward than a partner. Although these components aren’t a sense of fairness in and of themselves, studying them helps us to understand the trajectory through which it evolved and what contexts were important for selecting for these behaviors. More importantly, if other species show some of these behaviors, then we have evidence of the strong biological component to the human sense of fairness. Second, we can look at very young children’s reactions, to see whether the sense of fairness appears to emerge early enough that it is unlikely that it is

22 Sarah F. Brosnan entirely a result of culture (i.e., before the child has much exposure to formal schooling and formal economic exchanges). This developmental approach is very helpful for teasing apart not only when various behaviors emerge, but how cultural influences later shape them. Indeed, what we find is that humans develop a sense of fairness quite early in ontogeny, and that some – but not all – other species show evidence of traits that are related to the sense of fairness. In this chapter, I will first outline how one studies the evolution of complex behaviors even when they are not fully manifest in other species. Next, I will discuss what we have learned about fairness from studying responses to inequity in other species. Third, I will briefly outline the related work discussing the development of inequity responses, fairness and justice in young children. This work is extensive and could easily be a standalone chapter, but even a brief summary is useful to put the comparative approach in perspective with the developmental one. Finally, I will end with a consideration of what these results mean and what are the next key areas for scholars to consider.

The Evolution of Fairness How do we explore the evolution of complex behaviors in humans? One way is to try to figure out what earlier humans did, typically through paleontology and archaeology. This is a valuable approach for behaviors with permanent artefacts (such as buildings, pottery, or weapon making), but less informative for behaviors that leave no artefacts or artefacts that are impermanent.1 In these cases, one approach is to study other species. If we find that traits are shared among multiple species, we can start to unpack how and under what circumstances it evolved. One obvious place to start when studying humans is the other primates, as we are part of that taxon, although as I will argue below, it is important to study all animals, not just the primates. There are two ways that shared traits can come about, homology and convergence. Homology refers to behaviors that are shared among species due to shared ancestry. For example, bluebirds, eagles, and ostriches all have wings because the common ancestor to these species had wings. Studying homologies are useful for helping to pinpoint when in one’s evolutionary history a trait emerged. Alternatively, traits can emerge via convergence, when multiple species share a trait due to common selective pressures rather than shared ancestry. This is typically considered across taxonomic groups, but can also occur within the same taxon. To continue our above example, bluebirds, bats, and butterflies all have wings, but none of them share a common ancestor with wings. Indeed, none of them even share a common construction of wings, emphasizing a key point, that behaviors can share a function without sharing an underlying mechanism, and it is highly inappropriate to assume mechanism based on function.

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Convergence is important for helping to pinpoint the shared environmental features that may have led to selective pressures for the trait in question. As such, convergence can be even more important than homology in helping us to understand why specific traits evolved. Of course, for particularly complex traits we may not expect to see the same behavior across species, such as when behaviors are heavily influenced by cognitive ability or language (in humans). In these cases, what we are often looking for is related behaviors that may be an aspect of or precursors to the behavior in question. To continue our example of wings, paleontologists have made great headway in understanding how birds’ wings evolved. Fossils indicate that feathers came first, and one hypothesis is that feathers initially evolved for thermoregulatory or ornamental function, and were later adapted for flight. Similarly, when looking for behaviors such as fairness, we do not expect to see a sense of fairness in other species, but we may see related behaviors that tell us something about how it evolved, the context in which it evolved, or for what purposes these related behaviors were first used. A key issue with studying a complex trait like fairness is that it isn’t a behavior, it’s a social ideal. Social ideals require language, and to our knowledge are limited to humans. Therefore, to study fairness, we must first break it down in to component parts. The most basic of these is how subjects respond when they get a less valuable outcome than a social partner, often called disadvantageous inequity. This in and of itself isn’t fairness, which presupposes an interest in everyone’s wellbeing, not just one’s own, but is hypothesized to be the logical first step in the evolution of fairness (more on this at the end of the chapter). Subsequently, we can explore how subjects respond when they get more than a social partner, often called advantageous inequity responses or overcompensation. This response is key for a true sense of fairness, and determining whether other species show it is informative in telling us about its evolutionary trajectory, including aspects that may be limited to humans. Finally, we can look at how other species respond to witnessing inequity among conspecifics, and can explore what are the environmental, cognitive, and personal factors that may impact responses to inequity in order to better understand the factors that are necessary for the expression of fairness and the conditions that likely selected for it.

Responses to Inequity in Primates The exploration of responses to inequity in other species is a relatively young field. Although contrast effects, or the reaction to receiving a different outcome than anticipated, have been studied for nearly a century (Tinklepaugh, 1928), my colleague and I documented the first evidence of inequity, or a reaction to an outcome that someone else

24 Sarah F. Brosnan received, in a non-human species in only 2003 (Brosnan & de Waal, 2003). We offered paired capuchin monkeys the opportunity to trade a token with a human experimenter for a food reward. In the equity condition, both traded for a piece of cucumber, a food that they like and will normally eat, but isn’t a favorite. In the inequity condition, the subject continued to receive a piece of cucumber while the partner received a grape, a much more preferred food, for the same trade. Subjects who received a cucumber often refused it, either throwing it out of the enclosure or refusing to participate altogether, despite happily working for and eating the cucumber in control conditions. We included a condition in which the grape was explicitly shown to the subject,2 but they received a cucumber, to control for contrast effects, or responses due to the presence of the higher value foods independent of their partner receiving higher value foods. A subsequent study with chimpanzees showed similar results (Brosnan, Schiff, & de Waal, 2005). As with the original task, most research effort to date has focused on distributional inequity, and most have followed the same basic procedure. Subjects are paired, typically with a member of their social group, and given the opportunity to do some task, such as trading a token, for food. In control conditions, subjects receive the same treatment (task and reward), whereas in experimental conditions subjects either receive different foods than their partners or experience some variation in the procedure that requires more effort or a longer delay to receive the reward (i.e., an effort to test procedural inequity). Over the last 15 years, numerous studies have been run that help us to better understand this reaction and the contexts in which it occurs (reviewed in Brosnan & de Waal, 2014; Talbot, Price, & Brosnan, 2016). Perhaps most critically, it is clear that the subjects are responding specifically to a partner getting a better reward. In most studies there is a “contrast control” in which subjects get a lower value option than one that they were shown previously, but that neither they nor their partner received, to ensure that the reaction is not just a response to seeing a better reward. Subjects are considered to respond to inequity if they respond more strongly when their partner gets the better reward than when it is simply seen. Most, but not all, studies with capuchins and chimpanzees find this pattern (Brosnan & de Waal, 2003; Brosnan et al., 2005, 2015; Brosnan, Talbot, Ahlgren, Lambeth, & Schapiro, 2010; Fletcher, 2008; Talbot et al., 2018; van Wolkenten, Brosnan, & de Waal, 2007; see also Bräuer, Call, & Tomasello, 2009; Fontenot, Watson, Roberts, & Miller, 2007; Silberberg, Crescimbene, Addessi, Anderson, & Visalberghi, 2009). Indeed, in a study that directly compared subjects’ responses to contrast with their responses to inequity, chimpanzees showed stronger responses to inequity than to contrast (Hopper, Lambeth, Schapiro, & Brosnan, 2014). Not all species tested have responded to inequity, however. Subjects of some species do not

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respond to either condition (Brosnan, Flemming, Talbot, Mayo, & Stoinski, 2011; Freeman et al., 2013), respond to both inequity and contrast (e.g., Brosnan et al., 2005; Ulber, Hamann, & Tomasello, 2017), or even respond more strongly in the contrast than inequity condition (Freeman et al., 2013; Talbot, Freeman, Williams, & Brosnan, 2011). I discuss hypotheses for this variability among species below. We also have little evidence of procedural inequity, even in subjects that respond to distributional differences. It is challenging to test procedural inequity in species without language, but researchers have explored it by running experiments in which one subjects gets a different (more difficult) procedure than another. For example, chimpanzees are sensitive to getting less than a partner, but do not show a behavioral difference if they have to wait for the reward but their partner does not (Brosnan et al., 2010). Capuchin monkeys showed no difference in response when they had to work harder than the partner (i.e., three exchanges vs one were required to get the reward; van Wolkenten et al., 2007). One possibility is that non-human primates are only sensitive to distribution, not effort. Another – not mutually exclusive – possibility is that judging others’ effort is too difficult, especially when subjects must also assess whether the partner failed to help versus was unable to help (only the former should merit an inequity response; Packer, 1988). This difficulty suggests that there was little pressure to evolve sensitivity to differences in effort (Brosnan & Bshary, 2016). Individual Differences in Inequity Responses There is often variability among individuals within the same species, although there is not yet enough data to determine whether there are factors that consistently affect individual differences in responses in the same ways across species. Chimpanzees show substantial variability both across studies and within them, indicating that they may be more sensitive to context than other species (they have also been tested the most frequently). This variability, however, is not always consistent. When chimpanzees show a rank effect, dominants not surprisingly respond more strongly to inequity than subordinates (i.e., Bräuer et al., 2009; Brosnan et al., 2015), but not all studies find a rank effect. Sometimes sex differences are seen; however, they can go in opposite directions (Brosnan et al., 2010; Hopper et al., 2014). To attempt to address this, a recent study tested every possible pair from a social group that was willing to test together to try to determine the role of relationship quality in determining responses, with the prediction that subjects in closer relationships would be less sensitive to inequity than those with less close relationships (Clark & Grote, 2003). Only slightly

26 Sarah F. Brosnan more than half of the possible pairs were willing to test together. Those subjects who did test together had lived together for longer, on average, than those who chose not to test together, which tended to correlate with how much time they spend grooming and in contact, both measures of relationship quality. Among the pairs who did test together, there was no effect of relationship – likely because relationship had already influenced who was paired in the first place – and differences in responses were driven by subjects’ personalities (Brosnan et al., 2015). Marmosets also show substantial variation across studies. Although marmosets often don’t respond in the traditional task (Freeman et al., 2013; nor do closely related tamarins in similar sorts of tasks; McAuliffe, Shelton, & Stone, 2014; Neiworth, Johnson, Whillock, Greenberg, & Brown, 2009), recent evidence using a different procedure finds evidence of inequity responses. Males, but not females, were less likely to provide a qualitatively superior reward to their partner than they were to a stranger female, indicating that both subjects’ sex and the identity of the partner influence decision-making. In this study oxytocin, a neuropeptide that has been implicated in decision-making in social contexts, did not influence either sexes’ responses (Mustoe, Harnisch, Hochfelder, Cavanaugh, & French, 2016; although oxytocin reduces dogs’ responses to inequity; Romero, Konno, Nagasawa, & Hasegawa, 2019). The Role of a Task on Inequity Responses Inequity is sensitive to context, so not surprisingly, the procedure impacts how subjects respond. Understanding these differences will help us better understand the contexts in which inequity is important. For instance, it is clear that the relative value of the rewards plays a key role in determining inequity. One recent study compared capuchins’ responses to inequity when rewards were low, medium, and high value and found that subjects responded to inequity only when they got the low value reward, irrespective of whether their partner got the medium or high value reward (Talbot et al., 2018). Perhaps monkeys were more sensitive to whether their reward was particularly low value than to whether their partner got a particularly preferred reward, or to the relative distance between their and their partner’s reward, or perhaps they were simply unwilling to turn down more preferred rewards. At a practical level, this is important because while most studies use pre-tested foods to ensure that they are of consistently different value to the subjects, what is considered the “low value” food differs, as do experimenters’ criteria for determining food preferences. Thus, some of the variability across studies is likely due to the differences in the relative value of the rewards. At a more theoretical level, we don’t actually know whether the subjects who failed to refuse didn’t notice the inequity or whether they noticed but were unwilling to forfeit a valuable reward.

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These studies measure whether subjects are so upset that they refuse a food reward that they otherwise accept, which is a very costly response. Although most studies use refusals as the DV because they are a clear outcome, future work should explore more subtle behavioral responses, such as increases in agitation, or physiological measures, such as changes in hormone levels or heart rate, to determine whether subjects are noticing inequity that they do not respond to with refusal to participate. It is also clear that a task is critical for generating a response to distributional inequity. Several early studies gave subjects different rewards without having them complete a task in order to receive them (Bräuer, Call, & Tomasello, 2006; Fontenot et al., 2007; Roma, Silberberg, Ruggiero, & Suomi, 2006). In none of those studies did subjects respond to inequity. Since that time, numerous studies have included both the condition requiring a task and a “gift” condition, in which subjects are handed rewards without completing a task. In these withinsubjects studies, subjects typically respond in the work condition, but never do so in the gift one, indicating that a task is necessary (although not sufficient) to generate a response to distributional inequity (Brosnan et al., 2010; van Wolkenten et al., 2007). One obvious question is why this is the case. A prosaic response is that subjects are used to being handed food by humans. Because they are all socially housed, it is typical for some individuals to get more than others, either because the humans aren’t always perfectly equal in their distribution or because the dominant individuals tend to monopolize the better rewards. In this interpretation, subjects ignore different rewards when they are being handed out “for free,” but expect that in experimental conditions, in which outcomes are typically tightly controlled by the experimenter, rewards will be more equal. If this is the case, it suggests that they have learned to expect equity in some contexts, but not others. A second possibility is that the response is only triggered in situations that emulate working together. It has been argued that the response to inequity is a mechanism by which humans judge the value of their cooperative partners (Brosnan, 2006a; Brosnan & de Waal, 2014; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999); if a partner takes more than their share of the rewards following a joint action, it is time to find a better one. On the other hand, windfalls that are unrelated to joint effort are uninformative about the value of a cooperative partner; if you win the lottery, I may wish that I had done so as well, but your greater income doesn’t tell me anything about you as a partner. Thus, in these studies the task may trigger the response to working together, since both individuals are completing a task for a reward, and therefore generate an inequity response that isn’t seen in the absence of a task. Other work has delved more deeply in to this question, exploring how subjects respond when they actually are working together to achieve a reward.

28 Sarah F. Brosnan Linking Cooperation and Inequity Research on joint tasks with unequal outcomes indicates that subjects are quite sensitive to inequity in the context of cooperation, supporting the hypothesized link between cooperation and inequity. In most of these studies, subjects are tested for their willingness to cooperate using a so-called bar pull apparatus, in which a tray containing food is placed in front of two subjects, who can work together to pull it in using a set of bars or ropes. Typically the tray is either weighted such that no one subject can pull it in on their own, but subjects can when working together, or the rope pull is unattached, such that if one subject pulls without their partner the rope will become unthreaded from the tray and the apparatus can no longer be pulled in. The dependent variable is how often they successfully work together to pull in the tray and obtain the food across different conditions. A major advantage of this task for studying cooperation is that it is quite intuitive for subjects, in that they can see the tray with the food on it moving closer as they pull and moving away (or stopping) if they cease pulling (Brosnan & de Waal, 2002). Moreover, there is kinesthetic feedback; in the “loose rope” version, if one subject pulls the rope before the other, the rope is pulled away from the non-pulling subject. In the weighted tray version, if one subject lets go, which is visible to their partner, the tray suddenly becomes too heavy to pull, so the subject gets immediate, relevant feedback about the effect of their partner’s actions. This is important because if tasks are not intuitively obvious we may underestimate animals’ abilities because we confuse a lack of ability with a misunderstanding of the apparatus (Brosnan, 2018; de Waal, 2016). Distributional inequality negatively impacts success on this task. In one task, capuchins’ food rewards were either distributed on the tray such that subjects could easily claim their food without interference from the partner or were clumped in the middle of the tray so that one subject could monopolize them (de Waal & Davis, 2003). Subjects were more successful in the dispersed than in the clumped condition, from the very first trial, indicating that they knew from past social interactions that their partners could prevent them from accessing clumped resources. This was true for both unrelated pairs and mother/offspring (related) pairs, indicating that just being related isn’t sufficient to overcome inequality. However, the potential for inequality doesn’t always impede cooperation. Capuchin monkeys will help a partner when there are no rewards available for them as long as the advantaged subject shares some food (de Waal & Berger, 2000). These results indicate that what is important is not the distribution, but the partner’s behavior. In another study, subjects had the opportunity to pull with a social partner for either identical rewards (low or

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high value) or an unequal distribution (one low, one high). Subjects could choose what reward they were pulling for (Brosnan, Freeman, & de Waal, 2006). Subjects’ success rate was the same in the equal and unequal conditions, but in some pairs, one member of the pair monopolized the better reward in the unequal condition. In those pairs, cooperation rates across all conditions were less than half the rate of the pairs in which both benefitted roughly equally from the better reward in the unequal condition. Strikingly, these latter subjects cooperated at high levels even though they got a less valuable reward than their partner on about half of the unequal trials. It appears that subjects were able to extrapolate the relative equality, or lack thereof, across multiple trials. Chimpanzees show a similarly nuanced response. Chimpanzees are far more likely to cooperate with subjects who are tolerant of them in feeding situations (i.e., allow them to have some of a monopolizable food source), and when given a choice between two partners for a cooperation task, choose a tolerant partner over a less tolerant one (Melis, Hare, & Tomasello, 2006b, 2006a). However, unlike with capuchin monkeys, whether a partner shared previously does not appear to factor in to decisions about whether they share food (Melis, Schneider, & Tomasello, 2011). It could be that capuchins are more sensitive than chimpanzees to the short term effects of food sharing, or perhaps long term social relationships are of greater importance in decision-making in chimpanzees. The Phylogenetic Distribution of Inequity Responses The hypothesis that inequity and cooperation are linked also suggests that more cooperative species are also more sensitive to inequitable outcomes. Of course, there are several potential alternate hypotheses. One is that responding to inequity is a homology across the primates. However, the lack of a response in numerous primates indicates that this is not the case (Brosnan et al., 2011; Freeman et al., 2013; Talbot et al., 2011). Another possibility is that inequity responses emerge in the context of complex social groupings, but some of the primates that show no evidence of inequity responses live in quite large social groups (i.e., squirrel monkeys; Freeman et al., 2013; Talbot et al., 2011). It could also be that inequity responses are a byproduct of advanced cognition, although the lack of responses to inequity in orangutans, an equally smart but relatively less social ape, even those that are socially housed in captivity and so have extensive social experience, indicates that large brains alone are not sufficient to develop inequity responses (Bräuer et al., 2009; Brosnan et al., 2011). There is, however, evidence supporting the cooperation hypothesis. Among apes, chimpanzees show inequity responses (Brosnan et al.,

30 Sarah F. Brosnan 2015, 2005; 2010; although see Bräuer et al., 2009; Engelmann et al., 2017) as well as cooperative hunting (Boesch, 1994), strategic food sharing (Nishida, Hasegawa, Hayaki, Takahata, & Uehara, 1992), coalitions and alliances (de Waal, 1982), and high levels of cooperation in laboratory studies (Melis et al., 2006a; Suchak, Eppley, Campbell, & de Waal, 2014). The closely related bonobos, which are also highly cooperative (Hare, Melis, Woods, Hastings, & Wrangham, 2007), show some response, although the sample size was too small to be conclusive (Bräuer et al., 2009). They also show negative reactions to social inequalities in observational studies (Clay, Ravaux, de Waal, & Zuberbühler, 2016). Orangutans, which do not respond, also are not known to extensively cooperate outside of the lab (Chalmeau, Lardeux, Brandibas, & Gallo, 1997). The New World monkeys also follow this pattern. Capuchin monkeys respond to inequity (Brosnan & de Waal, 2003; Fletcher, 2008; Talbot et al., 2018; van Wolkenten et al., 2007; although see also McAuliffe et al., 2015; Silberberg et al., 2009) and also cooperate, coordinating group movements (Boinski, 1993), forming coalitions and alliances (Louis-Gros, Perry, & Manson, 2003), engaging in cooperative predator defense (Boinski, 1988; Perry, Manson, Dower, & Wikbert, 2003), and cooperating in lab tasks (e.g., Mendres & de Waal, 2000; reviewed in Brosnan, 2010). This is in notable contrast to squirrel monkeys, who are closely phylogenetically related (they share a phylogenetic Family) and are even sympatric in parts of their range, but show no response to inequity (Freeman et al., 2013; Talbot et al., 2011) and do not cooperate extensively, even in laboratory settings (Vale, Williams, Lambeth, Schapiro & Brosnan, 2019). It is less clear whether Old World monkeys follow this pattern, as only macaques have been tested thus far. Rhesus and long-tailed macaques do show inequity responses (Hopper, Lambeth, Schapiro, Bernacky, & Brosnan, 2013; Massen, Van Den Berg, Spruijt, & Sterck, 2012). Macaques do not cooperate in the same ways as capuchins and chimpanzees, but they do form extensive collations and alliances (Chapais, 1991; Higham & Maestripieri, 2010; Maestripieri, 2007) and cooperate in economic games as well as capuchins and chimpanzees (Brosnan, Wilson, & Beran, 2012). More work is needed on Old World monkeys to determine how widespread inequity responses are, and whether they correlate with cooperation or some other factor. Cooperative breeders, in which offspring care is provided by both parents and, sometimes, adult offspring, are an interesting exception. The level of cooperation and interdependency shown among these species seems to indicate that they would also respond negatively to inequity. However, there is no evidence for inequity responses in tamarins or owl monkeys (McAuliffe et al., 2014; Neiworth et al., 2009; Talbot et al., 2011) and only limited evidence for a response among marmosets,

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another Callthrichid related to tamarins (Mustoe et al., 2016). On first glance, this seems to contradict the cooperation hypothesis. However, typical partners in these studies are members of a bonded pair, who are completely interdependent with respect to reproduction, the most important thing any animal does from a natural selection standpoint. The costs of leaving a partner are quite high, and thus it may be that reactions to being disadvantaged are only beneficial when the inequity is extremely high, more than is present in these tests. We can test this hypothesis further by determining whether there is a difference in individuals’ responses when they are first forming a pair, when they should be vigilant to inequity, versus when they are an established pair with offspring, when the costs may be too high to merit reacting. Advantageous Inequity Aversion Up until this point, all that I have discussed is how subjects respond when they are treated negatively, but fairness implies being interested in both one’s own outcomes and those of others. To date, only chimpanzees show evidence of being sensitive to being overbenefitted. In one study in which subjects received either the same high value reward as a partner or the high value reward while their partner received a less preferred one, subjects refused the high value reward more often when their partner got the less preferred one than when both subjects got the preferred one (Brosnan et al., 2010; although note that subjects were nearly four times as likely to refuse to participate if their partner got a better reward as compared to when their partner got a less good outcome). We do not know whether this was due to concern about inequity or the future repercussions of obtaining a better outcome than a partner, particularly if that partner was dominant (the sample size was too small to statistically determine if dominance played a role). Nonetheless, whatever the cause, subjects did notice when their partner got a better outcome. Parallel evidence comes from chimpanzees’ behavior in the Ultimatum Game (UG). The UG is an economic game in which one of two subjects is given an endowment and must choose a split between themselves and their partner. The partner can either accept the split as offered or reject; if she accepts, both get the money as proposed, and if she rejects, neither get anything (Camerer, 2003). In most human societies, the proposer offers more than the minimum to the partner, and the partner will reject very low offers. This varies from Western societies, in which the modal offer is a 50/50 split and partners are likely to reject anything below about 40% of the endowment, to the Machiguenga of Peru, who both make very low, albeit non-zero, offers as subject and who accept most offers as partner (Camerer, 2003; Henrich, 2000). We cannot explain the full game to non-verbal species,

32 Sarah F. Brosnan so in primates we use a limited form UG, in which subjects choose between one of two splits of the endowment, an equal split and an unequal split benefitting the subject. The hallmark of the UG in humans has always been the rejection of low offers by the partner, but chimpanzees do not reject offers (Jensen, Call, & Tomasello, 2007; Kaiser, Jensen, Call, & Tomasello, 2012; Proctor, Williamson, de Waal, & Brosnan, 2013). However, chimpanzees’ offers do become more equitable when the partner has the option to reject. In one study, subjects had to choose a token representing one of the two distributions and pass it to their partner, who could either pass it to the human experimenter, signaling acceptance, or refuse to return it, signaling a rejection (Proctor et al., 2013). In a condition in which subjects could choose a token and return it themselves, they overwhelmingly chose the token representing the distribution that favored them. However, when they had to pass their chosen token to their partner, their preference reversed. The same pattern was found when the study was run with children from the same daycare class; partners never rejected a single offer, but proposers favored the equal split when the partner had recourse. There was also anecdotal evidence that the partners were making an effort to change the subject’s behavior. Although too rare for statistical analysis, chimpanzees would express frustration towards subjects who did not choose the equal split (e.g., banging on the walls, spitting water, vocalizing), while human children said things like “that’s not fair!” Of course, this study involved repeated interactions with known members of one’s social group, whereas most human studies are one-shot interactions between anonymous strangers. If they wish to make a statement, what recourse do these human subjects have, other than to refuse? Indeed, if you give them even a chance to write a note to the subject, responders do so, and accept lower offers (Xiao & Houser, 2009). As part of a social network, you are best served by changing your partner’s behavior, if possible, so that you can benefit in the future rather than refusing to ever interact with them again (Milinski, 2013). This hallmark behavior of rejecting is likely an artefact of the experiment being a very unusual social circumstance for humans.

Responses in Other Species Support the Hypotheses from Primates Although we are primates, it is also very important to understand the response in other taxa. If only primates respond to inequity, then it is clear that it is something unique to that taxon. If, as is the case, inequity occurs in multiple taxa, this convergence gives us an important opportunity to look for the underlying contexts that supported the evolution

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of the inequity response. Indeed, evidence from non-primates supports the hypothesis that subjects from species that are highly cooperative are sensitive to distributional inequity. Some cooperative corvids respond negatively to inequity (Wascher & Bugnyar, 2013), as do rats (Oberliessen et al., 2016), who are also cooperative (Daniel, 1942, 1943). Perhaps the best evidence comes from canids, who are both highly cooperative and, across numerous studies, show evidence of responding negatively to inequity (reviewed in McGetrick & Range, 2018). One key difference that emerges between canids and other species is that canids only refuse in the absence of a reward, not when there are differences in reward quality (Range, Horn, Viranyi, & Huber, 2009). However, subjects do respond to differences in quality by changing the duration and type of interactions with both the experimenter and their social partner, indicating that they have noticed the inequality, even if they do not refuse to participate (Brucks, Essler, Marshall-Pescini, & Range, 2016; Essler, Marshall-Pescini, & Range, 2017). This is true for both pack-living dogs and wolves, suggesting that this response is not an artifact of domestication (Essler et al., 2017). Additional work indicates that dogs who are more impulsive, less persistent, and make slower decisions are more sensitive to inequity (Brucks, Range, & Marshall-Pescini, 2017). Complementary evidence comes from species that lack a response to inequality. New Caledonian crows fail to show any understanding of a collaborative task, including responses to inequity (Jelbert, Singh, Gray, & Taylor, 2015). Keas, another corvid, show equivocal evidence for cooperation; in one study, “cooperation” was achieved by the dominant forcing the subordinate into the helper role (Tebbich, Taborsky, & Winkler, 1996). In another, cooperation rates were higher for individuals who affiliated more, but there was no evidence that the subjects understood their or their partner’s roles (Schwing, Jocteur, Wein, Noë, & Massen, 2016). Consistent with the hypothesis, they also show no evidence of inequity aversion (Heaney, Gray, & Taylor, 2017). Another interesting exception is cleaner fish, who work together to clean larger client fish (Bshary, 2001), yet fail to show inequity aversion in an analogue of the traditional task (Raihani, McAuliffe, Brosnan, & Bshary, 2012). The authors argue that this is due to a difference in social system; in most species that show inequity, it is not terribly costly to try out new partners. Cleaner fish (and cooperative breeding primates) are stuck with their partners, and so may be better served to change their partner’s behavior; indeed, cleaner fish are one of the few species for which there is evidence of punishment (Raihani, Grutter, & Bshary, 2010; Raihani & McAuliffe, 2012). Thus, there may be a tradeoff between partner choice and partner control in species’ responses to inequity.

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Responses in Young Children A developmental approach provides a complementary perspective to the comparative one presented in this chapter. In particular, this approach helps to determine human responses prior to the full immersion in culture that adult humans experience. Considering primarily studies that are procedurally similar to those with animals, there is evidence that children are sensitive to distributional differences from a young age. Children who received fewer stickers than a partner for doing the same task accepted the stickers, but showed negative affective and verbal responses to receiving fewer stickers than their partner (LoBue, Nishida, Chiong, DeLoache, & Haidt, 2011). Similarly to primates, subjects did not respond when they got more stickers than their partner. Many developmental studies do not include a contrast control, but those that do suggest that, like primates, children respond more strongly to inequity than contrast; in one study, children refused disadvantageous unequal offers in both social and non-social contexts, but did so more in the social condition, and only refused advantageous distributions in the social condition (McAuliffe, Blake, Kim, Wrangham, & Warneken, 2013). As this suggests, like primates, most evidence indicates that children are more sensitive to being disadvantaged than advantaged. When US children choose between an unequal or an equal distribution of rewards, they typically reject disadvantageous offers by the age of four, but advantageous offers are not rejected until the age of eight (Blake & McAuliffe, 2011). In a related study of children between ages four and 15 from seven societies (in North, South and Central America, India, and Africa), children in all societies refused disadvantageous offers, and this tendency increased with age (Blake et al., 2015). However, in only three of the seven societies did children refuse advantageous offers, and when they did, the refusal rate was lower for advantageous than disadvantageous offers. Indeed, US children age 5–6 will spitefully pay a cost to ensure that others’ outcomes remain below their own (Sheskin, Bloom, & Wynn, 2014). Work in infants mirrors these findings. Nineteen-month-old children expect to witness fair distributions of rewards to people, but, critically, not to inanimate objects (Sloane, Baillargeon, & Premack, 2012). In the same study, 21-month-old infants only expected fair distributions when both people participated in the task that generated the reward. Data from both eye-tracking and infants’ choices indicate that even infants as young as 12 to 15 months prefer equal over unequal distributions (Geraci & Surian, 2011), although it appears to be mediated by the way in which the subject shares (Schmidt & Sommerville, 2011). Overall, eye tracking and looking time data indicate that infants as young as three months are already sensitive to social situations, including the

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degree to which actors are “good” or “bad” in their interactions with others (reviewed in Hamlin, 2013) Finally, a common approach is to use the ultimatum game to compare children’s and adults’ responses. Five-year-old children do not respond in the same way as adults in a limited form UG (with a discrete number of choices; Wittig, Jensen, & Tomasello, 2013), with responders failing to take in to account proposers’ options and proposers appearing to lack understanding that a responder might refuse an unfair offer. Indeed, overall, children tend to accept (Benenson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007; Harbaugh, Krause, & Liday Jr, 2002; Melis, Floedl, & Tomasello, 2015) and propose (Murnighan & Saxon, 1998; Wittig et al., 2013) lower offers than do adults. As previously discussed, however, children do adjust their preference for the unequal offer when a partner is present (Proctor et al., 2013). Thus, while children do not respond like adults, they – and chimpanzees – appear to be sensitive to the presence of a partner.

The Evolution of Fairness The evidence of a negative response to inequity in so many different species, in concert with the evidence that it emerges quite early in human development, suggests that the response to inequity has a strong biological foundation (albeit one that is influenced by the culture in which humans live; i.e., Gachter, Herrmann, & Thoni, 2010). Moreover, the comparative evidence to date supports the hypothesis that the response to inequity evolved in conjunction with fairness, presumably as a mechanism to detect good cooperative partners (Brosnan, 2011; Brosnan & de Waal, 2014; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999). The first step in the evolutionary pathway was likely a negative response to (consistently) getting less than one’s partner in cooperative interactions that led to partner switching. Such a reaction corrects being routinely underbenefitted, a key concern in evolutionary currency, where the goal is to do relatively better than a partner. Therefore, if inequity is persistent, it can be worth sacrificing an absolute gain that leads to relative inequity in order to look for a more beneficial partner (Brosnan, 2006a, 2006b). Indeed, the basic abilities necessary to show this reaction appear to be relatively common throughout the animal kingdom. Obviously, subjects must be able to recognize when their rewards differ from those of others. This is something that is also needed for social learning, which is common in animals (Heyes & Galef, 1996). There also needs to be a mechanism that causes individuals to leave partners to whom their outcomes compare unfavorably. Although it is possible to do this by reasoning about the outcomes, it is more likely to be emotionally mediated. That is, subjects get frustrated when they get less, which leads to a tendency to look for a new partner. Humans may understand all the ramifications, but even for us, the initial step is likely an emotional reaction. This alone is sufficient to

36 Sarah F. Brosnan motivate the subject to find a new partner, without a need to understand why it is beneficial. We have previously hypothesized that given the gains available for maximizing relative outcomes from cooperation and how phylogenetically widespread these basic mechanisms are, responding negatively to getting less than a partner should be common across the animal kingdom (Brosnan & de Waal, 2014). The second step is a negative response to being overbenefitted. This is costly in the short term, requiring the sacrifice of an immediate gain, and presumably because of this, is also less common, even among humans, than responses to being underbenefitted (Blake et al., 2015). However, there are substantial long term gains to be made in this case as well. First, if the partner will leave a relationship in which they are consistently underbenefitted, then rectifying the inequity is necessary to maintain the relationship. If this is a long term cooperative relationship from which there have been, and presumably will continue to be, substantial benefits to the actor, then it is certainly worth the short term cost of rectifying the inequity for the long term gain of the future benefits from the relationship. Refusing an outcome that benefits you more than your partner, or working to rectify being overbenefitted, sends a clear signal that you value the relationship. Moreover, this may doubly benefit because it provides a clear signal to both the partner and to others that you are a good cooperator who values relationships, which should provide access to more partners in the future. To what degree is this unique to humans? The only species in which we have found evidence for this to date is chimpanzees, who sometimes refuse advantageous offers (Brosnan et al., 2010) and make more equal offers when their partner can block their rewards in the Ultimatum game (Proctor et al., 2013). Again, the fact that it is less common may not be surprising because, although it is beneficial in the long term, the benefits are not as direct as those from disadvantageous inequity aversion. It also likely requires more complex cognitive mechanisms. At minimum, it requires that individuals cooperate repeatedly within the same relationships and recognize their partners. Additionally, subjects must have at least some basic delay of gratification abilities to allow them to forfeit the short term gains of being overbenefitted, whether or not they understand the long term benefits. While many species show delay of gratification (Flessert & Beran, 2018), forfeiting a current benefit for the amorphous good of the relationship likely requires more than being able to wait for a few seconds for a better reward. Thus, while this response is likely present in other highly encephalized, social species, such as elephants, cetaceans, or other apes, we have predicted that this will be more rare due to the difficulty in trading off a short term cost for a long term gain (Brosnan & de Waal, 2014). Humans, with our dramatically expanded brains, added to this basic sense of fairness language, which allows for explicit agreements, the ability to plan far into the future, and remarkable self-control abilities,

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including the ability to understand the benefits of sacrificing short term gains for larger future benefits from cooperation. From these building blocks evolved the sense of fairness that we have today. It differs from what we see in other species in that we can set formal rules of what is fair and have expanded our sphere to include people from outside our group, including even other species. Nonetheless, we can see the roots of this ability in the responses to inequity in other species and better understand ourselves by studying them.

Where to from Here? Although we know quite a lot now about responses to inequity in other species, there is still much to learn. First, the most common way to measure inequity is rather crude; subjects are assessed for whether they refuse to participate when they receive a lesser (or greater) reward than their partner. But this is quite costly, since by definition all of these rewards are things that the subjects like to eat, and requires either that the subject is frustrated enough to forfeit something they like or has a good ability to inhibit (or both). Indeed, even among humans, small children will respond negatively to an unequal outcome without refusing it (i.e., LoBue et al., 2011). One promising way of studying this comes from canids. Both dogs and wolves will only refuse to participate if they receiving nothing at all while their partner receives a small reward; they do not refuse even for very low value rewards. However, subjects do change their behavior when they receive a lower value reward than a partner, for instance, spending less time with the experimenter and/or their partner (Brucks et al., 2016). Future work on all non-human species, as well as children, should focus on reactions that indicate that subjects notice the inequity, and may not like it, even if they do not refuse to continue to participate. In addition, it will be important to learn what mechanisms are involved in responses to inequity. For instance, are there hormonal correlates to inequity? Results thus far on the effect of oxytocin on inequity responses are mixed (Mustoe et al., 2016; Romero et al., 2019), and further work looking not only at oxytocin but also other hormones associated with cooperation, such as testosterone, will be key. In addition, we need to learn more about the contexts that influence inequity responses. In the social realm, does it matter who the partner is, what the pair’s relationship is, or whether there is an observer of the interaction? In the realm of cognitive mechanisms, what abilities are necessary for the response and do specific individual factors, such as risk preferences, influence decisions? In the environmental realm, what early life experiences influence the response, and in what direction? Because we have the ability to repeatedly test subjects whose history, including social relationships, are known, non-human species provide an excellent model system on which to run carefully controlled experiments to answer these important questions.

38 Sarah F. Brosnan Finally, it is critical to take these studies out of the lab and begin to explore inequity responses in the wild. One study on a sanctuary housed group of bonobos found that calls differ after a bonobo has received aggression “unfairly” versus after they “deserved it” (i.e., instigated the encounter; Clay et al., 2016). Are there other natural contexts in which inequity responses occur? In the lab, for practical reasons virtually all of our experiments are based on food rewards, but is inequity more common in other currencies? Finally, lab work also indicates that distributional inequity is a stronger influence than procedural inequity, but is this an artefact of the sorts of studies we can run in the lab? We can best understand behavior by studying subjects’ natural behavior in the field in concert with carefully controlled experiments in the lab that uncover underlying mechanisms (Janson & Brosnan, 2013). The comparative approach is an extremely useful tool for understanding the biological foundations of complex human social behaviors. Although the behavior itself may not be replicated in full in other species, we can look for precursors to better understand the pathway through which the behavior evolved and contexts that may have influenced it. The human sense of fairness appears to be a fundamental response in every society, albeit with variation among cultures. A biological approach to understanding it, focused on other species’ responses, has begun to unpack the forces that selected for it and the trajectory through which it evolved. Future work is needed to validate these hypotheses or suggest ways in which they should be changed to best describe our responses and predict reactions in other situations.

Notes 1 Although behavior can certainly be studied through archaeology. For instance, we know quite a lot about maternal care patterns in dinosaurs thanks to careful studies of footprints and other evidence that was fossilized (Martin, 2014). 2 In this study, the subjects were tested by themselves in the contrast condition. In subsequent work, to control for the fact that these socially housed primates may respond differently when they are alone, we tested them as a pair, and each primate was shown the better food but received the less preferred one.

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44 Sarah F. Brosnan Range, F., Horn, L., Viranyi, Z., & Huber, L. (2009). The absence of reward induces inequity aversion in dogs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(1), 340–345. Roma, P. G., Silberberg, A., Ruggiero, A. M., & Suomi, S. J. (2006). Capuchin monkeys, inequity aversion, and the frustration effect. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 120(1), 67–73. doi:10.1037/0735-7036.120.1.67 Romero, T., Konno, A., Nagasawa, M., & Hasegawa, T. (2019). Oxytocin modulates responses to inequity in dogs. Physiology & Behavior, 201, 104–110. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.12.023 Schmidt, M. F., & Sommerville, J. A. (2011). Fairness expectations and altruistic sharing in 15-month-old human infants. PLoS One, 6(10), e23223. Schwing, R., Jocteur, E., Wein, A., Noë, R., & Massen, J. J. M. (2016). Kea cooperate better with sharing affiliates. Animal Cognition, 19(6), 1093–1102. doi:10.1007/s10071-016-1017-y Sheskin, M., Bloom, P., & Wynn, K. (2014). Anti-equality: Social comparison in young children. Cognition, 130(2), 152–156. doi:10.1016/j. cognition.2013.10.008 Silberberg, A., Crescimbene, L., Addessi, E., Anderson, J. R., & Visalberghi, E. (2009). Does inequity aversion depend on a frustration effect? A test with capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Animal Cognition, 12(3), 505–509. doi:10.1007/s10071-009-0211-6 Sloane, S., Baillargeon, R., & Premack, D. (2012). Do infants have a sense of fairness? Psychological Science, 23(2), 196–204. doi:10.1177/ 0956797611422072 Suchak, M., Eppley, T. M., Campbell, M. W., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2014). Ape duos and trios: Spontaneous cooperation with free partner choice in chimpanzees. PeerJ, 2, e417. doi:10.7717/peerj.417 Talbot, C. F., Freeman, H. D., Williams, L. E., & Brosnan, S. F. (2011). Squirrel monkeys’ response to inequitable outcomes indicates a behavioural convergence within the primates. Biology Letters, 7(5), 680–682. doi:10.1098/ rsbl.2011.0211 Talbot, C. F., Parrish, A. E., Watzek, J., Essler, J. L., Leverett, K. L., Paukner, A., & Brosnan, S. F. (2018). The influence of reward quality and quantity and spatial proximity on the responses to inequity and contrast in capuchin monkeys (Cebus [Sapajus] apella). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 132(1), 75–87. doi:10.1037/com0000088 Talbot, C. F., Price, S. A., & Brosnan, S. F. (2016). Inequity responses in nonhuman animals. In C. Sabbaugh & M. Schmitt (Eds.), Handbook of social justice theory and research (pp. 387–406). New York: Springer. Tebbich, S., Taborsky, M., & Winkler, H. (1996). Social manipulation causes cooperation in keas. Animal Behavior, 52, 1–10. Tinklepaugh, O. L. (1928). An experimental study of representative factors in monkeys. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 8(3), 197–236. Ulber, J., Hamann, K., & Tomasello, M. (2017). Young children, but not chimpanzees, are averse to disadvantageous and advantageous inequities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 155, 48–66. doi:10.1016/j. jecp.2016.10.013

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Justification and Rationalization Causes, Boundaries and Consequences of Motivated Justice Perceptions Holly R. Engstrom, Adam Alic, and Kristin Laurin

What causes hurricanes? Here are two interesting answers. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, one Alabama State Senator speculated that it might have been caused by God’s wrath at the sinful decadence of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras (Fox News, 2005). And after Hurricane Harvey ravaged Houston in 2017, one academic at the University of Tampa tweeted that Texans had brought the disaster upon themselves by supporting Trump in the 2016 Presidential election (Paluska, 2017). Of course, these claims are false. It is easy enough to find out what science knows about the cause of hurricanes, which according to National Geographic is “warm ocean water plus the Earth’s eastward rotation” (National Geographic Staff, 2016). The claims made in the paragraph above are examples of people going to unmistakably absurd lengths to make sense of their world, and in particular to reassure themselves that this world is just. People want to believe they live in a place where everyone gets what they deserve, and deserves what they get. Decades of research supports this notion, finding that people systematically distort their perceptions to satisfy their apparent need to perceive justice in their social environment (e.g., Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Lerner & Goldberg, 1999). In this chapter, we synthesize current psychological theory and findings on justice beliefs from the perspective of motivated reasoning, discussing mechanisms, boundary conditions and consequences of this phenomenon. In the sections that follow, we begin by reviewing the concept of motivated cognition as a general phenomenon, and people’s tendency to rationalize: To see themselves, the world around them, and even their romantic partners in a rosier light than they perhaps are in reality. Then, we turn our focus to the more specific phenomenon of motivated justice perceptions, and dig into existing theoretical explanations for why justice is one of the features people strive to perceive in their world. Next, we link these theoretical explanations to four conceptual moderators of people’s tendency to

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conclude that the world is just, noting in each case how these moderators align with moderators of motivated cognition more broadly. We end by discussing consequences of the justice motive.

Motivated Cognition Motivated cognition can be roughly defined as the strategic use of mental processes with the goal of arriving at a particular conclusion. After briefly reviewing various forms motivated cognition can take, we focus on what we call here justification, or the motivated construction of justice perceptions. Thinking Is Not Just for Knowing Of course, there are occasions when people think simply with the goal of knowing, of comprehending something factual about the world (Kruglanski & Freund, 1983; Tetlock, 1983; but see Kahneman & Tversky, 1972; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973), choosing instead to use more effortful, complex cognitive processes (McAllister, Mitchell, & Beach, 1979; Tetlock & Kim, 1987). However, at other times, the goal of thinking is to produce not a thought that is true, but that one would like to be true (Kunda, 1990). In one paper representative of hundreds of others in support of this idea, participants read about two methodologically equivalent studies: One found that capital punishment was effective in deterring crime; the other found it was not. Participants’ subsequent evaluations of the two studies’ methodologies lined up neatly with the attitudes they entered the study with: If they arrived already supporting capital punishment, they found the most methodological flaws in the study questioning the effectiveness of capital punishment. If instead they arrived already opposed to capital punishment, they found more flaws in the study showing it could in fact be effective (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). Participants saw the studies and the quality of their evidence in a way that matched the conclusions they wanted to reach. Thinking Can Be for Feeling Good Often, the specific conclusions people want to reach are ones that reassure them that they can feel good about themselves, their environment, and their life circumstances. Gilbert and colleagues (1998) coined the term “psychological immune system” to refer to the broad collection of mechanisms that enable people to maintain a positive outlook and parry away the threat of negative information. Here, we use the term rationalization to refer more specifically to the mental act of reconstruing the external world or one’s internal preferences to create a better match between them.

48 Holly R. Engstrom et al. For example, in a study conducted in the days leading up to the 2000 United States Presidential election, some participants learned that George Bush was expected to win the election by a small margin; others learned instead that Al Gore was the expected winner. Regardless of whether participants initially preferred Bush or Gore, their preference shifted to favor the expected winner. Partisans who learned that their candidate would lose reported they preferred their own candidate less – and his opponent more – than partisans who instead learned that their candidate would win (Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002). In other words, people rationalized the status quo they anticipated, striving to conclude that whatever the future promised to hold would not be so bad. Thinking Can Be for Perceiving Justice We have just pointed out that people often rationalize their way to the conclusion that everything is right with their world. One of the specific ways in which people prefer their world to be right is that they prefer it to be just (Lerner, 1980). Empirical evidence for this preference goes back several decades. For example, when participants viewed peers receiving electrical shocks and were unable to intervene, they rationalized their way into viewing the electric shocks as just by rejecting the shock victim and perceiving her in more negative terms (Lerner & Simmons, 1966). This preference remains firmly in place today. For example, people who experienced either good or bad luck, or who did good or bad deeds, construed current events in a way that would compensate for previous outcomes, restoring overall justice (Gaucher, Hafer, Kay, & Davidenko, 2010). For example, participants assigned to recall bad luck in their lives (e.g. a bad hair day or misplacing a five-dollar bill) construed an upcoming event (e.g. a change in a school’s cafeteria budget allocation) in a more positive light – presumably to compensate for their bad luck – than those assigned to recall good luck. But participants who had done a bad deed construed the upcoming event in a more negative light – presumably as punishment for their misdeed – than those who had done a good deed. These studies illustrate the mental contortions people will perform to justify events in their world, from blaming innocent victims for their fate to anticipating a windfall after experiencing a random stroke of bad luck.

Why Are People Motivated to See the World as Just? Motivated cognition and rationalization in general allow people to come to comforting conclusions and reduce negative affect (Gilbert et al., 1998). Motivated cognition with the more specific goal of seeing the world or the system as just likely also serves this palliative goal,

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reducing “anxiety, guilt, dissonance, discomfort, and uncertainty” (Jost & Hunyady, 2003, p. 5) by fulfilling some justice-related need. But how should we define this need, and in particular why does seeing the world as a fair place feel good? Below, we review existing theory on this question using three different levels of analysis. Systematic Principles – Like Justice – That Can Explain How the World Works Are One Way of Reducing Uncertainty First, we tackle the broadest level of analysis, which relies on the idea that justice, among other potential organizing principles, helps reduce uncertainty about the world. People find uncertainty existentially unsettling, because uncertainty makes it difficult to predict how one should behave, how others will behave, or what will happen next (e.g., Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006; Hogg, 2000, 2007; Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Landau, Kay, & Whitson, 2015; Lind & van Den Bos, 2002). And yet it assails us daily in many forms. Does your colleague like you, or is she just trying to curry favor? Will your grant be funded? Why did your government approve that new bill? These circumstances, where we lack understanding of important features of the situation, or we lack information about people’s relationships or intentions, provoke feelings of uncertainty and confusion (van Den Bos & Lind, 2002). One set of finding suggests that perceiving the world as just can help counter these feelings (Lind & van Den Bos, 2002; van Den Bos & Lind, 2002). Specifically, justice addresses the feelings of unpredictability that uncertainty generates by reducing the number of possible outcomes to the ones that are just. For example, if a student is uncertain about the grade she will obtain on an exam she just completed, believing in justice at least allows her to predict that her grade will be relatively high (if she studied hard) or relatively low (if she chose to spend her time otherwise). Similarly, believing in justice allows people to make more certain judgments about given outcomes once they occur. If our student sees the legal system as generally just, then she can use that to make a heuristic judgment of a recent conviction in a court case, and spare herself any uncertainty about whether the judge was right. Supporting this theoretical notion, people who are less tolerant of uncertainty also tend to perceive their social systems as more just (Jost & Hunyady, 2005), perhaps because this helps them to reduce the uncertainty they have trouble tolerating. As well, people are increasingly likely to see justice in the world when made to feel uncertain (Bal & van Den Bos, 2012; see also van Den Bos, Wilke, & Lind, 1998). For example, after thinking about aspects of their lives about which they felt uncertain, participants were more likely justify the sexual assault of an innocent victim, blaming her for her fate rather than seeing the attack as unfair and unjustified.

50 Holly R. Engstrom et al. Believing in Justice Helps Sustain Goal Pursuit In short, justice offers one systematic principle according to which the world might operate, and thereby can help reduce the existential threat of uncertainty (Bal & van Den Bos, 2012). But surely there are other operating principles that could provide people a sense of certainty. For instance, caste systems, although wildly unmeritocratic, provide people with a strong ability to predict exactly where they will end up, starting from a very young age (Dumont, 1980). Our next level of analysis examines why people might prefer to believe in justice specifically as an operating principle: Because doing so helps them sustain goal pursuit. By the time most people reach adulthood, they have already invested a significant amount of time and effort in pursuits that have yet to yield any tangible benefits: Students at university have not yet landed their dream job, and middle-aged employees are often still working toward the day when they can trade in their 9–5 for leisurely afternoons with their future grandchildren. According to just world theorists, the only reason this situation is sustainable is that, as people grow up, they also become invested in an idea they label the social contract (Lerner, 1980): A tacit guarantee that hard work does pay off in the long run, that hours spent toiling away at a desk in the present will pave the way to one’s dreams in the future. Imagine a world without this contract, where people cannot be sure that their actions will lead to predictable and reasonable consequences. It is difficult to survive, let alone thrive, without taking actions, and to decide on what actions to take people want to be at least reasonably sure of their consequences (Bal & van Den Bos, 2012). Thus, believing in justice, like other organizing principles, allows people to predict the future, but believing in justice, unlike many other organizing principles, gives people the ability to control that future as well: It offers them a guarantee that actions they take in the present will have predictable and reasonable consequences, thereby allowing them to continue with their lifelong endeavor of pursuing long-term goals (Hafer & Rubel, 2015). Thus, rationalizing injustice in the world should facilitate people’s goal pursuit. This idea is supported by empirical research. For example, belief in a just world is positively correlated with feelings of personal control (Furnham & Procter, 1989), and with long-term goal pursuit across a diverse variety of samples, including prisoners (Otto & Dalbert, 2005), 9th-grade adolescents (Dette, Stöber, & Dalbert, 2004), young adults in assisted housing (Sutton & Winnard, 2007), and undergraduate students (Hafer, 2000, Study 3). When people’s belief in a just world is bolstered experimentally, they are better able to defer their gratification, an important ability in pursuing long-term goals (Callan, Harvey, & Sutton, 2014). For example, when people learned that the

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victim of a crime was himself immoral (making the crime seem more just), they were more likely to forego immediate rewards in favor of larger rewards delivered later (e.g., preferring to receive $1000 in 6 months rather than $500 now). That is, they were better able to keep their eyes on the (bigger) long-term prize when they saw the world as more just. The opposite is also true: When people’s belief in a just world is threatened, their ability to pursue long-term success declines (Callan, Will Shead, & Olson, 2009). Finally, people do appear to actively justify their world to protect their ability to pursue their long-term goals. For example, in one study, participants were randomly assigned to list goals they wanted to achieve in the next 1–15 years or goals they wanted to achieve in the next 1–24 hours. Those who listed long-term goals were more likely to justify a freak accident, attributing its cause to the victim’s previous immoral actions (Callan, Harvey, Dawtry, & Sutton, 2013; see also Hafer, 2000; Hafer, Bègue, Choma, & Dempsey, 2005). Thus, when people are thinking about their long-term goals, they increasingly apply motivated cognition to see the world as just. Reducing Ideological Dissonance Our final level of analysis examines why, given people’s preference for justice and meritocracy, they might be especially disturbed to perceive its absence in their overarching sociopolitical systems, and why, when they do, they might be especially likely to put their motivated cognition to work undoing that perception. People participate in the sociopolitical systems in which they live, for example, by paying the taxes that contribute to infrastructure, by going to work and buying goods, and by obeying the laws. In so doing, they are consenting to the status quo as it exists, and thus at the very least tacitly lending their support to it. If they see the system as unjust or illegitimate, this poses an existential problem: How can people resolve the inconsistency between their implied support for the system – one which will likely continue on into the future – and their perception that it violates their important preferences for justice? One route to reducing this ideological dissonance is to rationalize away any injustices present in the system: To justify the system (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003). There is a substantial body of evidence supporting the idea that people are motivated to justify their sociopolitical systems (e.g., Cichocka, Winiewski, Bilewicz, Bukowski, & Jost, 2015; Jost et al., 2004; Jost & Burgess, 2000; Kay et al., 2009; Laurin, Kay, & Shepherd, 2011; van der Toorn, Nail, Liviatan, & Jost, 2014; Wakslak, Jost, Tyler, & Chen, 2007), and we delve into this research in more detail later in this chapter. As two brief examples, in one study using a large,

52 Holly R. Engstrom et al. nationally representative survey, most participants agreed that economic inequality is necessary to convince people to work hard, suggesting they were justifying the unequal status quo in their current system (Jost et al., 2003). Experimentally, people who learn that their government is made up of primarily the wealthy justify that state of affairs by agreeing that it is appropriate for the wealthy to run governments, more so than participants who learn that their government is made up of people earning a wider distribution of incomes (Kay et al., 2009). In other words, rather than acknowledge the potential injustice of economic inequality in government, participants changed their beliefs to perceive it as perfectly reasonable and just. However, to our knowledge, no research has directly tested whether this rationalization directly serves to reduce dissonance. Summary These three levels of analysis suggest that people are motivated to see justice in their world in turn, (a) because it gives them an operating principle with which to predict events in the world, b) because justice is an operating principle that affords them control over those events and therefore allows them to work toward goals, and c) because in spite of their preference for justice, they often find themselves tacitly complicit in systems that operate unjustly. Broadly, all three explanations posit that seeing the world as just allows people to think and act confidently and with certainty about themselves, their world, and what will happen next. This can help to explain some of the boundary conditions that define the circumstances under which people may use these motivated cognitive strategies to perceive justice in the world. Specifically, variables that make a particular injustice more or less likely to influence certainty, goal pursuit, and cognitive dissonance should be those that moderate people’s motivation to justify. Our next section focuses on this issue.

When Do People Use Motivated Cognition to Rationalize and Justify? To put in context the three explanations for why people are motivated to perceive justice, picture the following example. Your highly competent and deserving colleague is consistently passed over for promotions, despite the fact that she has worked at your office for over a decade. In contrast, the CEO’s nephew rises quickly through the ranks, despite his relative inexperience and lack of skill. This state of affairs may induce in you some ideological dissonance: You have worked in this office for years, and will likely continue working there in the future, thus tacitly supporting it, and yet it acted unjustly. This may also threaten your sense

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that you can reliably achieve your goals: If your workplace is in the habit of arbitrarily promoting people based on connections rather than effort, how can you have faith that your hard work will be rewarded? And it may make you feel your future is uncertain: An unjust workplace may well introduce additional new policies you cannot predict in advance, fire people who do not deserve it, or suddenly give you a new supervisor with unknown management abilities, making it difficult to picture your future with any specificity. For all three of these reasons, psychological theory predicts that you are likely to justify the decision to promote the CEO’s nephew, coming up with reasons why he is more skilled than you initially thought, or emphasizing instead how justly your company treats its employees in all other regards. But we all know from experience that this prediction does not always bear out. People sometimes vote against policies that seem unjust, or even organize rebellions against oppressive governments. Clearly, people sometimes see the injustice in the world and take action against it. What factors influence whether people justify or instead speak out against injustice? In this section, we review evidence for four such factors: Dependence, inevitability, system threat, and limited cognitive resources. In each case, we leverage the three levels of analysis we just described to explain why each moderator makes theoretical sense, relying on the example of the CEO’s nephew described above. For each moderator, we then review empirical evidence for its role in shaping system justification and other motivated justice perceptions, and note parallel evidence for moderation of motivated cognition and rationalization more broadly. Dependence Events or status quos that have a large potential for influencing a person’s outcomes are said to be ones on which that person is more dependent; events or status quos that have a more limited scope of influence on the self are ones on which that person is less dependent. Why Dependence Should Promote Justification In the example where your CEO’s nephew is promoted over your deserving colleague, you might be highly dependent on your workplace: Perhaps most of your friends work there, and your position is such that your employer can make decisions about what hours you work, or the location of your office. Or, you might depend on it only very little: Perhaps you have a large network of friends outside of your office, and your position means that your hours and location of work are in your hands. It is in the former circumstance that your future is especially uncertain if the company is unjust, because it controls many

54 Holly R. Engstrom et al. of your outcomes. Put differently, being dependent on the system makes it more threatening for that system to be unjust, since that injustice injects uncertainty into more aspects of one’s life. For this reason, we would expect people to justify injustice in the world around them specifically to the extent that they feel dependent on the perpetrator of the injustice. Dependence Does Promote Justification For example, when people were made to believe that their school system had control over their success and prosperity (that is, when they felt more dependent on the educational system), they were more likely to agree that the current school funding policies were fair and desirable. Similarly, when people were made to believe their government had a strong influence over their financial, social, and personal well-being, they were more likely to agree that their government’s current allocation of funding to different provinces was just and desirable (Kay et al., 2009). Dependence Also Promotes Motivated Cognition More Broadly When people feel that they are dependent on the status quo or the outcome of some event, they are more motivated to see it more positively, even in terms unrelated to justice (Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2012; van der Toorn, Tyler, & Jost, 2011). For example, when people felt more dependent on their romantic relationship, they felt more committed to and satisfied with their relationship, and more positive affect and closeness towards their partner (Attridge, Berscheid, & Sprecher, 1998). Thus, when people feel more dependent – be it on a government body or a romantic partner – they rationalize the entity on which they depend, seeing it in a more positive light than they otherwise would. Inevitability Some aspects of the status quo are inevitable: They are set in institutional stone, they are unlikely to change, or you have little possibility of escaping to a new status quo. Other aspects offer the possibility of escape: They are merely anticipated as opposed to already in place, or things could change, or you could pick up and move to a new system with a new status quo. Inevitability is conceptually distinct from dependence. For example, a country’s government might be easy to escape from because of their liberal emigration policies (low inevitability) but have wide-reaching influence over the outcomes of people who stay in that country (high dependence).

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Why Inevitability Should Promote Justification The promotion of the CEO’s nephew might be an inevitable fact of your life: Perhaps the paperwork has already been submitted and he has already taken up residence in the big corner office, and maybe you have little choice but to continue at your current job, because there are no available alternatives for employment. Or there might still be a chance to escape this unjust situation: Perhaps there is a probation period before he is officially promoted, or maybe you have some promising leads from employers at competing firms. In the latter case, you might feel less ideological dissonance, since the conflict between the unjust promotion and your tacit approval of it could be short lived: If you escape this unjust workplace, you will no longer be supporting it even implicitly. You might also feel more in control of your ability to reach your goals, since you can tell yourself that soon you will be in an environment where will no similar injustices impeding your progress. And by the same token, you might feel more certain about your ability to predict the future in the new environment you envision for yourself. In short, injustices that people can escape need less justification, because if they escape it, the injustice will cease to be a threat. For this reason, we would expect people to justify injustice in the world around them to the extent that they feel permanently stuck with the injustice in question. Inevitability Does Promote Justification For example, when Canadian women were told that Canada is difficult to emigrate from, and therefore that living in Canadian society is inevitable for them, they were more likely to agree that the gap in wages based on gender was due to genuine differences between men and women: A system justifying explanation. Moreover, they were less likely to agree that the wage gap was due to unfairness in Canadian society: A system blaming explanation (Laurin, Shepherd, & Kay, 2010; see also Kay et al., 2009). Similarly, when participants learned that the percentage of women in business in Canada had hardly changed in the last decade – in other words, that gender-based inequality in their system is likely to persist indefinitely with no chance of relief – they were more likely to see gender inequality as just (Laurin, Gaucher, & Kay, 2013). Inevitability Also Promotes Motivated Cognition More Broadly Like dependence, inevitability also seems to promote motivated cognition even in domains unrelated to justice. In one study, smokers were asked to recall their outdoor smoking habits just before a ban on outdoor smoking had taken effect, when it was still conceivable that they could escape it, or just after the ban was implemented, once it had

56 Holly R. Engstrom et al. become fully inevitable. Participants in the latter condition reported that they had smoked less often in outdoor areas the previous summer, compared to participants in the former condition (Laurin, 2018). In other words, participants rationalized more when the ban became inevitable: They reconstrued their own personal history such that the ban would seem to affect them less (see also Laurin, Kille, & Eibach, 2013; Rusbult, Martz, & Agnew, 1998). Threat The third factor that we identify in our review of moderators of justification is threat. Many threats occur when people discover negative information about a valued event or status quo – for example, that it is unjust, that it is declining in quality, or that others see it negatively. In other words, when people have reason to call into question their prior faith that this event or status quo is good and just, they can be said to be under threat. Why Threat Should Promote Justification Recall our previous example, where your CEO’s nephew was promoted ahead of your more-deserving colleague. Imagine that, before you found out about this promotion, you discovered that your company was fraudulently declaring sales where none existed, unjustly misleading the shareholders. This unrelated discovery would likely have threatened your feelings of certainty: If your company is willing to engage in blatantly illegal behaviors towards the shareholders, they might also be willing to engage in unfair and unpredictable behaviors towards their employees. It might also have threatened your sense of ideological consonance: If you continue to work at this company, you are tacitly supporting this unjust practice. Now imagine that it is in this heightened state of uncertainty and ideological dissonance that you discover that the CEO’s nephew had been promoted. This injustice might further raise your already-heightened uncertainty and dissonance to unacceptably aversive levels. Thus, you might be especially inclined, under these circumstances, to justify why the CEO’s nephew deserved that promotion, to avoid adding to the discomfort you are already experiencing because of the fraud. In the absence of the threat, it is possible that the nephew’s promotion would cause only a tolerably heightened sense of dissonance and uncertainty. Notably, even negative information that is, on the surface, unrelated to justice can be threatening and therefore increase your feelings of uncertainty and dissonance, and your corresponding motivation to justify away injustices that would otherwise increase those aversive states further. This might be because threats to overall positivity carry

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with them connotations for fairness: Fairness is one of the most widely endorsed moral traits (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009), meaning that people broadly agree that fairness is an essential component of goodness. Thus, when goodness is called into question, so too is fairness or justice. For example, if you learn that your company has a low rating for employee satisfaction, you might start to wonder if that is because it treats its employees unfairly, thereby heightening your uncertainty and dissonance. Threat Does Promote Justification For example, after reading an article stating Canada was in a social and economic downward spiral, participants were more willing to justify the status quo of (unequal) Canadian gender norms in business: Participants who were told that there were very few female CEOs thought there should be fewer women in business and that women are undesirable CEOs (Kay et al., 2009). Thus, when participants felt threatened by negative information about their system, they defended against this threat by seeing unrelated injustices within the system more positively (see also Ledgerwood, Mandisodza, Jost, & Pohl, 2011). Moreover, when one of a person’s systems is threatened, she responds not only by justifying that system, but also by justifying her other, unrelated systems. This makes sense given the reasoning we outlined above for why threat increases justification: When people’s systems are under threat, they likely experience heightened uncertainty and dissonance. In this state, the prospect of a different system being unjust, with the feelings of uncertainty and dissonance that can provoke, is a danger people might want to guard against. Thus, when American high school student participants read negative information about the US, for example, that “many believe the country is on a course to failure and ruin,” they were more likely to agree that the US is fair and meritocratic – but they were also more likely to agree that their high school popularity system was fair and meritocratic (Wakslak, Jost, & Bauer, 2011). Thus, when people face negative information about one important system in their lives, they are motivated to defend both that system and other, unrelated systems. Threat Promotes Motivated Cognition More Broadly When people experience threat about other important facets of their lives, beyond the systems in which they live, even outside the context of justice it seems they also respond by rationalizing those threats. This has been especially well-studied in the context of threats to the self (see Roese & Olson, 2007 for a review). For example, in one study, some participants were told they had performed very poorly on a social

58 Holly R. Engstrom et al. perceptiveness test (which they were told was an important ability), threatening their positive self-views (McCarrey, Edwards, & Rozario, 1982). Following this, participants completed several anagrams. Threatened participants were more likely to attribute any success on the anagrams to internal factors (e.g., their strong ability and effort) and any failure to external factors (e.g., bad luck and anagram difficulty), compared to those who were not threatened. Thus, when people are threatened by negative information about themselves, they rationalize this threat by making more self-serving attributions in other domains unrelated to the original threat. Limited Cognitive Resources The fourth and final moderator in our review of variables that moderate justification and motivated cognition is the availability and focus of cognitive resources. Sometimes people are operating at peak mental capacity, their minds free from distraction and their attention focused like a laser on the injustice of a given state of affairs. Other times, their minds are occupied with other tasks. This moderator differs from the previous three in that availability of cognitive resources affects people’s ability to justify and rationalize, rather than their motivation to do so. Why Having Distraction or Having Limited Cognitive Resources Should Promote Justification After learning that the CEO’s nephew received the promotion that you thought should rightfully have been granted to your colleague, it might be difficult to tell yourself directly that this was justified: After all, this was a clearly nepotistic promotion, where a young upstart with no experience or hard work was promoted over someone who has demonstrated skills and dedication to your company for over a decade. However, as we have noted already, this clear-eyed conclusion might invite uncertainty, inhibit goal pursuit, and increase ideological dissonance. When you strategically justify the promotion – for instance noticing more of your colleague’s flaws, which could explain why she was passed over, or more ways in which your workplace is generally just – you may not experience your mental operations as strategic at all. If you directly scrutinized your thought process and realized that you were justifying this promotion to help you alleviate uncertainty, pursue your goals, or reduce ideological dissonance, that awareness would make it impossible for these justifications to work: You would know that in reality, the promotion was unjust, and that your efforts to reconstrue it were insincere. Recognizing this would mean recognizing that the world is still uncertain, your efforts might still not be rewarded, and you are still tacitly supporting an unjust system. Thus, it should be easier to

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justify when you are not directly scrutinizing your thought process – that is, when you lack the cognitive resources to pay close attention to how you feel about the situation. Having Limited Cognitive Resources Does Promote Justification For example, in one study, participants learned about a man who had cheated on his wife and was subsequently hurt in a car accident. Participants under cognitive load – those who had to remember a long sequence of digits throughout the course of the study – were more likely to think that this car accident was caused by the man’s immoral actions, compared to participants under no load, who merely had to remember a two-digit number (Callan, Sutton, & Dovale, 2010). Thus, when people’s ability to pay attention to their own reasoning was limited, they were more likely to see the world as a place where immoral people get what they deserve. In another study, students learned about a policy that restricted their ability to change their course schedule. They then had the opportunity to justify it – to describe it as valid and justifiable. Participants under cognitive load were more likely to engage in this justification (Laurin, Kay, Proudfoot, & Fitzsimons, 2013). Having Limited Cognitive Resources May Also Promote Rationalization More Broadly Scholars have theorized that other kinds of motivated cognition may also occur more commonly when people’s cognitive resources are limited (e.g., Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Wilson & Gilbert, 2005) and this prediction has received some empirical support. For example, most people (or, at least, most Westerners) are generally motivated to see themselves positively (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Ross, Heine, Wilson, & Sugimori, 2005; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003; Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea, 2005). They are especially likely to do so under cognitive load (Beer, Chester, & Hughes, 2013; Paulhus, Graf, & Van Selst, 1989). However, other research has found the opposite pattern – that motivated reasoning decreases under cognitive load – suggesting that under some conditions, motivated cognition requires cognitive resources to occur (Paharia, Vohs, & Deshpandé, 2013; Valdesolo & Desteno, 2008). This moderator thus has a more complex relationship with general rationalization than dependence, inevitability, or system threat. Summary In sum, people are more likely to justify events in their world under four conditions, each of which follows from theorizing about why the justice motive exists. When people’s outcomes depend on an event or status

60 Holly R. Engstrom et al. quo, or when that event or status quo is inevitable, any uncertainty within that event or status quo becomes especially aversive, and perceiving justice alleviates that uncertainty. In addition, any injustice within an inevitable event or status quo threatens people’s ability to pursue their goals and clashes with their tacit support for the system; both these ills can be remedied by reconstruing the injustice as instead just. When people’s perceptions of goodness and justice are under threat, concerns about uncertainty, goal pursuit, and dissonance increase, such that people are motivated to perceive justice in other, unrelated parts of the system to avoid exacerbating these concerns. Finally, when people’s cognitive resources are limited, they are increasingly likely to perceive justice, particularly when they are already strongly motivated to perceive justice – that is, when uncertainty, goal pursuit concerns, and dissonance are high. Dependence, inevitability, and threat not only promote justification, but also promote motivated cognition more broadly. This effect of dependence and inevitability on general motivated cognition is logical considering that if someone is dependent on some event or status quo, or if she cannot avoid that event or status quo, it will have a large or inescapable impact on her life. Thus, it would be upsetting for her to see that event or status quo negatively. Similarly, the effect of threat on motivated cognition is logical: If her positive view of the world, herself, or some other important aspect of her life is threatened, it makes sense that she would try to compensate for that threat by feeling better about other aspects of her life. In contrast, lack of cognitive resources has a more complex relationship with motivated cognition, and we leave it to future research to uncover when and why limiting cognitive resources promotes motivated cognition.

What Are the Consequences of the Justice Motive? In this final substantive section, we explore the consequences of justification. Thus far, we have examined the justice motive through an intrapersonal lens; accordingly, we begin by considering intrapersonal consequences of the justice motive: Goal pursuit and well-being. These consequences are strongly tied to our analysis of why the justice motive exists in the first place. First, we noted that the justice motive may occur to facilitate goal pursuit; if this is true, we should expect that it affects goal pursuit. Second, we also noted that the justice motive may occur to alleviate aversive psychological states; if this is true we should also expect that it affects psychological well-being. Notwithstanding our intrapersonal lens, it is clear that justice has an interpersonal dimension as well. We therefore next consider two interpersonal, or societal, consequences of the justice motive. First, we consider stereotyping and its role in maintaining people’s perceptions

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of justice. Second, we consider social change, and specifically how people’s perceptions of justice affect their willingness to fight for social change. Goal Pursuit Pursuing long-term goals is a vital component of achieving and maintaining well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Generally, to have successful careers, loving relationships, and physical health – all of which are strongly related to happiness and wellbeing (Rath, Harter, & Harter, 2010) – people must invest effort and resources over a long period of time. To be willing to make these investments, people need to be confident that they are likely to see a return on them. If the world is just, then someone who puts in the time, effort, and skill required to achieve a goal should eventually successfully achieve that goal. Thus, seeing the world as just should promote people’s motivation to pursue long-term goals, because they can feel more confident that their investments will be rewarded. In this way, goal pursuit is a consequence of the overall level of justice that people perceive in the world (rather than a consequence of the justice motive itself – that is, if someone lived in a completely just society, and perceived it as such without the need for any motivated cognitive processes, her perception of justice would still promote her goal pursuit). Justice Perceptions Are Especially Important for Disadvantaged Group Members This may be particularly important for members of disadvantaged groups because they are more likely to suffer from injustice in their society, compared to members of more advantaged groups. In an unjust society, members of advantaged groups are objectively less likely to be harmed by any injustice, since their advantaged position means that they have, in fact, benefitted from the injustice that exists; moreover, they have resources to spare to compensate for any injustice that instead causes them to suffer. Thus, their motivation to pursue goals is less likely to be influenced by their perceptions of societal justice. For example, imagine an unjust professor who does not reward students fairly based on their effort, but instead on arbitrary factors. For one thing, it is likely that those arbitrary factors may be ones related to students’ status: The professor may treat male students, Caucasian students, or wealthy students more favorably than others. For another, even if the professor treated those advantaged students unjustly, they are better equipped with material resources to fight for a better grade (Pascarella, Pierson, Wolniak, & Terenzini, 2004; Walpole, 2003), or to compensate for it by being able to succeed in spite of

62 Holly R. Engstrom et al. a poor academic record (Stinson & Wignall, 2014). Thus, injustice is more likely to reduce disadvantaged students’ ability to pursue their goals, while advantaged students escape unscathed or sometimes even benefit from the injustice. This example illustrates why perceiving injustice might be especially likely to interfere with the motivation to pursue goals among individuals from disadvantaged groups. These predictions are borne out in empirical research. In one study, undergraduate students who felt they had done poorly on a previous midterm were more committed to improving their performance on the next midterm if they believed the world was just – but only if they were members of a disadvantaged group (in this case, those with low socioeconomic status). Justice beliefs did not affect advantaged group members (i.e., those with high socioeconomic status; Laurin, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2011, Study 1). As well, experimental evidence supports the idea that justice information is causally related to goal pursuit: When participants learned that unfairness was declining in their country, they were more willing than those in a control condition to undergo long years of schooling to get a desired position. However, again, this effect only emerged among disadvantaged group members (in this case, ethnic minorities; Laurin et al., 2011, Study 3). The Complex Relationship between Justice Perceptions and Goal Pursuit Motivation for Disadvantaged Group Members Thus far, we have outlined how, for disadvantaged group members, seeing the world as just can increase their motivation to pursue longterm goals, whereas seeing the world as unjust can inhibit motivation. However, is this always the case? Recent theorizing suggests that in fact, in some cases, the opposite can occur: For disadvantaged group members, perceiving justice can sometimes stifle motivation (Laurin, Engstrom, & Alic, 2019). Believing that the world is just may help people to believe that if, if they are skilled enough and put enough effort into performing a task, they will receive whatever rewards follow from that task. However, if a low status person believes that the world is just, meaning that those who deserve high status will be able to obtain it, and she recognizes that she herself still has low status despite this fairness within the world, she may be forced to conclude that she lacks the necessary skills and abilities to get ahead (Laurin et al., 2019). Thus, believing in justice may reduce low status individuals’ confidence in their own abilities, which is in turn likely to undermine motivation (Bandura, 1982; Vroom, 1964). Furthermore, once this low status person has concluded that she lacks the ability to get ahead, it may be uncomfortable for her to think about how much she wants to achieve high status. If she wants high status,

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but at the same time feels she will not be able to climb the status ladder, one way to reduce this conflict may be to devalue high status. Based on evidence reviewed earlier in this chapter, when people believe that some outcome is likely (or certain) to occur in the future, they may reconstrue this event in a more positive light, to help themselves feel better about the future (e.g., Kay et al., 2002; Laurin, 2018). Thus, if this low status person believes she lacks the skills needed to obtain higher status, and therefore anticipates that in the future she will remain low on the status ladder, she may reconstrue this as something positive by feeling that she doesn’t really want to achieve high status anyway. In sum, seeing the world as just may increase disadvantaged group members’ confidence that if they had the right skills, they would receive fair rewards. However, this perceived justice may decrease disadvantaged group members’ belief in their own skills and the value they ascribe to high status, thereby inhibiting motivation to increase their status. Well-Being If a person is motivated to see her world as just and successfully achieves this, how will she feel? It is uncomfortable for people to believe that their world is unjust or illegitimate, so reducing these concerns is likely to result in more positive feelings. For example, those who endorsed a more meritocratic ideology were more satisfied with their financial position and life in general (Jost et al., 2003). Other research in this area has focused on political conservatism. Political conservatives tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives than liberals (Taylor & Funk, 2006). This may be explained by their greater tendency to endorse a meritocratic belief system, which allows them to better rationalize inequality by believing that anyone who works hard can make it to the top: In countries with greater economic inequality, conservatives’ belief in meritocracy buffers them from the negative effects of inequality on happiness and well-being that liberals experience (Napier & Jost, 2008). Thus, system justification allows people to maintain well-being in the face of negative information about the justice and legitimacy of that system. However, the effects of system justification on well-being may not be uniform across members of different social groups. For high status group members, seeing the system as just both alleviates concerns about injustice and allows them to view their own (high) position in society as justified and therefore see themselves positively. In contrast, for low status group members, there is a conflict between seeing the system as just and seeing themselves positively. Whereas those with high status might think “if the system is fair, and I made it to the top, I must have personal qualities that warrant high status,” those with low status

64 Holly R. Engstrom et al. might think “if the system is fair, and I did not make it to the top, I must lack personal qualities that warrant high status.” Thus, for low status group members, seeing the system as just may also present challenges to their self or collective esteem, meaning that it may have a less clearly positive relationship to well-being. Supporting this, African Americans who opposed equality more had lower self-esteem and higher neuroticism, whereas European Americans who opposed equality more had higher self-esteem and lower neuroticism (Jost & Thompson, 2000). Stereotyping Our society contains many status differences between groups that seem unjust: Women are paid less than men for the same work (Blau & Kahn, 2017), ethnic minorities are less likely to receive callbacks for jobs than white people despite equal qualifications (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004), and children of wealthy parents receive better grades than children of less wealthy parents even if they perform equally well on standardized tests (Gershenson, 2018). This poses a threat to people’s belief that society is just. As such, justifying these status differences between groups is one of the most common ways in which the justice motive is enacted (e.g., Cichocka et al., 2015; Hoffman & Hurst, 1990; Jost & Kay, 2005; Jost, Kivetz, Rubini, Guermandi, & Mosso, 2005; Kay & Jost, 2003; Laurin et al., 2011). One primary way people can accomplish this is to stereotype groups in such a way that their different statuses seem just. Why and How Stereotypes Might Justify Status Differences between Groups Stereotypes about low status groups often contain explanations for their low status, while stereotypes about high status groups contain explanations for their high status. For example, the poor are often stereotyped as lazy and unintelligent, whereas the rich are often stereotyped as capable and skilled (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Similarly, women are often seen as less independent and ambitious than men (Glick & Fiske, 2001). These stereotypes can then be used as explanations as to why some groups possess higher status and more advantages than others. However, stereotypes that cast groups as possessing exclusively positive or exclusively negative characteristics would also seem unjust: Why should one group of people get all of the positive traits? Perhaps for this reason, people tend not to ascribe universally negative stereotypes to low-status groups (or universally positive ones to high-status groups). Instead, people do ascribe negative characteristics to low-status groups and positive characteristics to high-status groups,

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but only on dimensions relevant to their status. For example, the poor are indeed seen as lazier and less intelligent than the rich, but also as warmer and happier (Kay & Jost, 2003). Similarly, women are indeed seen as less independent and ambitious than men, but also more nurturing and kinder (Glick & Fiske, 2001). These ambivalent stereotypes seem to justify the system, both by explaining why groups have the status that they do and by suggesting that positive and negative characteristics are fairly distributed between different groups – that “no one has it all.” Evidence that Stereotypes Do Justify Status Differences between Groups In one study, when participants were faced with a threat to their social system (and therefore motivated to defend their system), they were more likely to judge an obese person as lazy but sociable, and a powerful person as intelligent and independent but unhappy (Kay, Jost, & Young, 2005). Similarly, in countries with higher income inequality, groups that are stereotyped as less competent (i.e., lowstatus groups) are also stereotyped as warmer, and vice versa (Durante et al., 2014). That is, in countries where it is more obvious that some people receive more benefits than others, people defend against the threatening idea that this is unjust by seeing low-status groups as incompetent (and thus likely undeserving of higher status), but compensate them for this negative stereotype with more positive views of their warmth. Thus, when people are more motivated to justify the system (i.e., under system threat), they are more likely to apply stereotypes that justify status differences between groups, presumably to satisfy their drive to perceive justice. Applying these stereotypes then increases people’s perceptions that the system is in fact just (Jost & Kay, 2005; Kay & Jost, 2003; Kay et al., 2005). In fact, these particular combinations of stereotypes (low competence and high warmth, or low warmth and high competence) are commonly ascribed to a wide variety of social groups (Brambilla & Leach, 2014; Durante & Fiske, 2017; Fiske, 2018; Fiske et al., 2002). Applying this constellation of ambivalent stereotypes helps people justify and maintain the system (Jost & Kay, 2005; Kay & Jost, 2003; Kay et al., 2005). People tend to apply the paternalistic stereotype of low competence and high warmth to low-status groups who do not compete with other groups for status. For example, older people, housewives, and the poor tend to be seen as incompetent but warm (Fiske, Xu, & Cuddy, 1999). This both explains why these groups are low status (incompetence) and compensates them for this negative stereotype with positive traits (warmth). In contrast, people tend to apply the envious stereotype of high competence and low warmth to high-status groups who do compete with other groups. For example, Jews, feminists,

66 Holly R. Engstrom et al. and the rich tend to be seen as competent but cold (Fiske et al., 1999). This both explains why these groups are high status (competence) and punishes them for this positive stereotype with negative traits (coldness). This motive can also prompt people from low status groups to stereotype themselves and see their ingroup negatively and their outgroup positively, to make their low status seem just and legitimate. For example, participants who read about gender inequality were more likely to see their own personality as aligning with gender stereotypes (Laurin et al., 2011, Study 1). In another study, when women were induced to see their own personality as aligning with gender stereotypes, they saw their society as more just (Laurin et al., 2011, Study 2). Thus, the system justification motive can lead people to apply stereotypes to other groups and to themselves in ways that will help them to justify the system, which in turn reassures people that their system is just (Jost & Kay, 2005; Kay & Jost, 2003; Kay et al., 2005). Social Change Successfully justifying the system should reduce people’s desire to change the system – why fix what isn’t broken? This has important consequences for people harmed by an unjust system, since others should be less motivated to help them after deciding that the system is just. For example, in one study, people who justified the system more were less emotionally distressed about inequality and were less supportive of redistributing resources to address inequalities (Wakslak et al., 2007, Study 1). In a subsequent study, when people were given an example of justice within their system – a personal statement from someone who worked hard and became successful – they were less morally outraged about inequality and reported less support for social programs to help the disadvantaged, like soup kitchens and crisis hotlines (Wakslak et al., 2007, Study 2). Moral outrage towards the system is an example of a system-level emotion: An emotions elicited by, and targeted at, the system (Solak, Jost, & Clore, 2012). System justification can dampen negative emotions targeted at the system by reassuring people that they need not feel upset about injustice. Once these negative emotions have been attenuated, people will be less motivated to change that system. However, system justification may not be the only motive in play. People also seem to possess a system-change motivation that encourages them, under certain circumstances, to improve the social system (Johnson & Fujita, 2012). Specifically, when participants learned that it was possible to change their system, they felt motivated to do so, and preferentially sought information about their system’s weaknesses (presumably, to figure out how the system should be changed). In contrast, when participants learned that it was not possible to change their system, they felt motivated to preserve

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the status quo, and sought solely positive information about the system. Thus, system justification motivation may only decrease support for social change when people see that change as difficult to achieve. System justification’s inhibitory effect on social change may also rely on how that social change is construed. For example, when proenvironmental changes were rephrased to suggest they support the current system and status quo (e.g., “Being pro-environmental allows us to protect and preserve the American way of life. It is patriotic to conserve the country’s natural resources”), people high in system justification reported more support for social change, including stronger intentions to engage in pro-environmental activities (Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith, 2010). Thus, if social change can be construed as something that would in fact support and prolong the current system, people with strong system justification motivation can actually support that change more than those with lower inclinations to defend their system.

Conclusion We began this chapter by discussing people’s remarkable ability to see fairness and justice even in capricious natural events. This is not only present when considering how hurricanes may be caused by sins or Trump voters, but rather reflects a more general motivation to see the world not only as good, but also as just. We outline three theoretical reasons why this justice motive exists. We then describe four factors that promote both people’s motivation to see justice, and highlight how these factors follow logically from theoretical reasons why the justice motive exists in the first place. We also draw parallels between people’s motivation to see justice and people’s motivation to see goodness, suggesting that factors that increase the justice motive also increase rationalization more broadly. Finally, we conclude by discussing important consequences of this motivation to perceive justice.

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4

Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Psychology of Fairness E. Allan Lind

Some years ago, I suggested that fairness judgments have such powerful effects on social behaviors and attitudes because the experience of fair or unfair treatment is interpreted as evidence of inclusion in or exclusion from the group within which the experience occurs (Lind, 1995, 2001; Lind, Kulik, Ambrose, & Park, 1993; Van den Bos, Lind, & Wilke, 2001). Fairness Heuristic Theory advanced the idea that fairness judgments are used as a heuristic—a mental short cut or approximation—to gauge social safety and to assess the likelihood of exclusion or exploitation. The theory explored the implications of that idea based on our understanding of social cognition processes in the 1990s and early 2000s. Fairness Heuristic Theory provides a number of predictions concerning how fairness judgments are generated and used, many of which have been confirmed (e.g., Ambrose & Schminke, 2009; Lind et al., 1993; Lind, Kray, & Thompson, 2001; Soenen, Melkonian, & Ambrose, 2017; Van den Bos, Wilke, & Lind, 1998; Van den Bos, Wilke, Lind, & Vermunt, 1998). In this chapter, I will explore the central theme of this previous work—how and why fairness experiences have such strong effects on key social behaviors—and I will attempt to update the theory in light of newer work. In particular, I will consider how the original theory fits with new biological studies of how other social animals react to what we humans see as fair or unfair treatment, with neurological studies of brain reactions to fairness and to exclusion, and, of course, with continuing research in social psychology and related disciplines. The development of new and intriguing theories about fairness and powerful new applications of justice research also call for a new look at when and how fairness experiences are integrated into fairness impressions and how these fairness judgments guide behavior. As we will see, these new “inputs” into the scholarship of justice, especially the biological investigations, suggest that Fairness Heuristic Theory’s emphasis on cognitive appraisals of justice might have led us to miss some important considerations.

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Origins of Fairness Heuristic Theory Fairness Heuristic Theory was based on an earlier theory, Group Value Theory, which Tom Tyler and I presented in the final chapter of our 1988 book on the psychology of procedural justice (Lind & Tyler, 1988). Tyler and I had reviewed the literature on the social psychology of procedural justice up to that time, and we arrived at the conclusion that the then-dominant theory about social behavior in groups—interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959)—could not explain all, or even most, of the justice phenomena that researchers had reported. Specifically, justice studies had provided a great deal of evidence that perceptions of procedural justice could, and often did, exert great influence of a person’s attitudes and behavior, sometimes showing more powerful effects than did the person’s assessments of the material and social outcomes associated with the experience in question. (The phenomenon of positive procedural and process fairness judgments leading to more positive attitudes about and compliance with authorities is termed the “fair process effect;” Folger, 1977.) For participants in laboratory studies, litigants and defendants in court cases, and citizens contemplating the legitimacy of their government it often seemed more important that a procedure or process be “fair” than that it yield the best outcomes for the person in question. This was a remarkable finding because the assumption that behavior is driven by self-interested motivations was, and had been for decades, one of the central tenets of the social and economic sciences. The strongest example of self-interest analysis in social psychology is seen in Interdependence Theory (Kelley and Thibaut, 1978; sometimes this theory is called “social exchange theory”), which posits that most social behavior can be explained if one assumes that individuals seek the attainment of individual social rewards. Deviations from self-interested actions were seen as mistakes or errors of judgment. In Interdependence Theory the search for the best material and social outcomes is thought to be directed by understandings about how other people and their actions might modify the rewards and costs the individual receives. A substantial body of research in areas such as negotiation and game theory, social satisfaction, and relationship investment supports predictions from interdependence theory. However, justice research, and especially research on procedural justice, yielded findings that ran contrary to some fundamental predictions from interdependence theory. As mentioned above, justice research had shown that while self-interest undoubtedly drives some part of reactions to social processes and experiences —so that better outcomes (or the prospect of better outcomes) prompt people to see procedures as more fair—the impact of other, fairness-related considerations was at least as strong as that of outcomes. Fairness judgments have been shown to be driven by such

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things as perceptions of having an opportunity for “voice,” feelings that one has been treated with dignity, the belief that authorities are unbiased, and feelings that one has received adequate explanations of how the process works and why decisions are made the way they are. Tyler and I proposed that the body of procedural justice findings could be better understood if it were supposed that people have two “social experience processors”—a self-interest processor that follows interdependence principles to gauge self-interest concerns and a groupvalue processor that analyzes what the experiences mean for the perceiver’s status and inclusion in the group (Lind and Tyler, 1988, Chapter 10). Group Value Theory has proven to be a very useful account of how people analyze procedural and process justice-related experiences and how they use fairness judgments to guide their behavior and to generate attitudes and beliefs. The idea that experiences with or information about social processes and formal procedures might activate the group-value experience processor explained why research showed that people are willing to accept procedures and procedure-linked outcomes that are not in their immediate self-interest. Specifically, Tyler and I suggested that people often give priority to fairness because it tells them about their standing and inclusion in important groups. We argued that this social information might well be more important in the long run than immediate costs or benefits. Also congruent with Group Value Theory is a substantial body of research showing that procedural justice judgments seem especially powerful in driving more socially toned behavior and attitudes—behaviors such as cooperation, compliance with authorities, obedience to laws, organizational citizenship behavior, or turnover in organizations, and attitudes such as the perceived legitimacy of authorities and social institutions, organizational and social identity, and trust in authorities (e.g., Moorman, 1991; Organ, 1990; Organ & Moorman, 1993; Tyler, 1990, 1997). Tyler and I later extended the ideas in Group Value Theory to address the issue of how the perceived fairness of process affects reactions to and obedience of social, organizational, judicial, and political authorities. We labeled this analysis of procedural justice in hierarchical contexts the Relational Model of Authority (Tyler & Lind, 1992). We reviewed research on the antecedents of trust in and obedience to authorities and found that, across a wide range of authorities and across many contexts, positive reactions to authority are tied to relational judgments, especially to interpretations of experiences that suggest that the authority in question values the person in question or the subgroup to which he or she belongs. Thus, when people think that an authority has treated them with dignity and concern, has acted without bias, and has listened and considered their views, they feel that they have been treated fairly and are likely to accept the authority’s decisions. In line with the idea that these judgments are based on group value considerations, rather than just self-

78 E. Allan Lind interest considerations, people who feel fairly treated by an authority are subsequently willing to accept even decisions that are not favorable to their individual interests. As with any scientific theory, however, time and the accumulation of new research and other theoretical advances raised some issues not covered by Group Value Theory and the Relational Model of Authority. Later models and theories have, however, built on the basic concepts in these two works and expanded our understanding of the psychology of justice. Tyler and his associates have produced a substantial body of conceptual and research work, much of it under the title of the Group Engagement Model (see generally Tyler & Blader, 2000, 2003; see also Tyler’s chapter in this book). The Group Engagement Model explores further the link between fairness experiences—especially procedural fairness experiences—and feelings of group identity. This work demonstrates how the antecedents and consequences of perceptions of procedural fairness are tied to engagement with the group, organization, or institution in question. This is, in my opinion, a very useful line of theory and research, but I will not address it further in this chapter—Tyler’s work runs more or less parallel to the line of theorizing I explore here, adding its own important insights but neither contradicting nor confirming what I propose below, except by lending support to the basic idea that fairness and social justice concerns have very strong links to social identity processes.

Elements of Fairness Heuristic Theory Drawing on one of the core assumptions of Group Value Theory, Fairness Heuristic Theory takes as its starting point the idea that there is an intrinsic duality in social life (what Brewer, 1989, termed “ambivalent sociality”). Because we humans are social animals that also have individual interests and concerns, a key issue in any social context is how to resolve a “fundamental social dilemma” (Lind, 1995, 2001, 2011). The horns of the fundamental social dilemma are, on the one hand, the benefits of group identification and cooperation and, on the other hand, the dangers associated with surrendering some of one’s individual identity and raw quest for material goods. This dilemma is not something people generally think about, according to the theory, but it is a reality in all social contexts—a “fact of life,” as it were, for all of us. We live in societies, organizations, and families, and we reap substantial benefit, both material and psychological, from being part of these social entities. At the same time, when we invest our identity and our efforts in social groups and endeavors, we risk exploitation and exclusion. Fairness Heuristic Theory argues that it would certainly be a useful aspect of human social psychology if there were some basic psychological process that allowed people to resolve the dilemma, to decide whether to trust

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and cooperate or to distrust and protect their individual interests. If such a method of balancing the benefits and risks of social action exists, the theory argues, it can be used and, having resolved the dilemma, people can get on with their social lives. Fairness Heuristic Theory takes a functional approach to understanding why people behave as they do in social settings, arguing that coping with the fundamental social dilemma required humans to develop social psychological processes to resolve the dilemma. The theory argues that we react, and sometimes react strongly, to fair or unfair treatment because fairness functions as a heuristic, a shortcut, for deciding whether or not we can place trust in a given relationship. Perceptions of fair treatment prompt cooperative behavior, obedience to authority, and trust in others because feeling fairly treated tips the heuristic process toward acting without much concern about exploitation or exclusion. Fair treatment triggers a group-favorable resolution of the fundamental social dilemma, the theory argues, and this prompts increased investment of identity and loyalty in the relationship. Perceptions of unfair treatment, on the other hand, prompt competitive or even combative behavior because feeling unfairly treated tips the heuristic toward suspicion that future interactions will bring harm, either in terms of diminished personal outcomes and standing or in terms of psychological damage from exclusion. When someone feels unfairly treated in a relationship, the theory suggests, he or she will not invest identity or loyalty in the relationship and will instead treat interactions as material exchanges, where any investment or cooperation must be guaranteed by contracts or external enforcement. In the extreme, feelings of severely unfair treatment will provoke both feelings of exclusion and retaliatory intergroup conflict (see recent theoretical development and research along similar lines by Van den Bos, 2018; see also Lind, Greenberg, Scott, & Welchans, 2000.) In its original expression (e.g., Lind, 1995, 2001; Van den Bos et al., 2001) Fairness Heuristic Theory analyzed the implications of this heuristic idea and explored—in light of some predominant themes in social cognition at the time—how people might generate fairness judgments and how they use those judgments to guide behavior. For example, the theory noted that if people are cognitive misers, as Fiske and Taylor (1984) had suggested, it would make sense for such an important tool as fairness judgments to be generated quickly with respect to any given relationship or group membership and then used for subsequent decisions without much later analysis (at least as long as the early judgments generally aligned with reality). The theory proposed two distinct ways that people process and use fairness judgments. In the “judgmental phase,” which was predicted to occur early in relationships with groups or other individuals, fairness-relevant experiences would be

80 E. Allan Lind processed quickly to form an overall fairness judgment to guide decisions about whether to behavior cooperatively or not. In a subsequent “use phase,” which occurs after fairness judgments are generated, existing fairness judgments would be used to guide behavior and serve as the basis upon which trust judgments, feelings of identification, and even other fairness judgments are generated. Later events might prompt a shift back to the judgmental phase, but absent any such phase-shifting experience early fairness-relevant information would carry more weight than would later information. The theory thus predicts that fairness judgments will be “sticky,” to use a phrase from the Jackson and Pósch chapter in this volume. The theory predicts that people will show a primacy effect in the justice judgment process, giving greatest weight to justice experiences encountered early in relationships. Subsequent research (Lind, Kray, & Thompson, 2001) did indeed show strong primacy effect when research participants were primed to think of themselves as members of the group that delivered fair or unfair experiences. Participants who experienced “voice” (which typically yields feelings of high procedural fairness) early in the experiment showed greater shift toward perceptions of fairness than did those who received voice procedures later. As the theory predicted, this shift was stronger when the participants had participated in a group identity enhancing task. Later, Soenen et al. (2017) found evidence that organizational change, when it prompted a phase-shift of the sort discussed by Fairness Heuristic Theory, moderated the relationship between early and later justice judgments. More research is certainly needed before we can say conclusively that phase-shifting or some similar process is a standard part of the generation and use of fairness judgements. (Some such process might reconcile the two distinct lines of social justice research over the years. Phase-shifting might explain when fairness experiences and their evaluation are a motivating factor in social behavior and when judgments of fairness are motivated, driven by identity and self-protection needs, to use terms from the first chapter of this book). Research by Van den Bos and his colleagues (e.g., Van den Bos, 1996; Van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt, & Wilke, 1997; Van den Bos et al., 2001; Van den Bos, Vermunt, & Wilke, 1997; Van den Bos, Wilke, & Lind, 1998) gives us additional insight into how fairness-relevant experiences affect subsequent beliefs and actions. These studies demonstrated what has come to be called the “substitutability” dynamic in justice judgments. At the time this work was done, psychologists were puzzling over why process fairness judgments often have greater impact on attitudes and behavior than do outcome fairness judgments. Fairness Heuristic Theory suggested that part of the explanation might lie in the usual timing of information and experiences about process versus outcomes and in the interpretability of process information. In many contexts, and especially

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in the judicial and organizational decision-making contexts that are often the focus of psychological studies of justice, process information precedes outcome information. Process and procedures in court hearings and trials are experienced before case outcomes are known, and promotion, pay, hiring, and lay-off procedures and process are experienced before decisions are made and outcomes announced. In addition, outcomes are often less interpretable than process experiences, since it is hard to tell whether a particular outcome is good or bad without information about others’ outcomes or strong expectations about likely outcomes. It might be the case, the theory suggests, that process fairness experiences have greater impact because they are encountered first. According to the theory, early process fairness experiences and judgments about them should color later outcome experiences and judgments, but if outcome information is encountered earlier, then early outcome fairness should affect the interpretation and evaluation of later process fairness experiences. The theory in essence predicts that whatever fairness information is encountered first will substitute for later deep consideration of other fairness information. Prediction of the substitutability of different forms of fairness is based on some of the same considerations that predict primacy effects for early process fairness experiences as opposed to later process fairness experiences; the same sort information processing considerations should operate across different types of fairness. The substitutability studies (see, e.g., Van den Bos, Wilke et al., 1998) examined situations where people are exposed to the outcome before they learn about the fairness-relevant aspects of the process or where people were given information about others’ outcomes. In these situations, outcome fairness was more influential, coloring process fairness judgments and affecting other down-stream consequences of fairness. In another set of studies, Van den Bos and his colleagues (Van den Bos et al, 1998) tested one of the core assertions of Fairness Heuristic Theory, the proposition that fairness judgments are used as a heuristic to resolve trust dilemmas. In these studies, participants were provided early in the experiment with positive, negative, or with no real information about the trustworthiness of an authority. The participants then experienced either fair or unfair treatment at the hands of that authority. In the two conditions that gave participants a priori information about trust, fairness experiences had less influence than was the case when the participants were given little information about trustworthiness. Thus, it appeared that fairness was indeed used as a heuristic to guide attitudes and behavior in the absence of sufficient information to support trust. A final aspect of Fairness Heuristic Theory that deserves attention here is its focus on global, overall fairness judgments. From the time the initial studies on procedural justice had been conducted (Thibaut & Walker,

82 E. Allan Lind 1975; Walker, LaTour, Lind, & Thibaut, 1974), procedural justice and distributive justice have been seen as distinct types of fairness judgments. Indeed, especially in organizational studies, some scholars (e.g., Bies, 2015; Colquit, 2001; Greenberg, 1993) speak of four types of fairness judgments —distributive, procedural, interactional, and informational justice judgments—and suggest that each type of justice might quite different effects on downstream attitudes and behavior. In Fairness Heuristic Theory, the logic of using fairness judgments to resolve the fundamental social dilemma suggested that any fairness judgment would function. Thus, the theory posited that whatever fairness experiences were encountered first, be they outcome or process based, would be used to generate an overall impression of fairness. The primacy and substitutability predictions described above resulted from the theory’s suggestion that fairness information of any type would be used to generate an overall justice judgment and this overall justice judgment would then color later fairness-relevant information as it was encountered. There is some research support for the idea that overall fairness judgments are critical in driving justice-based responses (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009; see Ambrose, Wo, & Griffith, 2015).

Moderation of the Fairness Effects Before we address how Fairness Heuristic Theory might need to be modified, we should consider some work conducted since the theory was first advanced that has explored factors that enhance or diminish fairness effects. One line of work—that based on the Uncertainty Management Model (Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002)—addresses how personal uncertainty enhances sensitivity to procedural and distributive justice experiences; a second line of work—research on the impact of social inhibition and disinhibition (Hulst, Van den Bos, Akkermans, & Lind, 2017)—has revealed that being in a state of social disinhibition can diminish the fair process effect. Understanding when and why fairness has the effects it has are key questions in many social justice theories (e.g., Brockner, 2002; Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Lind, 1995, 2001; Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Blader, 2000, 2003; Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). The Uncertainty Management Model explores the connection between fairness and the psychological management of personal uncertainty. The research program that gave rise to the model found that when a person is in a state of personal uncertainty, fairness effects are stronger than when the person in question is not in a state of uncertainty (Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos et al., 2008; Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000). In some of these studies, uncertainty primes were used to induce feelings of personal uncertainty. In other studies uncertainty was provoked by a flashing yellow caution light near the place data were collected or by brief

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presentation of an exclamation point. Across all the experiments it was found that when exclamation points or flashing lights were present or when uncertainty primes are given, fairness effects were stronger (Van den Bos et al., 2008). Van den Bos and his colleagues have linked this moderation of fairness effects to the operation of the human alarm system (Van den Bos et al., 2008; Van den Bos & Lind, 2009). As I will explain below, research and theory on the role of fairness as a mechanism for coping with personal uncertainty seems to me to be critical to our understanding of when and how fairness acts as a motivating force, driving other behavior and cognitions. Work on uncertainty management and fairness tells us a great deal about how fairness experiences play out in the context of the dilemma about how to balance individual versus group concerns. For the moment, it is important to note that this work shows that (a) personal uncertainty enhances the overall impact of fairness-relevant experiences, and (b) the patterning and dynamics of this enhancement are such that some very basic psychological processes, in particular the human alarm system, appear to be involved. A recent paper by Hulst and her colleagues (Hulst, Van den Bos, Akkermans, & Lind, 2017) demonstrates another interesting moderator of fairness effects. This work addresses the impact of behavioral disinhibition (see Van den Bos & Lind, 2013) on social justice reactions. Hulst et al. asked some participants in court hearings (in one experiment, bankruptcy court hearings; in a second experiment, criminal court hearings) to answer three open-ended questions about times they had acted without inhibitions—a prime that had been found in the laboratory to produce an acute state of behavioral disinhibition. In both experiments, those who were exposed to the disinhibition prime showed weaker fair process effects. The moderation of the fair process effect was substantial and has important practical implications. For the theoretical analysis below, however, even more striking is the demonstration of another connection between a rather fundamental psychological state (behavioral inhibition and disinhibition) and a key element of the psychology of justice (the fair process effect).

Is Fairness Heuristic Theory Too Cognitive? One of my descriptions of Fairness Heuristic Theory (Lind, 2001) carried the phrase “justice judgments as pivotal cognitions” in the title, and it is neither surprising nor inaccurate that the theory itself is often labeled “cognitive” or “social cognitive.” These labels were often employed to distinguish Fairness Heuristic Theory from, for example, the Group Engagement Model or Group Value Theory, which are often labeled “relational” theories of justice. The psychological dynamics posited in the theory did in fact rely heavily on research and theory in

84 E. Allan Lind social cognition. However, recent research in neuroscience and nonhuman behavioral studies on fairness raise the issue of whether the cognitive infrastructure of the theory is a problem. In this section, I will describe a few studies that appear, to me at least, to suggest that the answer to the question posed by the heading above is “yes, Fairness Heuristic Theory is too cognitive,” (as, I would argue, are many existing analyses of the psychology of justice.) My view is that perhaps we would be better served by a science of justice and fairness that is based less on cognitive constructs and more on social situations and behavioral reactions to those situations. Brosnan’s chapter in this book (see also Brosnan, 2006, 2011; Brosnan & de Waal, 2003, 2014) describes fairness-related reactions and fairnesslike behavior across a number of species of mammals and birds. This work demonstrates reactions, sometimes quite strong reactions, to what social psychologists would regard as violations of distributive fairness (i.e., violations of equality and equity in allocations) or violations of procedural fairness (see, e.g., Brosnan’s description of research on “procedural inequity” in her chapter in this book; see also Bekoff, 2001, 2004; Bekoff & Pierce, 2009). I am not qualified to say whether animals such as diverse primates, corvids, canids, and rodents can be said to have cognitions, but the variety of species that show responses to unfairness-like experiences surely suggests that it might be better to focus on social situations, rather than the internal experience of judgments and attitudes, as the primary drivers of fairness and unfairness reactions. If an unexpected discriminatory reward or improper interaction prompts in a nonhuman social animal a reaction that looks very much like what we see in human reactions to unfairness, perhaps we need to examine deeper processes than cognitive balance (e.g., Adams, 1963, 1965) or cultural norms (e.g., Kidder, 1986; Kidder & Muller, 1991) as we seek to understand the origins and power of fairness-linked behavior in humans. This is not to say that we humans cannot profitably describe and analyze our own experience of fairness in cognitive terms, only that we might gain additional insight by accepting that fairness processes are sometimes more basic, more visceral, than are our internal ruminations about justice. Additional evidence for just how fundamental are fairness and fairness-based reactions can be seen in the work of Eisenberger, Lieberman, and their colleagues on the human brain’s reactions to fairness and exclusion (Lieberman, 2014; Lieberman & Eisenberger, 2012). Tabibnia, Satpute, and Lieberman (2008) found that specific areas of the brain showed changes in blood flow when the person in question experienced fair, as opposed to unfair, rewards. Tabibnia et al. suggest that their findings show that fair treatment stimulates brain areas that are involved in fundamental hedonic processes and that the tolerance of unfairness (in the study, in the interest of future material gain) activates areas of the brain that are linked to emotional regulation.

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The picture that emerges is one of a physiologically pleasurable reaction to fairness and separate brain reactions to control negative affect associated with unfair treatment. Another study, this one reported by Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams (2003), also shows specific brain reactions to fairness-linked experiences. Eisenberger and her colleagues had participants who were being scanned in fMRI machines first watch and then play CyberBall (Williams & Jarvis, 2006), a computer mediated game in which participants believe they are playing a virtual game of “catch” by directing an image of a ball to one or another other player. In fact, there were no other players; only the participant in the fMRI was really in the game and a computer directed the ball tosses of the supposed others. After a number of rounds in which the participant was thrown the ball, he or she was never thrown the ball again. Eisenberger et al. conducted the study to examine brain responses to exclusion, social psychologists might say that the experimental condition involved unfair exclusion. The exclusion was unjust because there was no evidence of a fair process producing the exclusionary behavior. Eisenberger et al. found that two areas of the brain were especially involved in reactions to their experimental procedures. One (the anterior cerebral cortex) had been shown in other studies to be an “alarm system” that is associated with the experience of physical pain; the other (the right ventral prefrontal cortex) had been shown to interact with the anterior cingulate cortex and to be involved in the regulation of pain and the negative affect associated with pain. The implication again seems to be that there are physiological reactions to fairnessrelated experiences, reactions that make fair treatment feel pleasurable and unfair treatment feel painful. Lieberman (2014) argues that evolution has “piggy-backed” reactions to fairness and exclusion on preexisting neural mechanisms that detect and react to pain or physical satisfaction.

Fairness Heuristic Theory Revisited With the developments described above in mind, how might Fairness Heuristic Theory be updated? Perhaps the place to begin is with the convergence of ideas in the original theory’s consideration of the “fundamental social dilemma” and Brosnan’s proposal (2011; see also her chapter in this book) that aversion to unfair treatment has coevolved with the capacity for long-term cooperative relationships with non-kin others. Brosnan couches her argument in terms of equitable and inequitable distributions of outcomes, proposing that when cooperation becomes common—and when therefore exploitation becomes a threat—it makes sense that evolution would select for those who are sensitive to unfairness (in her work, inequity or inequality). She notes:

86 E. Allan Lind … individuals who came under selection for more extensive cooperation because of the benefits such behavior accrued would similarly come under strong selection to limit their cooperative interactions to partners who shared the resulting rewards. Those who managed to do so, by changing partners when outcomes deviated substantially, would have gained far more than those who indiscriminately cooperated with all potential social partners with whom there was a net benefit. (Brosnan, 2011, p. 8) Fairness Heuristic Theory, with its functionalist approach to understanding fairness-related phenomena, would suggest similarly that for humans—where either exploitation within the group or expulsion from the group can be threat to the wellbeing or even the continued survival of the individual in question—it would make sense to evolve strong affective reactions to events that signal that the individual in question might be in danger of being used or expelled from the group. Such reactions would selected for and requisite fundamental responses would become “hardwired,” as the work of Eisenberger, Lieberman, and others suggest might well be the case. Humans would have developed a sensitivity to social and situational cues that suggest exploitation or potential rejection in the same way we develop sensitivity to any other commonly encountered threat to our survival. The original presentation of Fairness Heuristic Theory portrayed the fundamental social dilemma not as an active, cognitive, understanding, but rather as a background consideration in the operation of fairness processes. The biological and neuroscience work on fairness suggests that the dilemma might play out well below consciousness, that it might be a description not of a cognitive dilemma but rather a description of evolutionary pressures. Following this logic, it would certainly not be surprising if the reaction to unfair treatment in humans were more emotional than rational. Hints of serious exploitation within the group would be expected to prompt anger at the perpetrator or the authority associated with perceived exploitation. Hints of rejection would prompt similar anger, then first intragroup protest and, if the rejection continued, a redefinition of group boundaries (and exit from the former group) and perhaps retaliation against the former group. Consider, for example, that a “vendetta effect” (unreasonably high rates of litigation, far beyond any expectation of material gain) has been observed in reactions to perceived unfairness in job terminations when the terminated employee feels he or she has been treated particularly unfairly (Lind et al., 2000). Another example of this sort of strong affective reaction, indeed an even more impressive example, is seen in the pattern of very strong and often combative reactions to unfairness involved in radicalization and extremism, as described by Van den Bos (2018; see also his chapter in this book).

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Research showing that fairness effects are moderated by levels of uncertainty (Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002) and by behavior disinhibition (Hulst et al., 2017) fit well with this reformulation of Fairness Heuristic Theory and with the overall functionalist approach. The use of fairness experiences as indicators of social safety would be expected to be most important if the person were in a state of personal uncertainty or insecurity, because personal uncertainty is likely to activate the human alarm system and to raise the possibility that either social connections are at risk or social connections are more critical—both considerations would provoke attention to fairness as a gauge to the reliability of social support (see Van den Bos, McGregor, & Martin, 2015). It also makes sense that fairness processes are less likely to be activated if the person in question is not attending to social cues, as is the case in behavior disinhibition. One could argue that it is critical that we understand not just when justice effects occur but also when and why they do not occur. For social relationships and social groups to survive, there must be some process or set of processes that prevent every inequality, inequity, or social process defect from developing into interpersonal conflict or the splintering of the group. Part of this limiting of fairness effects seems to lie in the fact that there are situations—such as personal uncertainty— that turn on or turn up fairness effects, and there are other situations— such as social disinhibition—that turn off or turn down fairness effects. We also seem to have evolved mechanisms to control—to defer or damp down—fairness reactions. The neuroscience work by Eisenberger, Lieberman, and others, cited above, suggests that humans have evolved neural systems for controlling reactions to the pain associated with unfairness and exclusion and for deferring the pleasure associated with fair, but costly, outcomes or treatment. Unfortunately, we do not know much about how and when these control-of-fairness mechanisms are activated. We need research and especially theory that will tell us more about what factors and psychological processes limit the justice experience-affective response reaction to fairness-relevant situations. How and when, for example, do social practices that defuse the negative affect associated with unfair treatment—practices such as apologies or compensation—operate within the psychology of justice? Habituation is another process that might reduce the threat that minor injustices pose for ongoing relationship or long-term groups. Occasional affronts and inequalities encountered within a group or relationship do not necessarily trigger as much affect once we are used to them. We might even habituate to greater injustices if we are forced to endure them for long periods of time. It would be very interesting to investigate, at least as far as one could within ethical constraints, whether and how people habituate to injustice. One hypothesis is that we have almost unlimited capacity to habituate, but another is that we will endure repeated injustice,

88 E. Allan Lind from fear of punishment or rejection, until we finally “snap”—showing a catastrophic conversion to fairness-motivated action—and then rebel or reject the relationship or society within which the repeated injustices occur. In this respect, Van den Bos’ work on radicalization and extremism is especially relevant. Functionally it would make sense if, either through the engagement of the control systems neuroscientists have studied or through a diminution at times of our raw sensitivity to justice, fairness judgments and reactions to them became less volatile. The original Fairness Heuristic Theory logic for the “stickiness” of fairness judgments was based on social cognition processes, but one could also arrive at that prediction without reference to social cognition processes. For example, it might be the case that the process of developing positive connections with others or with groups or institutions strengthens the control systems that regulate our underlying fairness responses. Social connections and social interaction might soothe the pain of unfairness in the same way they soothe physical pain. In any event, there is clearly much work remaining as we seek to understand the psychology of justice and the drivers of fairness-related reactions. We need to address not only when fairness effects occur, but when they do not occur. We need to look into the evidence from other species and from neurological research to understand why we, as a species, are so sensitive to fairness. There is plenty of scholarly territory remaining to be explored in the psychology of justice.

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Bies, R. J. (2015). Interactional justice: Looking backward and looking forward. In R. S. Cropanzano & M. L. Ambrose (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of justice in the workplace (pp. 89–107). New York: Oxford University Press. Brewer, M. B. (1989). Ambivalent sociality: The human condition. Behavioral and brain sciences, 12, 699. Brockner, J. (2002). Making sense of procedural fairness: How high procedural fairness can reduce or heighten the influence of outcome favorability. Academy of Management Review, 27(1), 58–76. Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures. Psychological Bulletin,120(2), 189–208. Brosnan, S. F. (2006). Nonhuman species’ reactions to inequity and their implications for fairness. Social Justice Research, 19, 153–185. Brosnan, S. F. (2011). A hypothesis of the co-evolution of cooperation and responses to inequity. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 5. doi:10.3389/ fnins.2011.00043 Brosnan, S., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature, 425(6955), 297–299. doi:10.1038/nature01963 Brosnan, S. F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2014). Evolution of responses to (un) fairness. Science, 346, 1251776. Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 386–400. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, 290–292. Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1984). McGraw-Hill series in social psychology. Social cognition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Folger, R. (1977). Distributive and procedural justice: Combined impact of voice and improvement on experienced inequity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 108–119. Greenberg, J. (1993). The social side of fairness: Interpersonal and informational classes of organizational justice. In R. Cropanzano (Ed.), Series in applied psychology. Justice in the workplace: Approaching fairness in human resource management (pp. 79–103). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Hulst, L., Van den Bos, K., Akkermans, A. J., & Lind, E. A. (2017). On the psychology of perceived procedural justice: Experimental evidence that behavioral inhibition strengthens reactions to voice and no-voice procedures. Frontiers in Psychological and Behavioral Science, 6, 1–12. Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations: A theory of interdependence. New York: Wiley. Kidder, L. H. (1986). There is no word for “fair”—Notes from Japan. In International Conference on Social Justice in Human Relations, Leiden University, Netherlands. Kidder, L. H., & Muller, S. (1991). What is “fair” in Japan? In H. Steensma and R. Vermunt (Eds.) Social justice in human relations (pp. 139–154). Boston, MA: Springer. Lieberman, M. D. (2014). Social: Why our brains are wired to connect. New York: Broadway Books.

90 E. Allan Lind Lieberman, M. D., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). A pain by any other name (rejection, exclusion, ostracism) still hurts the same: The role of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in social and physical pain. In J. T. Cacioppo, P. S. Visser, & C. L. Pickett (Eds.), Social neuroscience: People thinking about thinking people (pp. 167–187). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lind, E. A. (1995). Social conflict and social justice: Some lessons from the social psychology of justice. Leiden, the Netherlands: Leiden University Press. Republished in Representative Research in Social Psychology, 21, 6–22. Lind, E. A. (2001). Fairness heuristic theory: Justice judgments as pivotal cognitions in organizational relations. In J. Greenberg and R. Cropanzano (Eds.), Advances in organizational justice (pp. 56–88). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Lind, E. A. (2011). Culture and fairness: Some possible dynamics of cultural variation in the psychology of fairness. In K. Ohbuchi & N. Asai (Eds.), Inequality, discrimination, and conflict in Japan: Ways to social justice and cooperation. Victoria, AU: Transpacific Press. Lind, E. A., Greenberg, J., Scott, K. S., & Welchans, T. D. (2000). The winding road from employee to complainant: Situational and psychological determinants of wrongful termination lawsuits. Administrative Science Quarterly, 45, 557–590. Lind, E. A., Kray, L. J., and Thompson, L. (2001). Primacy effects in justice judgments: Testing predictions from fairness heuristic theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 85, 189–210. Lind, E. A., Kulik, C., Ambrose, M., and Park, M. (1993). Individual and corporate dispute resolution: Using procedural fairness as a decision heuristic. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 224–251. Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum Press. Moorman, R. H. (1991). Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 845–855. Organ, D. W. (1990). The motivational basis of organizational citizenship behavior. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 12, pp. 43–72). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Organ, D. W., & Moorman, R. H. (1993). Fairness and organizational citizenship behavior: What are the connections? Social Justice Research, 6, 5–18. Soenen, G., Melkonian, T., & Ambrose, M. L. (2017). To shift or not to shift? Determinants and consequences of phase shifting on justice judgments. Academy of Management Journal, 60(2), 798–817. Tabibnia, G., Satpute, A. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2008). The sunny side of fairness: Preference fairness activates reward circuitry (and disregarding unfairness activates self-control circuitry). Psychological Science, 19, 339–347. Thibaut, J. W., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York: Wiley. Thibaut, J. W., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural justice: A psychological analysis. L. Erlbaum Associates. Tyler, T. R. (1990). Why people obey the law: Procedural justice, legitimacy, and compliance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Tyler, T. R. (1997). The psychology of legitimacy: A relational perspective on voluntary deference to authorities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 323–345. Tyler, T. R., & Blader, S. (2000). Cooperation in groups: Procedural justice, social identity, and behavioral engagement. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press. Tyler, T. R., & Blader, S. (2003). Procedural justice, social identity, and cooperative behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 349–361. Tyler, T. R., and Lind, E. A. (1992). A relational model of authority in groups. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 25 (pp. 115–192). New York: Academic Press. Van den Bos, K. (1996). Procedural justice and conflict. Doctoral dissertation, Leiden University. Van den Bos, K. (2001). Uncertainty management: The influence of uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 931–941. Van den Bos, K. (2018). Why people radicalize: How unfairness judgments are used to fuel radical beliefs, extremist behaviors, and terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press. Van den Bos, K., Ham, J., Lind, E. A., Simonis, M., van Essen, W. J., & Rijpkema, M. (2008). Justice and the human alarm system: The impact of exclamation points and flashing lights on the justice judgment process. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 201–219. Van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2002). Uncertainty management by means of fairness judgments. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 1–60). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2009). The social psychology of fairness and the regulation of personal uncertainty. In R. M. Arkin, K. C. Oleson, & P. J. Carroll (Eds.), Handbook of the uncertain self (pp. 122–141). New York: Psychology Press. Van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2013). On sense-making reactions and public inhibition of benign social motives: An appraisal model of prosocial behavior. In J. Olson & M. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 48, pp. 1–58). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Van den Bos, K., Lind, E. A., Vermunt, R., & Wilke, H. A. M. (1997). How do I judge my outcome when I do not know the outcome of others? The psychology of the fair process effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1034–1046. Van den Bos, K., Lind, E. A., & Wilke, H. (2001). The psychology of procedural justice and distributive justice viewed from the perspective of fairness heuristic theory. In R. Cropanzano (Ed.), Justice in the workplace: Volume II—From theory to practice (pp. 49–66). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates. Van den Bos, K., McGregor, I., & Martin, L. L. (2015). Security and uncertainty in contemporary delayed-return cultures: Coping with the blockage of personal goals. In P. J. Carroll, R. M. Arkin, & A. L. Wichman (Eds.), Handbook of psychological security (pp. 21–35). New York: Psychology Press. Van den Bos, K., & Miedema, J. (2000). Toward understanding why fairness matters: The influence of mortality salience on reactions to procedural fairness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 355–366.

92 E. Allan Lind Van den Bos, K., Vermunt, R., & Wilke, H. A. M. (1997). Procedural and distributive justice: What is fair depends more on what comes first than on what comes next. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 95–104. Van den Bos, K., Wilke, H. A. M., and Lind, E. A. (1998). When do we need procedural fairness? The role of trust in authority. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1449–1458. Van den Bos, K., Wilke, H. A. M., Lind, E. A., and Vermunt, R. (1998). Evaluating outcomes by means of the fair process effect: Evidence for different processes in fairness and satisfaction judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1493–1503. Walker, L., LaTour, S., Lind, E. A., & Thibaut, J. (1974). Reactions of participants and observers to modes of adjudication. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4, 295–310. Williams, K. D., & Jarvis, B. (2006) Cyberball: A program for use in research on interpersonal ostracism and acceptance. Behavior Research Methods, 38, 174. 10.3758/BF03192765.

5

Integrating Three Theoretical Traditions in Distributive Justice and Social Exchange Research Robert J. MacCoun and Sarah Polcz

Introduction In the rational choice tradition, the postulate of “narrow self-interest” predicts that people will make decisions that maximize their own payoffs. Though a powerful simplifying assumption, this is often wrong. Both personal experience and academic research reveals that when making decisions people do not merely look out for themselves but often also weigh the interests of others. To characterize how decision-makers weigh the relative interests of themselves and of others, social psychologists have pursued three main approaches. We call these the “Justice Standards” (JS), “Thin Relational Models” (RM), and “Social Value Orientations” (SVO) paradigms. Figure 5.1 summarizes the three paradigms, depicting (roughly) the areas of apparent overlap in their coverage. In this chapter we argue that each approach has certain blind spots relative to the others, but that they do not appear to conflict in terms of major empirical predictions and can be fruitfully integrated. Integrating them requires explicit attention to (a) the information-processing requirements of a given norm or rule, together with (b) the situational affordances that allow or thwart the expression of different social motivations. Our treatment here is verbal, but it is based on a more comprehensive and formalized treatment presented elsewhere (MacCoun & Polcz, 2017). The Justice Standards ( JS) Paradigm The distributive justice literature we review in this section emerged piecemeal from the contributions of many different scholars (e.g., Adams, 1965; Bierhoff, Cohen, & Greenberg, 1986; Lerner & Lerner, 1981; Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978). At the time it emerged, it was called “equity theory,” but since the paradigm outgrew that theory, we will refer to the larger program of research as “Justice Standards” (JS). Because this paradigm has received the most attention in social psychology, we will review it only very briefly.

94 Robert J. MacCoun and Sarah Polcz Justice Standards Relational Models

SVOs

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Figure 5.1 Graphical depiction of the three paradigms, indicating rough areas of overlap

The justice standards approach is the work of many hands, but it was most cleanly summarized by Morton Deutsch (1975), who suggested that much of the work on distributive fairness could be described as the interplay of three distinct standards for assessing the fairness of outcomes: Proportionality,1 Equality, and Need. Deutsch argued that each is motivated by a different relational goal. In situations where the goal is economic productivity, people will prefer to allocate outcomes relative to contributions. When the goal is social harmony, people will prefer to allocate outcomes equally. When the goal is personal welfare (e.g., a parent’s wishes for her child), people will prefer to allocate outcomes according to need. (See related arguments by Clark, Mills, & Corcoran, 1989; Hochschild, 1981.) Earlier work in the equity-theory tradition tried to make the case that the panoply of other candidate distributive justice rules could be reduced to a proportionality rule, whereby outcomes are allocated proportional to contributions. Deutsch’s (1975) proposal was a response to growing evidence that this conception was too narrow to describe actual choices and sentiments. The Need and Equality standards each reject the inputsto-distributions calculus of the Proportionality framework, but for different reasons. The Need standard attends to welfare deficits among those within care relations, however broadly, provisionally, or contingently bounded. The Equality standard sidesteps the assessment of differences in need or contribution, as being not only mathematically but interpersonally divisive, instead substituting a transparent policy of identical treatment. Perhaps the key contribution of what we are calling the “justice standards” approach is that it established empirically that the psychology of distributive justice cannot be reduced to a unitary conception of

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fairness. This body of work provided an important foundation for the development of the other paradigms we examine below. The “Thin” Relational Models (RM) Paradigm The second research tradition, Alan Page Fiske’s (1991, 1992) Relational Models theory, integrates and builds upon concepts from developmental psychology, economic sociology and philosophical anthropology. RMT posits that the tensions and harmonies of human sociality are generated by four distinct relational models (RMs) that structure human social cognition. Each RM organizes relational thinking according to a distinctive logic. The four relational models are differentiated by the nature of the interpersonal comparisons people attend to when they plan, generate, or interpret social action (Fiske, 2004): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Things they have in common (Communal Sharing); Differences in rank (Authority Ranking); Balance between persons (Equality Matching), or Ratios (Market Pricing).

Each model entails a characteristic attitude concerning the movement of resources between the parties to the relationship. Indeed, each model is also associated with characteristic decision-making principles, punishments for rule breakers, behaviors that enact and reinforce the model and more. There is a rich level of detail associated with Fiske’s theory supported by a plethora of studies across psychology, sociology and anthropology (see Haslam, 2004). We consider this full body of work the thick version of Fiske’s theory. In this chapter, a thin version of Fiske’s theory will be described. We believe focusing solely on Thin RM clarifies its novel claims and facilitates its integration with the other distributive justice paradigms. In our view, thin RM centers on Fiske’s (1991) one-to-one mapping of the four relational models to the four classes of measurement scales identified by S.S. Stevens (1946). Stevens claimed that there are four types of scales used for observations in the sciences. These four scale classifications are nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio scales. Each scale type represents a different kind of information about empirical phenomena. We now briefly review the scale types, then elucidate how each manifests as a distinct relational model. Nominal scales assign numbers to observations solely as a means of identifying them with distinct qualitative categories based on their common properties; an example is “religious affiliation” (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, etc.). Ordinal scales are similar

96 Robert J. MacCoun and Sarah Polcz to nominal scales in that observations are classified as belonging or not belonging to a category, but with categories that can be ordered along some continuum; an example is “educational attainment” (some high school, some college, bachelor’s degree, some postgraduate training, postgraduate degree). Interval scales also have an ordering, but with the more stringent requirement that the scale numbers that are assigned to categories imply equal intervals along a continuum. Finally, ratio scales are similar to interval scales but with intervals that are defined relative to an absolute zero point. An absolute zero means, for instance, the non-occurrence of an event, or absence of any units of an object of interest. When there is an absolute zero, it becomes meaningful to discuss the ratio of the two objects to one another. An important point about scale types is that they are not intrinsic to the phenomena of interest but instead depend on the questions one is asking. Although there are differences between scale types in principle, in practice many phenomena can be measured in terms of one of those scales. The choice between the scales will often depend upon the purpose of the measurement, which is in line with Stevens’ aspirations for his project; he did not offer a justification for the four scale types beyond their usefulness. They are neither claimed to be grounded in human psychology, nor justified as isomorphisms with the real relationships they are used to represent, still they have proven both intuitive and popular. Fiske (1992) noted that his four relational models map onto the four Stevens scale types. Nominal classification assessments are at the heart of the Communal Sharing relational model. In Communal Sharing the focal relational consideration is what people have in common with one another – are they the same in a relevant way? If the answer is yes, then with respect to that aspect of the relationship, no person has precedence over another; they are all interchangeable exemplars of that category. What this entails for the handling of resource distributions is that there is no relevant difference between them that would privilege one individual’s claim to a resource over the claims of others. This might mean, for instance, that allocation decisions can be self-directed – you can take what you desire or need from a common resource without seeking approvals, offering anything in exchange, or awaiting benevolence. Or, resources that you acquire from sources outside the sphere of the relationship might remain under your control to distribute, but all someone in a Communal Sharing relationship with you need do is ask, and you would affect a transfer, for what’s yours is theirs. In RM, when a relationship is organized using the Authority Ranking model, distributions follow the ordinal rule that higher-ranking people are entitled to more than their subordinates. The superior will keep more for him or herself while still allocating something to those beneath, while a subordinate will do the opposite. How much more or

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how much less is a function of discretion or convention; the important thing is that when amounts distributed are ordered by increasing or decreasing quantities that their order mirrors the ranks in the Authority Ranking relationship. The Equality Matching relational model can be loosely analogized to interval scale thinking, insofar as it implies equal units that permit the calculation of any differences to be eliminated. The units of interest to be balanced are socially defined. For instance, they could be rides to a sports practice, dinner parties, holidays spent with in-laws. In an Equality Matching dyad, the difference in the number of units attributable to one person is understood as the deficit, or number needed, of the other person in order to reach balance. If one person gives something to another, this act gives rise to an expectation that at some point there will be reciprocation in kind to restore balance between them. When the substance of an interaction turns upon proportions or ratios between persons (rather than differences), the Market Pricing model is in play. Distributions are determined by relevant contributions as situationally defined. Ratio scaling requires a defined zero point, which enables the use of a currency (e.g., dollars) as an intermediate medium to facilitate exchanges. The Stevens scale taxonomy is not universally accepted among measurement theorists, but it does offer two compelling ideas. First, that there is a “ladder” of increasingly refined ways of making distinctions. And second, that each refinement enables new forms of quantitative assessment (naming, ordering, computing differences, and computing ratios). Whether, when, and how these mathematical operations correspond to mental operations is a question of longstanding psychological interest (e.g., Birnbaum, Anderson, & Hynan, 1989) but we believe the Stevens analogy provides a compelling and elegant backbone for Fiske’s RM theory. The Social Value Orientations (SVO) Paradigm The third approach, the Social Value Orientations (SVO) paradigm, grew out of early social psychological attempts to establish a psychologically plausible version of game theory, best exemplified by Thibault and Kelley’s interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Many of the ideas were defined, formalized, and experimentally tested well before the more recent explosion of behavioral game theory in economics (e.g., Camerer, 2003; Charness & Rabin, 2002; Falk & Fischbacher, 2006; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999) and interdependence theory anticipates many of those developments. Within the interdependence-theory tradition, the SVO circumplex is less a specific account of allocation preferences than a measurement tool and descriptive framework for classifying

98 Robert J. MacCoun and Sarah Polcz a variety of preferred allocation strategies (see Griesinger & Livingston, 1973; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Liebrand & McClintock, 1988; McClintock, 1972; McClintock, Messick, Kuhlman, & Campos, 1973; Messick & McClintock, 1968; Murphy & Ackerman, 2014; van Lange, 1999). SVO experimental scenarios characteristically involve lone decisionmakers tasked with fully distributing some resource, called decomposed games. Participants are presented with a choice of paths to go down in how much to hand out to some “other” and how much to keep for themselves (a “self” allocation). These self-other tradeoffs can be likened to vectors in a two-dimensional outcome space. In this tradeoff space, there is a convention of representing the importance one places on one’s own outcomes on the x-axis and the importance one places on another’s outcomes on the y-axis. Each point in this space reflects a particular balance of how much one gives to the other versus keeps for oneself. In this way, different points in the space reflect differential weightings of our own welfare versus that of someone else, and different locations can be said to reflect different positions on interpersonal values. In these decomposed games, the units that a participant is allocating remain uniform even as the balance of amounts to self and other in their set of choices scale inversely within an upper bound. Assuming there is transitivity across the set of choices, an actor’s tradeoffs in response to a small number of allocation allows us to draw inferences about the actor’s more general preference structure (Maccrimmon & Messick, 1976). In the SVO literature the SVOs are sometimes taken to represent relatively stable individual differences, and indeed the SVO circumplex (suitably rotated) has been shown to map onto two of the “Big Five” personality factors, Extraversion and Agreeableness (DeYoung, Weisberg, Quilty, & Peterson, 2012). But as the justice standards and relational models paradigms suggest, any traitlike differences in interpersonal orientation are likely to interact with the moderating influence of particular relationships (e.g., coworker vs. daughter), settings (e.g., the marketplace vs. the home), and cultures. As seen in Figure 5.2, the two-dimensional SVO space is proposed to have a circumplex structure, which has specific psychometric properties not relevant for this chapter (see Guttman, 1954; Tracey, 2000). It closely resembles the earlier “interpersonal circumplex” of personality theory (Leary, 1957) and indeed the two models appear to be closely linked (Wiggins, 1996). One apparent difference is that SVO is more a mapping of interpersonal strategies than of fixed traits, but even this difference is more apparent than real because from the outset, Leary (1957) conceived of one’s position on the circumplex as contingent on the interplay of one’s relationships, settings, and personal dispositions.

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MaxOther MaxJoint

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–50 MaxRel

–100 –100

–50

0

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Figure 5.2 The social values orientation circumplex, showing vectors corresponding to four major interpersonal strategies.

Although scores can fall anywhere in the SVO circumplex, Figure 5.2 shows that certain vectors are of special psychological interest: 1. MaxSelf (sometimes called “MaxOwn” or “Individualistic”; 0°): Along this vector, people strive to maximize their own gain without reference to the implications of their choices for the amount distributed to the other’s conditions. Note that this vector characterizes the vast majority of modeling in economics and other rational choice traditions. 2. MaxOther (sometimes called “Altruistic”; 90°): Along this vector, people strive to maximize the Other’s outcomes irrespective of their own. 3. MaxJoint (sometimes called “Cooperative” or “Prosocial”; 45°): Along this vector, people strive to maximize the sum of Own and Other. 4. MaxRel (sometimes called “Competitive”; 135°): Along this vector, people strive to maximize their gain relative to that of the Other. While additional vectors can be given psychological labels (e.g., “Masochistic”; 180°; “Sadistic”; 210°), it is rare to observe people making choices outside the arc spanned by the four strategies listed here, at least for the kinds of people and relationships examined in laboratory experiments and questionnaire surveys. The graphical nature of the SVO paradigm makes vivid some key insights about human motivation. First, SVO explicitly embeds the self-

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interest assumption of rational choice as a special case within a more general model of “other-regarding” preferences. Second, SVO established early on that other-regarding utility functions allow for prosocial or generous departures from individualism (the arc between 0° and 90°), but also for antisocial or spiteful departures (the arc between 90° and 180°). And third, the SVO circumplex illustrates how popular economic thinking often confuses a Social Darwinistic idea of ruthless competition (essentially, MaxRel) and the narrow self-interest of Adam Smith’s economics (MaxOwn) – the former is spiteful toward others, while the latter is indifferent. On the other hand, the mathematical clarity of SVO is sometimes undermined by investigators’ choice of verbal labels. In their review of SVO measures, Murphy and Ackermann (2014) relabel MaxJoint as “prosocial” – a label that is both broader and less clear than MaxJoint. Other authors include multiple strategies under the “prosocial” rubric, but confusingly, they differ in their choices; in a recent meta-analysis, Balliet, Parks, and Joireman (2009) pooled MaxJoint and MaxOther respondents into a “prosocial” category, while van Lange’s “prosocial” category (1999) grouped MaxJoint with a fifth strategy, one which does not form a vector: 5. MinDiff (sometimes called “egalitarianism” or “inequality aversion”): In this strategy, people strive to minimize the difference between their outcome and that of the Other.2

Compare and Contrast There are a number of points of potential overlap across the JS, SVO, and “thin” RM paradigms. Some seem uncontroversial. First, all three depart from traditional rational-choice accounts; all three relax the selfinterest assumption, and all three are largely mute on the rationality assumption. Second, each implies an other-regarding utility function; we care about what happens to others, whether spitefully or compassionately. And third, all three invoke quite similar notions of a situationally-contingent equality standard – the Equality justice standard, the Equality Matching relational model, and the MinDiff SVO strategy. Perhaps that is not surprising as there is only one way to have the same amount as someone else, but many ways in which distributions between persons can vary. But the overlap is more than mathematical; all three traditions treat equality as a canonical social preference that is not reducible to other motives (contrary to some early treatments of equity theory). In the remainder of this section, we compare and contrast the three paradigms.

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Justice Standards vs. Thin Relational Models While Thin RM’s Equality Matching model closely parallels the Equality standard, its MP model encompasses the Proportionality standard.3 There is partial overlap between the JS and RM paradigms, including the equality principle noted above, as well as strong parallels between the JS notion of proportionality and the RM notion of Market Pricing. The JS tradition lacks a clear counterpart to RM’s Authority Ranking principle. Deutsch (1975) and other JS researchers had long recognized that the inputs to Proportionality assessments can involve either effort or ability, and by that same logic, so one might add status ranking as an input (see discussion in Tyler, Boeckmann, Smith, & Huo, 1997). Indeed, that argument might find support in French and Raven’s (1959) classic taxonomy of forms of “social power,” which puts factors like coercion, reward, and legitimacy on the same footing as factors like expertise and information. Still, power is a very different concept than justice, and we suspect many justice theorists would resist incorporating it into fairness standards. Thin RM has several points of contact with the Need principle. First, RM allows the needy in a Communal Sharing relationship to take what they need. But while Thin is consistent with Need, they are not coextensive. Thin Communal Sharing is much more general. Within a Communal Sharing relationship the parties have undifferentiated access/entitlement to a resource. Examples of Communal Sharing resource sharing include fishing in the sea, food in a home fridge, joint bank accounts, joint tenancy in property. Because these resources are held in common; it is not the case that they belong to one party and are being transferred to another based on Need. When there is no resource scarcity, the only social reference point on which one person’s claim on a resource is contingent is group membership. Another point of contact between Thin RM and the Need principle is the idea that an AuthorityRanking distribution is compatible with addressing a subordinate’s needs so long the superior party retains a larger resource share. Authority Ranking and Need are not mutually exclusive although the maintenance of the Authority Ranking imbalance is an upper bound on the satisfaction of a subordinate’s Need. In the “thick” fuller statement of Fiske’s theory (1991, 1992), there are various discussions of lexical relationships among the RMs, such that one principle (e.g., market pricing) might be permitted under another (e.g., authority ranking) so long as the requirements of the superordinate model are met. This lexical ordering was not well articulated in the JS paradigm until the work of Clark and colleagues (e.g., Clark et al., 1989), and even there mostly with respect to the psychological difficulty of juggling co-existing standards.

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Interestingly, using the minimal groups method as well as a comparison of mixed vs. same-sex dyads, Messé, Hymes, and MacCoun (1986) found that group membership moderated people’s choice of allocation standards, but in manner closer to Opotow’s 1996 “scope of justice” theory than Fiske’s 1991 relational model theory. Specifically, in a work simulation task, third-party allocators followed a proportionality standard when at least one of the workers was in their ingroup, but followed an equality standard when both workers were belonged to the outgroup. One feature that the JS and RM approaches share is that both treat distributive justice principles as categorical rather than dimensional. As we discuss below, a distinctive contribution of the SVO approach is its dimensional account. Justice Standards vs. Social Value Orientations Again, the Equality standard is essentially isomorphic with the MinDiff strategy in SVO. Beyond that, there is little overlap between the JS and SVO approaches, which is surprising, given that both are long-standing accounts in the social-exchange tradition in social psychology. The lack of overlap is in large part attributable to the distinction between what people want (the preferences of SVO) and what people think is fair (the standards of JS). MaxOther is similar to the Need principle in being altruistic or beneficent in its effect, but the two ideas are not isomorphic. Taken literally, a universal application of MaxOther would be as generous to a prince as to a pauper. MaxOther can come closer to approximating the Need standard if we invoke an auxiliary contingency that it is only invoked when others are in need. But that is not part of the formal structure of the SVO account. As a model of other-regarding utility functions, SVO is expressed in terms of various arithmetic relationships between outcomes for Self vs. Other: viz., MaxOwn = max(Self), MaxJoint = max(Self +Other), MaxRel = max(Self-Other), and MinDiff = min(Self-Other). As we discuss further in the final section (and in more detail in MacCoun & Polcz, 2017), the SVO approach can be expanded to explicitly model the Need standard as a strategy (call it “MinNeed”), but doing so requires information about the Other’s status-quo point, as well as an operative threshold (e.g., a poverty threshold) for defining a state of neediness. Similarly, Proportionality can only be represented on the SVO circumplex if we include the contributions or inputs of Self and Other as reference points. MacCoun and Polcz (2017) compare several alternative ways of formalizing both Need and Proportionality.4

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Thin Relational Models vs. Social Value Orientations Our final comparison is between thin RM and SVO. As noted, the thin version of Equality Matching is basically identical with MinDiff, although Fiske’s full account adds a far more nuanced statement of social reasoning and behavior under the Equality Matching model. Market Pricing is most similar to MaxSelf, but for reasons noted in our discussion of Proportionality, information on outcomes for Self and Other is insufficient to operationalize even a thin account of Market Pricing. Communal Sharing has no clear counterpart in SVO. Communal Sharing relationships are unraveled by the fencing off of certain resources as “yours” and “mine.” In contrast, the central preoccupation of SVO, how much will someone give to another person when doing so diminishes their own payoffs, is a question which starts from an assumption of separation between persons. It starts where Communal Sharing ends. We believe this has led to an underappreciation in the SVO paradigm of the extent to which people are involved in Thin Communal Sharing relationships. The response format in a decomposed game, a set of sliding distributions between “self” and “other,” does not allow participants to communicate a preference for not fencing off the resources of “self” and “other.” Arguably, a strict MaxJoint strategy comes closest to Communal Sharing because summing the outcomes of Self and Other erases their differences (i.e., 5 + 3 = 4 + 4 = 3 + 5). But while a thin version of Communal Sharing is compatible with “growing the pie,” it does not require it. More generally, thin Communal Sharing is mute on the question of how much people should give to others versus keep for themselves. If people classify a relationship as Communal Sharing, they have made a judgment of inclusion. But that judgment inherently refuses to provide criteria for one-shot resource divisions. To respond to an SVO answer set, additional considerations must be introduced to arbitrate among the options. Authority Ranking is also absent from SVO. One might add weights that give priority to the outcomes of higher status individuals, but recall that for Fiske, Authority Ranking involves ordinal rather than interval or ratio scaling. Thus, Authority Ranking allows a variety of possible distributions subject to a threshold constraint that Self > Other, or that Other > Self, depending on which actor has the higher status. Nevertheless, there may still be meta-relational information conveyed by decision-makers’ choices within the payoff space. Our distributive choices have not only a constitutive function, in the sense that distributing resources equally is an enactment of an Equality Matching relationship, or holding resources communally is an enactment of a Communal Sharing relationship. Our distributive choices also have a communicative

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function, part of which involves signaling through action the kind of relationship it is our intention to have with the “other.” By choosing a payoff within the broad Authority Ranking region of the circumplex, decision-makers communicate they want or expect an Authority Ranking relationship. Still, this communicative aspect creates the potential for conflict, because from the recipient’s perspective, it may be difficult to distinguish authority entitlements from simple greed (MaxSelf) or even spitefulness (MaxRel). Haslam and Fiske (1992) published what to the best of our knowledge is the only direct empirical comparison of RM and SVO, where he argued that RM better reflected participants’ intuitive relational cognition. But that study operationalized SVO in an unconventional way; presenting the SVO social motives as symmetrical within two-person relationships. MaxOther (Altruism) for instance, was described as a relationship in which you would do anything for the other person without regard to yourself and vice versa. But while symmetrical social motives are not ruled out by SVO, they are neither required nor typically assumed. Considering that for most people, the MaxOther relationship in which they are most likely to be involved is parenting, to restrict MaxOther endorsements by participants to cases where a child, perhaps a toddler, would match parents’ selflessness is narrow indeed.

Future Directions and General Discussion Each of these three research traditions has made major contributions to our understanding of how people evaluate and choose among different allocations to Self and Other. But as we have argued, each approach has blind spots, and while the RM and SVO approaches are more comprehensive than the JS tradition, we see no principled reason to favor any one of these paradigms over the other. Rather, because the approaches differ more in emphasis than in direct predictions, we see ample opportunities for integration. In our view, the formal framework of SVO provides the best scaffolding for integrating the insights of JS and RM, but doing so requires explicitly operationalizing certain reference points and/or threshold values – status quo states and need thresholds (for Need), contribution values (for Proportionality and Market Pricing), membership indicators (for Communal Sharing) and status thresholds (for Authority Ranking). This implies that some allocation strategies are inherently more complex than others, with MaxOwn and MaxSelf (one component each) being computationally simpler than MaxJoint or MaxRel (two components each), and Need, Authority Ranking, Proportionality and Market Sharing all involving complexities beyond MaxJoint and MaxRel. There is still much to learn about these computational requirements, and whether and how they cognitively constrain allocation

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decisions, and thereby distort observers’ inferences about allocators’ motives. For example, Liebrand & McClintock (1988) found that MaxSelf and MaxOther choices had longer response latencies than MaxJoint and MaxRel choices. And yet Rand and colleagues (e.g., Rand, Newman, & Wurzbacher, 2015) have found that time pressure promotes cooperative over competitive or selfish choices, suggesting that algorithmic considerations probably interact with the degree to which certain strategies are well-learned and automatized. Another computational consideration is that the environment may make some strategy components more salient – or conversely, more costly to obtain – than others. Thus situational affordances in both the natural and the built environment may bias allocation choices toward some strategies and away from others, further complicating the attributional task for observers who seek to interpret the allocator’s motives. Another area for development is the question of how strategies are lexically ranked. For example, how do allocators choose among outcome pairs that equally satisfy a dominant strategy? What strategy will an allocator choose when their preferred strategy is difficult or impossible to implement? Fiske (1991, 1992) has given more attention to this question than theorists in the other traditions. We believe that these computational and lexical considerations are probably implemented cognitively as a constraint satisfaction network – a view that would bring the distributive justice and social exchange literatures into closer contact with modeling in other areas of social and cognitive psychology (Read, Vanman, & Miller, 1997; Robbennolt, Darley, & MacCoun, 2010; Simon, Krawczyk, & Holyoak, 2004; Thagard, 1989). Operationally, a more tractable halfway point to a full-scale network model would be a set of SVO-type allocation, as shown in Table 5.1. These rules

Table 5.1 Nine Allocation Rules Rule

Definition

MaxSelf MaxOther MaxJoint MaxRel MinDiff MinNeed Proportionality Communal Sharing Authority Ranking

max(own outcome) max(other’s outcome) max(own outcome + other’s outcome) max(own outcome – other’s outcome) min|own outcome – other’s outcome| min(need threshold – other’s state) min|own outcome:inputs – other’s outcome:inputs| Take from common pool, subject to membership constraint Any of the above subject to status constraint (superordinate > subordinate)

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will differ (across people and cultures) in their chronic level of activation, and each rule will be triggered by different relationship features, environmental cues, and personal and collective goals. To facilitate a better integration of the JS, RM, and SVO approaches, expanded measurement approaches will be needed. Elsewhere, we offer a detailed comparison and critique of existing SVO instruments (MacCoun & Polcz, 2017), but our list of desiderata includes the following: 1. The method should capture responses anywhere within the circumplex space rather than privileging (or ignoring) some regions. 2. The method should capture criteria beyond simple {Self, Other} outcome pairs – including group memberships, status differences, role obligations, status quo states, and psychological floors, thresholds, or ceilings on deservingness. 3. The method should elicit lexical “tie-breaker” orderings among strategies. 4. The method should be stochastic (yielding probabilistic predictions or “propensities”) but also fuzzy (allowing an assessment of gradations from vague tendencies to strict “step functions”). 5. The method should be applicable in observational studies where no direct elicitation methods are feasible; i.e., it should permit inferences – albeit fallible ones – about strategy use “in the wild.” This is an ambitious list, but not unreasonably so. The psychology of social exchange and perceived justice is central to both basic social science and applied public policy analysis, and our theoretical core should evolve and expand to meet the demands of those aspiration

Author Contributions The literature review and writing of the chapter was done jointly by SP and RM. The formal theoretical approach we summarize in the final section was developed primarily by RM with contributions by SP.

Conflict of Interest Statement The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Notes 1 For Deutsch and other social psychologists of the late twentieth century, “proportionality” was usually called “equity.” Because that term has other

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meanings in law and in welfare economics, we use the more specific term “proportionality.” 2 MinDiff has one feature not shared by MaxOwn, MaxJoint, or MaxRel (which are all monotonic functions). If there are two pairs of choices that each minimize differences (e.g., {0,0} vs. {2,2}, nothing inherent in MinDiff guides the actor toward one pair over the other. Thus the MinDiff strategy requires a tie-breaking policy like “coin toss” or more likely “choose the pair with the larger sum.” 3 Again, we remind the reader that we are focusing on what we call “thin” RM theory, excluding the many supplemental arguments that flesh out the “thicker” version of Fiske’s account. 4 After drafting that paper, we later learned that some of these ideas had been presented somewhat differently in a book chapter by McClintock and Van Avermaet (1982) but were apparently never pursued by SVO researchers.

References Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267–299). New York: Academic Press. Balliet, D., Parks, C., & Joireman, J. (2009). Social value orientation and cooperation in social dilemmas: A meta-analysis. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 12, 533–547. Bierhoff, H. W., Cohen, R. L., & Greenberg, J. (Eds.). (1986). Justice in social relations. New York: Plenum Press. Birnbaum, M. H., Anderson, C. J., & Hynan, L. G. (1989). Two operations for ‘ratios’ and ‘differences’ of distances on a mental map. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 15, 785–796. Camerer, C. F. (2003). Behavioural studies of strategic thinking in games. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 225–231. Charness, G., & Rabin, M. (2002). Understanding social preferences with simple tests. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(3), 817–869. Clark, M. S., Mills, J. R., & Corcoran, D. M. (1989). Keeping track of needs and inputs of friends and strangers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 533–542. Deutsch, M. (1975). Equity, equality, and need: What determines which value will be used as the basis of distributive justice? Journal of Social Issues, 31(3), 137–149. DeYoung, C. G., Weisberg, Y. J., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2012). Unifying the aspects of the Big Five, the interpersonal circumplex, and trait affiliation. Journal of Personality, 81, 465–475. Falk, A., & Fischbacher, U. (2006). A theory of reciprocity. Games and Economic Behavior, 54(2), 293–315. Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. M. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114(3), 817–868. Fiske, A. P. (1991). Structures of social life: The four elementary forms of human relations. New York, NY: Free Press.

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Fiske, A. P. (1992). The four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review, 99(4), 689–723. Fiske, A. P. (2004). Relational models theory 2.0. In N. Haslam (Ed.), Relational models theory: A contemporary overview (1 edition, pp. 3–24). Mahwah, NJ: Psychology Press. French, J. R. P., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright & A. Zander Group dynamics (pp. 150–167). New York: Harper & Row. Griesinger, D. W., & Livingston, J. W. (1973). Toward a model of interpersonal motivation in experimental games. Behavioral Science, 18(3), 173–188. Guttman, L. (1954). A new approach to factor analysis: The radex. In P. F. Lazarsfeld (Ed.), Mathematical thinking in the social sciences (pp. 258–348). New York: Columbia University Press. Haslam, N. (2004). Research on the relational models: An overview. In Relational models theory: A contemporary overview. Haslam, N., & Fiske, A. P. (1992). Implicit relationship prototypes: Investigating five theories of the cognitive organization of social relationships. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(5), 441–474. Hochschild, J. L. (1981). What’s fair: American beliefs and distributive justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations: A theory of interdependence. New York: Wiley. Leary, T. (1957). Interpersonal diagnosis of personality. New York: Ronald Press. Lerner, M. J., & Lerner, S. C. (1981). The justice motive in social behavior. New York: Plenum. Liebrand, W. B. G., & McClintock, C. G. (1988). The ring measure of social values: A computerized procedure for assessing individual differences in information processing and social value orientation. European Journal of Personality, 2, 217–230. MacCoun, R. J., & Polcz, S. (2017, June 28). Social propensities. doi:10.2139/ ssrn.2994562 Maccrimmon, K. R., & Messick, D. M. (1976). A framework for social motives. Behavioral Science, 21(2), 86–100. McClintock, C. G. (1972). Social motivation—A set of propositions. Behavioral Science, 17(5), 438–454. Messick, D. M., & McClintock, C. G. (1968). Motivational bases of choice in experimental games. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4(1), 1–25. McClintock, C. G., Messick, D. M., Kuhlman, D. M., & Campos, F. T. (1973). Motivational bases of choice in three-choice decomposed games. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 9(6), 572–590. McClintock, C. G., & Van Avermaet, E. (1982). Social values and rules of fairness: A theoretical perspective. In V. J. Derlega & J. Grzelak (Eds.), Cooperation and helping behavior: Theories and research (pp. 43–71). Academic Press. Messé, L. A., Hymes, R. W., & MacCoun, R. J. (1986). Group categorization and distributive justice decisions. In H. W. Bierhoff, R. L. Cohen, & J. Greenberg (Eds.), Justice in social relations (pp. 227–248). New York: Plenum Press.

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Murphy, R. O., & Ackermann, K. A. (2014). Social value orientation: Theoretical and measurement issues in the study of social preferences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(1), 13–41. Opotow, S. (1996). Affirmative action, fairness, and the scope of justice. Journal of Social Issues, 52, 19–24. Rand, D. G., Newman, G. E., & Wurzbacher, O. M. (2015). Social context and the dynamics of cooperative choice. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 28, 159–166. Read, S. J., Vanman, E. J., & Miller, L. C. (1997). Connectionism, parallel constraint satisfaction processes, and gestalt principles: (Re)introducing cognitive dynamics to social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 26–53. Robbennolt, J., Darley, J., & MacCoun, R. J. (2010). Multiple c Constraint satisfaction and judging. In D. Klein & G. Mitchell (Eds.), The psychology of judicial decision making (pp. 27–40). New York: Oxford. Simon, D., Krawczyk, D. C., & Holyoak, K. J. (2004). Construction of preferences by constraint satisfaction. Psychological Science, 15, 331–336. Stevens, S. S. (1946). On the theory of scales of measurement. Science, 103(2684), 677–680. Thagard, P. (1989). Explanatory coherence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 435–467. Thibaut, J. W., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York: Wiley. Tracey, T. J. G. (2000). Analysis of circumplex models. In Howard E.A. Tinsley and Steven D. Brown (Eds.), Handbook of applied multivariate statistics and mathematical modeling (pp. 641–664). New York: Academic Press. Tyler, T. R., Boeckmann, R. J., Smith, H. J., & Huo, Y. J. (1997). Social justice in a diverse society. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press. van Lange, P. A. M. (1999). The pursuit of joint outcomes and equality in outcomes: An integrative model of social value orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 337–349. Walster, E., Walster, G., & Berscheid, E. (1978). Equity: Theory and research. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Wiggins, J. S. (1996). An informal history of the interpersonal circumplex tradition. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66, 217–233.

6

A Fairness Theory Update Robert Folger and Jigyashu Shukla

A Fairness Theory Update When people begin to talk about what they perceive as fair or unfair, the discussions often become quite lively. People care deeply about the topic. They have strong opinions about it. Beliefs and preferences regarding it can strongly motivate behavior. Fairness Theory (FT), the subject of this chapter, represents efforts to understand how such passions are ignited. The chapter begins with some details about the theory’s development from the viewpoint of the lead author. The remainder is a joint contribution.

Perceived Fairness: It Is All Relative My ideas about fairness began to develop in graduate school, but the foundation had already begun to be established when I first began studying psychology as an undergraduate. A course in experimental psychology introduced me to Harry Helson’s notion of adaptation levels. Helson’s study of phenomena involving vision revealed that perceptions of stimuli differed depending on the background within which the stimuli were displayed. He extended this research into other areas and found that some basic principles were broadly applicable. Essentially he was investigating how frames of reference affect a person’s perceptions and judgments. An object feels heavier after having lifting several lighter objects, for example, relative to its perceived weight after lifting heavier objects. To me this was at the core of psychology itself, namely the study of how objective reality translates into subjective experiences. Pursuing this theme was further stimulated when I decided to apply to graduate school in psychology and began intensive reading to prepare for taking the Advanced Psychology adjunct to the Graduate Record Exam. My readings included Thibaut and Kelley’s (1959) book, The Social Psychology of Groups. In it they introduced the concept of the comparison level (CL) as an implicit standard used to

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evaluate the satisfactoriness of outcomes in general and the quality of relationships in particular. As they put it, “the CL is … a psychologically meaningful mid-point for the scale of outcomes—a neutral point on a scale of satisfaction-dissatisfaction” (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959, p. 81). Citing that same description in their book, I later wrote “It is in this sense that CL is said (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959, p. 82) to be analogous to Helson’s (1948) concept of adaptation level” (Folger, 1998, p. 88). Naturally this intrigued me. As a beginning graduate research assistant at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, I was told to read the classic piece by Hal Kelley on attribution theory (Kelley, 1967). Coincidentally the next entry was by Tom Pettigrew on relative deprivation (Pettigrew, 1967). I found it fascinating and noticed how many ideas it was able to bring together under referent as an umbrella term. Years later I used that term in formulating referent cognitions theory, the forerunner of FT.

Referent Cognitions Theory Several twists and turns occurred between the time I read about Pettigrew’s use of referent terminology and my development of FT. A key turning point occurred in 1978, however, when I heard Danny Kahneman give a talk on “The Psychology of Possible Worlds.” The occasion was the annual Katz-Newcomb Award ceremony where the University of Michigan’s Center for Group Dynamics honored him and Amos Tversky (see Folger, 2005, for additional details). The material covered in that talk made an appearance in an abbreviated form several years later (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982) and received full treatment only after an even longer period as norm theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). The latter article helped to spark a large literature on the psychological antecedents and consequences of counterfactual simulations (see for reviews, e.g., Byrne, 2017; Roese, 1997). In my case, the impact of Kahneman’s ideas about counterfactuals was more narrowly specific. I had been puzzling over a conundrum noted by Crosby (1976) in an article about relative deprivation. She noted that although thinking about a state of affairs better than existing outcomes could sometimes be the cause of emotions such as resentment, at other times it might be accompanied by hopefulness about the prospects for future improvements. In driving back from Michigan (where Kahneman spoke) to Evanston, Illinois (where I was spending a sabbatical at Northwestern University), I had the distinct sense that the resolution of the puzzle could be found—somewhere!—in the material Kahneman had covered. It took a while for me to be able to capitalize on Kahneman’s insights. When my thinking crystalized, however, it led to an operationalization that illustrated the genesis of what would become referent

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cognitions theory, or RCT. The demonstrative, proof-of-concept research (Folger, Rosenfield, Rheaume, & Martin, 1983) involved having undergraduate subjects work on two tasks. They were told that their score on one of them would be used to determine whether they received a bonus. In other words, their scores on the other task would become irrelevant objectively but nonetheless (according to the RCT hypothesis) would remain relevant psychologically for comparison purposes. This psychological effect would be the function of comparison with an alternatively imaginable reference point, namely the outcome from scores that otherwise would have been used to make the bonusaward decision. All subjects received the same feedback about their performance on the first task, indicating a level of performance in terms of points scored. The same was true for the feedback on the second task. Then subjects were informed that only the scores from the first task would determine the bonus (consistent with prior instructions, such that subjects were not surprised about the procedure that involved bonus-task selection after the fact). All subjects learned that they had failed to earn the bonus. Half of them were told they would have received it if the other task had been the basis for determining the bonus, whereas the other half were told they would not have earned the bonus even if scores on the other task had counted. Dependent measures showed that the former subjects were more resentful. Other features of this research include the following. First, the results were replicated with two additional types of manipulations, namely referent outcomes based on bogus information about a previously available opportunity or a previously considered way of conducting the experiment. Second, both replications made it clear to subjects that there would be no other opportunity for them to earn the bonus. In contrast, the initial experiment had involved a fully crossed factorial design in which half of the subjects believed that an upcoming opportunity made it quite probable they would eventually obtain the bonus after all. The other half were led to believe it was quite improbable. Because only the latter conditions produced the effect I’ve described as maximizing resentment, the former was not included in the two replications. This was true of all subsequent tests of RCT as well. As RCT evolved, new antecedents of resentment were introduced. At the outset, the concept of a referent referred simply to an outcome that differed from the one obtained but that was still salient and relevant as a standard of comparison. The RCT key distinction was between highreferent outcomes, defined as more favorable than the actual outcome, and low-referent outcomes, defined as less favorable. When made aware of a high-referent outcome that would continue to be unobtainable, subjects in the initial (Folger et al., 1983) studies expressed resentment that was absent in the other experimental conditions.

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Reflecting on those initial findings, however, I wondered about the extent to which they might have been due to a procedural aspect of the studies. Specifically, the subjects in the high-referent conditions might have had reason to feel resentment toward an experimenter who had provided no explanation for why only one set of scores counted. This suggested to me a reason for making procedural justice another key variable in the RCT perspective. Three sets of findings confirmed the value of including procedural justice factors. In an initial experimental paradigm (Folger, Rosenfield, & Robinson, 1983), subjects again failed to receive a bonus, but they were made aware of either a high- or low-referent imaginable alternative. One difference from the previous studies, however, was that each subject believed she was competing with another subject. The manipulation of referent-outcome levels was based on having half the subjects believe that they would have won if the contest had been scored differently (high referent), whereas the remainder thought they would have lost in either case. The procedural manipulation was based on the description of scoring rules and the circumstances of a change to the originally announced scoring procedure. The operationalization of this crosscutting factor involved the purported use of separate experimenters, one for each of the alleged two competitors. The subject’s experimenter (in actuality, the only one) returned and announced a changed set of rules after supposedly checking with the other experimenter about the opponent’s scores. Half the time this was thoroughly explained to justify why the original scoring rules had to be abandoned. The experimenter gave a much less sufficient explanation to the remainder of the subjects and then simply noted that the rescoring had been the other experimenter’s decision. The results showed an outcome X process interaction such that (a) there was no difference in resentment as long as the procedural rescoring was well justified, whereas (b) high-referent subjects were significantly more resentful than low-referent subjects when the justification was minimal. Two types of follow-up studies showed similar effects. In the first, Folger and Martin (1986) altered the experimental paradigm such that information about the referent outcome came from details about an alleged opportunity for additional compensation by working on a task for another experimenter. Half of the subjects were further told that this opportunity was possible only for those who met some stiff eligibility requirements (6% chance), whereas instructions given to the other half said nothing about having to meet such requirements. Because all subjects subsequently learned that they would not be allowed to do the bonus task, the former (low expectations) case operationalized a low-referent outcome, whereas the latter (high expectations) operationalized a high-referent outcome.

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A justification manipulation constituted a crosscutting factor. Half the subjects (high justification) read a note from the original experimenter that cancellation of the bonus opportunity to work on the other experimenter’s task was due to an equipment failure. The remainder (low justification) read a note from the original experimenter simply stating that he had “decided not to let you do the other experiment after all.” The results confirmed the RCT prediction for reactions to be the most negative when low justification was given and subjects compared the lost opportunity to its high-referent imaginable alternative outcome. Using a different paradigm, Cropanzano and Folger (1989) focused on moving away from the justification of a procedure, which had been the method used in the two earlier studies, and instead having an aspect of the procedure itself be manipulated. The factorial design manipulated procedural justice (high/low) and referent outcome (high/low). In brief, this involved creating a situation in which half the subjects would get to choose which of two tasks would count toward earning a bonus but would not know in advance the criteria for success (viz., the respective difficulty levels of the tasks). In contrast with this high-choice (high procedural justice) condition, the no-choice (low procedural justice) condition was implemented by having subjects informed that the experimenter had made the assignment of tasks. High-referent subjects believed that the other (not chosen; or not assigned) task would have produced the bonus for them, whereas the low-referent subjects believed that they would have lost either way. As in the earlier studies, this produced the process X outcome interaction predicted by RCT.

From RCT to FT Although successfully confirmed in the line of investigations just described (see also Van Den Bos & Van Prooijen, 2001), RCT was somewhat limited in scope. It grew out of a simple question: Why are people sometimes upset in thinking about conditions better than their own, whereas at other times such conditions instead provide hope and encouragement? An answer came from the original RCT investigation of the opposite effects produced by high likelihood cognitions versus high referent-outcome cognitions. In the former case, the present is not so good but is getting better; in the latter, the present is not so good, and it would have been so much better otherwise. In addition, subsequent developments introduced procedural aspects, but the focus was primarily on emotional concomitants (viz., resentment and related reactions) rather than perceptions of fairness per se. Moreover, RCT was not an overarching framework. The comparison with FT is in part evident by describing the three central FT components and differentiating them from how two of them had emerged within RCT.

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When the RCT stream of research immediately dropped likelihood as a factor of interest (the issue seemed well settled because of the first set of findings), the subsequent inclusion of procedure-related features of an authority’s decision-making practices led to a description of the analysis as follows: RCT predicts resentment…toward someone responsible for one’s own unfavorable outcomes—someone whose wrongdoing was instrumental in bringing about such outcomes….they should have behaved otherwise….[However, to conclude] that adverse consequences have indeed resulted from a person’s actions, it must be possible to believe that the outcomes would have been more favorable if the person had acted otherwise. (Folger & Martin, 1986, p. 532) Moreover, it was argued that “typically the perceptions that an allocator should have acted otherwise…will engender accompanying perceptions that the recipient would have been better off (Folger & Martin, 1986, p. 544). An introduction to FT described it as emphasizing “a distinction between an event’s negative impact…and whether someone is held accountable for the event” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 181). Our discussion first focuses on how these short descriptions relate to certain differences between the two theories. Then we indicate additional differences noted by Folger and Cropanzano (1998), especially as related to the added concept of could counterfactuals. Two Basic Differences between RCT and FT The above RCT passage referred to outcomes, whereas the FT passage referred to events. The latter has a broader scope because an unjust event might be, for example, a procedural impropriety that does not lead to any untoward effects (i.e., the negative “impact” might be a negative impressions about the person who implemented the procedure). The RCT reference to outcomes, on the other hand, highlighted their significance as adverse consequences. Specifically, FT “reconceptualizes outcome, procedure, and interactional conduct in terms of the feature they share” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 182). That shared feature is the negative impression created by a given event because of its deficiency relative to counterfactuals (alternatively conceivable outcomes, processes, or aspects of interpersonal conduct). The RCT reference to unfavorable outcomes also implied that their averseness had to stem from comparison with something specific that would in fact have occurred, if only the outcome-determining person had behaved differently. FT suggests that events—whether as outcome,

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process, or conduct—can seem negative for other reasons. The FT analysis thus fits with Kahneman and Tversky’s (1982) ideas about the psychology of counterfactuals (cf. Kahneman & Miller, 1986): Anything can seem negative relative to something better (upward comparisons). In a slight departure from the standard approach to counterfactuals, however, FT claims that classifying events along an inferior/superior continuum does not require having specific alternatives come to mind. A person’s negative impressions about an event only require some source of discrepancy with “what the person assumes it would feel like to experience something else [better, in some sense] instead” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 182). The following summarizes what we have said thus far regarding two ways FT differs from RCT. First, the former “uses the term Event to include both the traditional focus on exchanged outcomes…as well as an emphasis on procedural and interactional considerations” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 184). Second, the RCT analysis “described circumstances maximizing resentment as those in which a preferred alternative would have occurred [emphasis added], if only someone had done what should have been done” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 185). The RCT notion “that thoughts about what Would have happened were inevitably linked [emphasis added] to thoughts about what should have been done” thus contrasts with the FT acknowledgment that “other contextual factors can instigate implicit or explicit alternatives to the Event in question” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 185). Adding a Could Element and Shifting Emphasis to Agent Accountability FT also adds a could counterfactual to the would and should described by Folger and Martin (1986). In part the added component reflects an ordinary sense of referring to the way someone should behave: It would seem illogical to say someone should have done something humanly impossible. Commonplace interpretations of should (as behavior appropriate under a given set of conditions), therefore, simply entail couldhave-done-otherwise as a necessary component. As a counterfactual, however, could has another implication for the psychology of fairness: Impossible-to-achieve conditions seldom become salient grounds for comparison with actual conditions, whereas something that easily could have occurred has a greater probability of being brought to mind as a basis for comparison. (Nonetheless, recall our earlier insistence that the inferior/superior continuum of reactions does not require comparisons with event-specific thoughts about what might have happened if someone had acted otherwise.) Importantly, the FT addition of a could counterfactual has a specific interpretation in the overall context of accountability that involves

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would and should as well. For example, suppose Gloria thinks it’s unfair for Fred to hold office because he worse credentials than anyone else who ran; in short Fred did not deserve to win. Gloria actually considers all of the other candidates equally well qualified. To imagine how much better she would feel (counterfactually), she does not have to imagine a win by any other candidate in particular. She also does not have to imagine anything in particular that could (counterfactually) have happened. Gloria can easily bring to mind a large number of events that could have led to Fred’s defeat, such as a variety of untried campaign strategies by his opponents. Nonetheless, asking her “Can you think of anything anyone could have done that would have prevented this unfair event?”does not make “Yes, I can!” in itself sufficient to hold someone accountable for unfairness. To begin with, a “yes” answer per se doesn’t stipulate whom to hold accountable or why. Perhaps Fred was a write-in candidate and managed to win because the other candidates mounted successful attack ads against everyone but him. If Gloria discovers that Fred cheated, however, then she has every reason to hold him accountable for his undeserved win. She thinks he would not have won, that he could have refrained from cheating, and that no candidate should be allowed to cheat. Now make one change to the scenario: Fred lost. Under that set of circumstances, a deserving candidate wins. The fair outcome does not eliminate the case for holding Fred accountable by FT standards, however, because cheating represents a violation of procedural fairness. Again, imagining a would-be-better world without cheating does not require that any particular counterfactual comes to mind (non-cheating is the generic counterfactual to cheating by definition). Put another way, cheating cannot co-exist with fairness. Presumably Fred had to know that his actions amounted to cheating. Certainly it seems reasonable to also assume he could have refrained from cheating. The would/could/ should criteria thus suffice for holding him accountable for procedural unfairness.

Research Related to FT There are several different ways in which various research efforts have been related to FT. First there is research directed toward tests of referent cognitions theory predictions. As the forerunner of FT, it is encompassed by the latter. Put another way, the Would and Should elements were already in place. Second there is other research that, although not designed explicitly to test referent cognitions theory, is nonetheless consistent with its predictions. That, too, has been reviewed elsewhere (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996), specifically with regard to the Would x Should (outcome x process, or distributive justice x procedural justice) interaction prediction.

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Third, investigators have referred to FT in conducting research designed to test it directly or indirectly. This section provides a selective review of that last variety. Gilliland et al. (2001) conducted two vignette-based experiments and one field experiment and found results generally consistent with FT predictions in the context of rejection letters to applicants. Specifically, they designed manipulations of the explanations provided in those letters, such that the generation of counterfactuals was or was not made more difficult. As a way of reducing the extent of Could counterfactuals, for example, explanations emphasized that conditions beyond the organization’s control forced a hiring freeze (which, interestingly, was indeed the case in the field experiment). Some of the data showed effects that were context-dependent. In particular, one of the findings seemed to indicate a decidedly more favorable reaction from rejected applicants when two types of counterfactual-reducing explanations were combined, relative to the use of a single explanation. McColl-Kennedy and Sparks (2003) conducted focus-group interviews with staff, faculty, and post-graduate students at two universities to gather data about reactions to service-recovery attempts. The authors used FT as a framework for understanding how such reactions might differ based on an organization’s approach to dealing with a service failure and the resulting counterfactual effects on consumers’ emotions. A service provider that makes little effort to recompense a customer might risk “they could have done more” counterfactuals, for example, thereby increasing possible anger and resentment. Thus, consistent with Gilliland et al. (2001), this study applied FT to analyze how a bad situation becomes worse in the eyes of the harmed parties when Would, Could, and Should counterfactuals contribute to blaming those deemed responsible for the harm. A meta-analytical review by Shaw, Wild, and Colquitt (2003) provided robust empirical evidence for FT. The authors utilized FT to hypothesize the relationships among justice perceptions, cooperation, retaliation, and withdrawal behaviors. They argued that justice perceptions are affected by explanation delivery and explanation adequacy after a harmful act by an authority. The findings established that justification begets a sense of the appropriateness of an otherwise harmful act as a necessary step for a larger goal. The adequacy of justification inhibits the “should counterfactual,” thus increasing the perceived fairness of the act. Moreover, in the cases where should counterfactuals are not the feasible counterfactuals, the excuse form of justification is more powerful because it inhibits the “could counterfactual” by showing a scarcity of feasible options. The excuse form of justification also impedes the “would counterfactual” among the stakeholders by showing that the moral standards were intact but the circumstances were difficult to do what is deemed fair by the stakeholders. The above research established that FT drives the strength of justifications, and practitioners can utilize the same while designing explanations and clarifications for controversial organizational policies.

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Naquin and Kurtzberg (2004) conducted two experimental studies to observe the mechanism behind technology identification as a causal factor in an organizational mishap. They found that FT explained the attributions of accountability by the stakeholders. In study 1, the stakeholders considered organizations less accountable when a mistake was established as being the outcome of a technology error. A higher accountability for an error was attributed when a human blunder was the root cause. Counterfactual thoughts were established as the mechanism between the type of error and accountability attributed by the stakeholders. Overall, technologically instigated errors were found to produce less counterfactual contemplations, whereas human error led to more counterfactual thinking. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 in more natural settings. Specifically, in Study 2, the authors analyzed the employees’ reactions after the failure of an email server in an organization. In the survey distributed to the employees, half of them were informed that server failure occurred due to human error while the other half were informed that a technological mishap caused the failure. In the case of human error, there were more counterfactual thoughts. Barclay, Skarlicki, and Pugh (2005) analyzed how FT might apply regarding the effects of procedural and interactional justice on attributions of blame by victims of a layoff, as well as their emotional reactions and subsequent behavioral tendencies. Measured emotions included anger and hostility (as “outward-focused” emotions, along with shame and guilt as “inward-focused”). The laid-off employees were also asked to write a description of their reactions and how they might have tried to get even for the layoff. Those responses were coded for behaviors that included major acts of retaliation (e.g., “I destroyed important company documents”; Barclay et al., 2005, p. 633). The results showed that the relationship between ratings of the layoff as an outcome and its interactional (in)justice combined to affect retaliation, whereas procedural justice did not. Consistent with the FT emphasis on blame attributions as central to accountability, the authors argued that interactional justice leads to the more clear-cut identifiability of the transgressor because interactional justice is an especially discretionary aspect of fair treatment (under the transgressor’s control; cf. Folger & Cropanzano, 1998). Price, Lavelle, Henley, Cocchiara, and Buchanan (2006) utilized FT to explain how the suppression of voice behavior affects the morale of the employees in an organization. The authors argued that the employees hold the higher authorities accountable for the denial of voice and this accountability is based on expectations, previous experiences and social comparisons. The mechanism of that accountability was the counterfactual thoughts. For example, the authority could and should have allowed employees to have voice. The more the gap between imagined (counterfactual) outcomes and the real outcomes, the stronger

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negative affect prevailed amongst the employees whose voice was suppressed. Moreover, the judgments of overall procedural fairness were stronger in the cases of team procedures allowing individual voice and organizational procedures allowing team voice. The interaction between the team and organizational procedures pertaining to voice significantly influenced the fairness perceptions. In another research study, Zapata-Phelan, Colquitt, Scott, and Livingston (2009) investigated the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation in the relationship between organizational justice and task performance. Based on the results of two studies (lab experiment and field study), the authors established the relationship between procedural justice and task performance partially mediated by intrinsic motivation. Procedural justice had a significant relationship with both self-reported and free-choice based measures of intrinsic motivation, whereas interactional justice did not show the above effects. In this study, the authors used FT to argue that negative affect, constituting blame and/or anger and/or resentment, takes place when individuals perceive that the authority should and could have acted differently and they would be in better condition if the authority made a different decision. This counterfactual thinking had an adverse impact on intrinsic motivation, which led to poor task performance in case of violation of procedural justice. Nicklin, Greenbaum, McNall, Folger, and Williams (2011) empirically tested FT and investigated whether counterfactual thinking was the underlying mechanism connecting the contextual factors and perception of fairness. In study 1, counterfactual thoughts predicted the fairness perceptions; the contextual variables (like knowledge and expertise) influenced both counterfactual thoughts and fairness perceptions, and counterfactual thinking partially mediated the relationship between contextual variables and fairness perceptions. Study 2 used a more robust operationalization of counterfactual thinking and demonstrated that counterfactual thought generation guided the perceptions of fairness. Study 3 manipulated the frequency and strength of counterfactual thoughts, and the results showed that the strength measures were more strong predictors of fairness perceptions. Bernerth, Walker, Walter, and Hirschfeld (2011) used the lens of FT to look at the nuances of organizational change. In the event of an organizational change, counterfactual thinking was significantly strong. Specifically, the authors theorized that the employees in the case of costcutting initiatives would ask pertinent questions. The majority of the questions by the employees would have a counterfactual theme of thoughts, such as the following: Why did other departments not need to lay-off any laborers (would theme)? For what reason could the other employees not lose their other benefits (could theme)? What the management should have done (should theme) better. This counterfactual

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thinking might lead to a sense of fairness/unfairness that determined the employees’ commitment to change and turnover intentions. In another research study to test FT, Nicklin (2013) investigated counterfactual thinking as a link between an individual’s level of expertise and his/her fairness perceptions. The study established that counterfactual thinking became more salient with the rise of skill and expertize of the individuals. The research study utilized a twofold randomized design in the two experiments; Study 1 demonstrated that agent expertise is identified with would and should of counterfactual thoughts and the construction of other-ascribed counterfactuals. Study 2 demonstrated that would and should counterfactuals are identified with fairness discernments. In an attempt to expand FT, Ganegoda and Folger (2015) integrated the counterfactual orientation of FT with predictions from prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). Apart from the counterfactual thinking authors accounted for the following in fairness decision making:- (a) a decision’s frame, and (b) the way in which a decision’s frame create a bias for that decision and influence counterfactual activation. The authors established that decision recipients perceived a decision as fairer, regardless of the outcome, when the decision choice and the frame in which the choice was communicated were consistent with the cognitive bias identified by prospect theory. The above findings were established from two randomized experiments simulating real business settings. In experiment 1, a resource allocation situation was simulated while in experiment 2, a layoff situation was simulated. In experiment 1, the frame of risk-taking for the employees was manipulated. The managers who chose a risky option were considered fairer by the affected parties (or neutral observers) compared to the manager who chose a riskless option, even though the outcomes and procedures of the two decisions were similar. The same framing was manipulated in experiment 2. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the pro-frame bias predicted counterfactual thinking and the counterfactual thoughts were the mediators between pro-frame bias and perception of fairness. In a more recent article, Windscheid, Bowes-Sperry, Mazei, and Morner (2017) tested FT in the context of the diversity initiatives by an organization. They found that identity conscious activities were seen less positively than identity blind activities in light of the fact that the utilization of demographic differences for hiring or promotion (as in identity conscious activities) abused both procedural and distributive justice principles. The authors explained the above finding with FT. They argued that when people saw a policy based decision adversely, they got engaged in counterfactual reasoning about whether another decision would have been better (the would counterfactual), could have been made by the authorities (the could counterfactual), and ought to have been made to consent to various moral or ethically proper norms

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(the should counterfactual). This counterfactual thinking, in turn, rendered the identity conscious initiatives (with the intention of social uplift of a particular group) as deemed unfair by others, more so by the out-group members.

FT, Justice, and the Construct of Deonance Even when the earliest description of FT appeared, passages such as the following appeared along with it: “Central concerns about justice focus on inferences regarding whether people have honored their relational (social) obligations….Justice is an aspect of morality involving social relations” (Folger & Cropanzano, p. 76). Deonance (a neologism introduced in that context, akin to duty as one translation of ancient Greek, deon) was relatedly described “as a term for the sense of injustice experienced when someone egregiously offends the social mores that dictate condemning harm intended without sufficient regard for interests other than one’s own” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 77). Like FT, conceptualizations about deonance have morphed over time. Here we sketch some of those developments, especially for the sake of distinguishing current usage from a related expression—“deontic justice”—found in earlier work (e.g., Cropanzano, Goldman, & Folger, 2003; Folger & Skarlicki, 2008). We will make that distinction by describing aspects of separation between deonance and justice (of any sort). Unfortunately, the first full-length treatment of deonance referred in its title to fairness as deonance (Folger, 2001)—in other words, as if they were somehow two aspects of the same thing, or related closely enough to be virtually interchangeable. Those ways of talking about the relationship between justice/fairness and deonance make the connection seem inextricable. If justice is an aspect of morality, deonance is a term for a type of experience responsible for the sense of injustice, and one interpretation of fairness is to treat it as if it were deonance, then the relevant distinctions would start to blur rather quickly. We want to sort that out. To do so, we will point to an ambiguity in FT and show how a conceptualization of deonance—beyond connections with fairness and justice per se—can deal with the underlying issues more directly. The nature of should counterfactuals contributes both to that conceptualization and to the FT ambiguity. The idea behind deonance is that people can be influenced by what Heider (1958) called an “ought force”—a motivational force based on people’s sense of morality. Holding people accountable for unfair treatment, in FT terms, involves a contrast between (a) a relevant moral standard of conduct that should have motivated them, and (b) actual conduct that seems to have lacked that motivation. This particular connection between deontic/ought-force

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motivation and perceived unfairness seems straightforward enough: The greater the extent to which preventable and morally impermissible conduct led to someone’s unwarranted misfortune, the greater the blameworthiness of that conduct and the unfairness of the results. The problem lies with the word results, as if implying that unfairness ultimately must involve the outcomes people receive. From an FT standpoint, ambiguity stems from trying to hedge on that issue by referring to an event or experience instead of an outcome. In other words, someone can perceive an event unfavorably if it falls short of counterfactual standards, whether those are distributive, procedural, or interpersonal. One description of FT put it this way: “Thus, the Event to which people might respond might not be a physical deprivation or a subjective representation of material loss; rather, such events might also be cases of another person’s rudeness and inconsiderate conduct” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 185). Does that mean rude conduct counts as an outcome? Any reference to rudeness is equivalent to saying another, more polite form of conduct would be received more favorably (seem more desirable, etc.). But if rude behavior seems bad relative to a non-rude counterfactual, doesn’t that conflate would and should? In fact, the following passage shows how the lines blur and things become confusing: “[P]ermissibility focuses on what people did or did not do in relation to what they should or should not have done (and what should or should not have happened)” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 189). Should have done and should have happened both refer to morally laden standards, but the former refers to conduct itself, whereas the latter seems as if it must imply that what happens is not the same as what is done. If behavior (conduct) and “happenings” are not the same, how are they different? Research by Van Den Bos and Van Prooijen (2001) provides a concrete example of this difference, which FT failed to take into account. Two studies examined the reactions from people who were denied an opportunity to express an opinion, in procedurally unfair “no-voice” conditions, compared to those treated with procedural fairness in “voice” conditions. The counterfactual possibilities were made especially salient in half of the situations by referring to a change that had moved the participant to a different group just before the decision of what procedure to use (vs. the procedures applied without any membership change). The results confirmed that even when no outcome information was involved, the mere absence of voice seemed especially unfair if it occurred immediately after a switch to the group in which the procedure was announced. The denial of procedural rights you never had is not as bad as those you’ve just found out have been denied to you, even if neither situation involves traditional distributive injustice about outcomes. Put another way, counterfactuals can alter fairness perceptions about procedures rather than just outcomes. By

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extension, it seems theoretically unnecessary to require counterfactual comparisons about outcomes that would have been received. Consider the following statement about FT for comparison: “Moral principles such as fairness norms permit individuals to connect their state of well-being with the conduct of others” (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998, p. 178). A “state of well-being” might conceivably apply to the mental state of thinking “My goodness, I’ve been denied voice” and being upset despite any outcome deficiency (well-being not materially affected). It makes just as much sense, however, to insist on a distinction between Person A’s conduct and Person B’s state, mental or otherwise. We will build on that distinction by elaborating on the concept of deonance. Recently perspectives on deonance have led to a broad conceptual framework, deonance theory (DT; e.g., Folger & Glerum, 2015; Folger & Stein, 2017; see also Folger, Ganegoda, Rice, Taylor, & Wo, 2013). DT addresses some shortcomings in FT regarding justice perceptions. The thinking that went into the creation of DT (Folger, 2001; Turillo, Folger, Lavelle, Umphress, & Gee, 2002; see also Folger, 1993, 1998) focused on third-party reactions as the phenomenon of interest. After all, if people only cared about fairness when it affected their own outcomes, why would judges or juries ever make much of an effort to decide carefully? FT, however, had not developed to make that point salient; and, to the extent that the relevance of a third-party perspective received some attention in Folger and Cropanzano’s (1998) book, the discussion remained in the context of (in)justice. DT also provides the basis for extending analyses beyond justice and into the broader realm of moral motivation more generally. The influence of certain types of moral standards of conduct creates a motivational context that differs from the way motives influence behavior in their absence. Sometimes people think of a given choice (e.g., vanilla versus chocolate ice cream) as having nothing to do with issues of morality—they feel free to do whatever they wish (cf. the concept of “free behaviors” as articulated in the theory of psychological reactance by Brehm, 1966). The question of whether people can rightfully feel free to choose among certain kinds of behavioral options, however, takes on new meaning when perceived moral standards enter the picture. Consider the question of legalizing marijuana. For the sake of argument and distinguishing DT from FT’s focus exclusively on justice, assume all those pondering the matter do not think issues of unfair treatment have any relevance in this case. Linguists and scholars who study variations in patterns of logical reasoning (e.g., philosophers and cognitive psychologists) use terminology that refers to the “deontic” concepts applicable when speaking of behaviors as permitted, forbidden, and required. These concepts can apply even when notions about

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fairness and justice do not. Below we use the example of marijuana’s possible legalization to illustrate the point. On the one hand, arguments for and against legalization of marijuana might be framed solely in terms of economic costs and benefits. Proponents might claim, for example, that legalization could coincide with a form of taxation capable of providing a steady stream of increased state revenue. Opponents, on the other hand, might argue such economic forecasts do not have enough reliability to serve as the basis for decisions about marijuana’s legalization. Pointing to cigarette smoking as a cause of cancer, they could even claim that medical evidence about the health risks of smoking marijuana implies an overall rise in healthcare costs, offsetting any increased revenues from a tax on marijuana. Different economic consultants might also reach different conclusions drawn from statistical analyses having nothing to do with fairness or ethical considerations. On the other hand, some people might see marijuana usage as a matter involving freedom of choice. Perhaps proponents of legalization might frame the matter as similar to constitutionally guaranteed liberties such as freedom of speech, assembly, or religion. Arguments about freedom of choice as a matter of personal liberty, however, automatically (by definition) introduce the deontic concept of permission (cf. McNamara, 2006). DT in turn treats permission as psychologically relevant to people’s perceptions of rights (their own and others’), which do not have to refer to legal issues (e.g., the right to shop for ice cream at Store A versus Store B). For example, someone might consider a certain form of behavior as one that ought to be permitted—or, alternatively, forbidden—on moral grounds (e.g., euthanasia, abortion). Some ways to think about rights also go hand in hand with notions of responsibility, duty, obligation, and the like. Rights do not need to be considered absolute and unlimited; instead, common expressions include the idea that “with rights go responsibilities” (e.g., freedom of speech does not include yelling “fire” in a crowded theater as a practical joke). In addition, one person’s rights might entail that other people have a duty not to interfere with his or her right to exercise that freedom. DT treats perceptions of rights and responsibilities not just as affecting possible legislation or forming opinions about social issues, but as sources of motivational influence on what people do and how they react to what other people do. The studies initially cited as interpretable from a deonance perspective (Turillo et al., 2002) focused on the motivation to punish someone blamed for a willfully harmful intention. Because the intention involved the effort to achieve unwarranted favorable outcomes at someone else’s expense, that context of presumed inequity prompted expressions such as “deontic justice” to describe instances involving third-party punishment (e.g., Cropanzano et al., 2003; Folger, 2005; Folger & Skarlicki, 2008).

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Certain features of those original studies made it seem useful to seek an explanation based on deonance as a new psychological construct— that is, as a psychological state that would motivate people to take the kinds of actions the results indicated. Specifically, those actions seem hard to explain in the typical fashion of most psychological theories. In a manner not unlike the standard account of behavior used by economists, many of these theories refer to motives interpretable as variations on the theme of self-interest. The Turillo et al. (2002) studies used a dependent variable involving monetary outcomes, such that one of the subjects’ two possible responses gave them more money than the other. In particular, this self-sacrificial choice—made on average about threequarters of the time and comparable to results obtained in similar studies (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1986)—allegedly allowed one other person to receive benefit as well, while simultaneously making it so that another person received no money at all. Depriving the latter, therefore, acted as a punishment. That action does not fit with a desire to maximize self-interest based on material welfare. More importantly, making that choice also had a variety of other features primarily pertaining to what it did not do. First, it could not contribute in any way to impression-management interests because subjects responded anonymously. Second, they believed that if either of the other two (bogus) subjects received no money, the person would never know that he or she had missed a chance to receive some money. The act of self-sacrificially punishing another person, therefore, could not satisfy motives for punishment such as a desire to “send a message” to the deprived person. In fact, this form of punishment could not have had any influence over what other people might do in the future, unlike forms of punishment designed to deter bad behavior. The desire to rectify injustice also could not act as a motive for the self-sacrificial punishment response, which made theories about justicerestoration inapplicable. The experimental design (see Turillo et al., 2002, Study 2) described the subjects’ choice as an allocation across three people. One was said to be another subject from an unrelated study, whereas the third person supposedly had taken part in a study that also involved monetary allocations. According to this (bogus) information, that subject had indicated a preference about how to divide an allotment between him/herself and another subject in the same study. All those in that prior (fictitious) study allegedly knew that limited resources made it impossible to pay everyone, so only a subset would receive a monetary award based on their allocation preferences. Turillo et al. told subjects that they would be making a choice between two options about how to allocate funds among themselves, the subject from an unrelated study, and one of the subjects who had indicated a preferred allocation in the prior study but had been in the

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subset randomly selected not to receive that allocation. The Turillo et al. instructions said such subjects had expressed preferences about which one of two options they would choose as the way to divide $20 anonymously between themselves and another subject in the same study. One option was to give themselves $10 and the other $10. The other option allowed them to keep $18 for themselves. The Turillo et al. subjects thought their self-sacrificial punishment response would prevent any money from going to a person who had chosen the $18/$2 option. Thus, they also believed that their responses would not “correct” a past injustice, because the random drawing supposedly conducted in the prior study kept that particular $18/$2 allocation from occurring. Since the publication of the Turillo et al. (2002) studies, various lines of research have shown similar results in which third parties use selfsacrificial punishment to sanction norm-transgressors (see Henrich et al., 2006, for a review and additional evidence regarding the phenomenon in 15 diverse populations around the world). Such studies show that, as one recent research report noted, “people punish violators of various norms, such as norms of cooperation, fairness, and honesty, even when it means incurring costs (Konishi, Oe, Shimizu, Tanaka, & Ohtsubo, 2017, p. 1; see this article for additional citations). One line of research, for example, investigated reactions to dishonesty when separated from the issue of fairness operationalized as equality (Ohtsubo, Masuda, Watanabe, & Masuchi, 2010, Experiments 2a & 2b). The subjects responded to an allocation decision allegedly made by two other participants. The instructions indicated that one of them (“trustee”) had sent a message about what s/he would do if the other (“trustor”) gave up the chance for a small amount and instead allowed the trustee to decide how to split a much larger amount (2000 Japanese Yen, JPN). One condition (dishonest trustee), showed a trustee message promising to take 700 JPN and give the trustor 1300 JPN. The other condition instead said the trustee promised a split of 1000 JPN each. The further information given to subjects, however, showed that the trustee actually ended up giving the trustor half of the money regardless of the message sent. More than half of the third-party subjects (versus only one such case out of 30 in the honesty condition) chose to reduce some of their own experimental endowment to punish the putatively “dishonest” player. Note that this result occurred even though the dishonesty involved not only a fair (equal) trustor/trustee division but also one made possible by giving the trustor more than had been promised. A related paradigm produced similar results (Konishi & Ohtsubo, 2015). We have described these punishment-of-dishonesty studies for two reasons. First, they provide evidence for costly punishment of norm violations outside the domain of justice (viz., when the violations

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involve the norm of honesty). Second, we also call attention to this evidence because it illustrates how such studies have continued the trend of focusing on transgressions and the punishment of malfeasance. Those two points set the stage for indicating how to distinguish DT from both the context of justice and that of third-party punishment. Studies by Folger, Stein, and Whiting (2017) obtained results illustrating the ought-force dynamics of motivational influences termed contributive and connotative. The former refers to motivation driven by perceptions about the contributions a behavior might make to future states of the world (e.g., benefits to a given group of people by donating to a certain charity). In other words, contributive motives influence choices among behavioral options based on what might happen by behaving one way rather than some other way. When deciding whether to punish bad behavior and by how much, for example, contributive motives would influence the decision-making process according to assumptions about what effects the punishment might have (e.g., time in jail as a threat to deter crime by others in the future, or to prevent the incarcerated from committing any crimes while in jail). Connotative motivational forces, on the other hand, fit into the more general category of influences on behavior because “it’s just the right thing to do” (e.g., punishment because it is deserved rather than for the sake of what it might accomplish). These sources of motivational influence can combine in multiple respects depending on ways of construing the possible differences between various behavioral options or among the various aspects a given behavior seems to possess. For that reason, DT borrows from Heider (1958) not only in referring to these as ought forces but also in his reference to Lewin’s (1951) force-field analysis (cf. Folger & Glerum, 2015; Folger & Stein, 2017). The Folger et al. (2017) studies illustrated the contributive/connotative distinction in a context removed from third-party punishment of transgressions—namely by having subjects role-play the position of a clothing manufacturer’s purchasing agent who had to make a supply-chain decision about the source of cotton as a raw material. The studies in this line of research (e.g., one also involving the decision by a fund manager) aimed at demonstrating how contributive and connotative factors interact when pitted against one another—that is, as a vector of forces. These studies also focused on positive motives rather than punitive responses, so the descriptions of the two options according to positive grounds for “certification” by an independent non-government organization. In all conditions, the certification applied to the company’s existing supplier, whereas no certification existed in the case of the alternative supplier. Between-subjects conditions also differed according to the change in expenses expected from switching to the new, uncertified supplier (e.g., “trivial” vs. “moderate” savings). This contributive factor of savings represented the purchasing

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agent’s “ought” responsibility to the company and its shareholders as a positive ideal of business practice (cf. Friedman, 1970). Motivational influence based exclusively on that contributive obligation would call for switching to the new supplier. The between-subjects manipulation of the connotative factor differed in the nature of the certification given to the existing supplier. Connotative motivations stem from the value-laden implications of the ideals expressed. Folger et al. (2017) pretested the endorsement strength of various values expressed as terms defined on activist websites promoting corporate social responsibility (e.g., a website referring to “sustainability” and describing what that meant). Contrasts between the values of “fairness” and “participativeness” produced the largest difference in those ratings. On that basis, half of the conditions referred to a fairness certification and half referred to a participativeness certification. Motivational sources of influence on behavior interact in a psychological force field, like the eddies created when the divergent currents of two rivers come together. DT thus predicts that connotative and contributive forces can interact. Indeed, the results showed a statistically significant interaction (replicated in the fund-manager context). Both connotative values—fairness and participativeness— attenuated the tendency to switch suppliers to the same degree when that change would produce only a trivial savings. In other words, at the lowest level of potential influence from the motivation to fulfil contributive obligations, subjects placed greater importance on their connotative (socially responsibility) obligations. When contributive motives increased in strength (moderate savings), the influence from connotative motives declined. The interaction of motives, however, produced results that differed according to the relative strength of distinct connotative values. Specifically, subjects in the moderatesavings condition switched to the non-certified supplier to a greater extent in the case of an existing supplier certified for participativeness (weak connotative force) relative to certification based on fairness (strong connotative force).

Conclusion Relating the Turillo et al. (2002) results to those from the Folger et al. (2017) studies, as just described, provides a way to tie together the material we have covered in this chapter. We began with RCT in the “it’s all relative” sense of psychological subjectivity about the objective characteristics of the world. In presenting the would/could/ should analysis of FT and summarizing some of the related research, we showed how the workings of counterfactual contrasts could influence the relative strength of perceptions of unfairness and thus

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the degree to which someone would be held accountable for taking unfair actions. The Turillo et al. (2002) results represent a transition point between FT and DT. On the one hand, the would-be $18-$2 allocator’s actions came across as especially egregious relative to the $10/$10 suggestion as an alternative. Holding that person accountable even though the sacrifice required accomplished nothing contributively (e.g., no deterrent effect), however, laid the groundwork for investigations into the relative strength of connotative forces—such as the Folger et al. (2017) studies.

References Barclay, L. J., Skarlicki, D. P., & Pugh, S. D. (2005). Exploring the role of emotions in injustice perceptions and retaliation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 629–643. Bernerth, J. B., Walker, H. J., Walter, F., & Hirschfeld, R. R. (2011). A study of workplace justice differences during times of change: It’s not all about me. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47, 336–359. Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Oxford, England: Academic Press. Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 189–208. Byrne, R. M. (2017). Counterfactual thinking: From logic to morality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26, 314–322. Cropanzano, R., & Folger, R. (1989). Referent cognitions and task decision autonomy: Beyond equity theory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 293–299. Cropanzano, R., Goldman, B., & Folger, R. (2003). Deontic justice: The role of moral principles in workplace fairness. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24, 1019–1024. Crosby, F. (1976). A model of egoistical relative deprivation. Psychological Review, 83, 85–113. Folger, R. (1993). Reactions to mistreatment at work. In K. Murnighan (Ed.), Social psychology in organizations: Advances in theory and research (pp. 161–183). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Folger, R. (1998). Fairness as a moral virtue. In M. Schminke (Ed.), Managerial ethics: Moral management of people and processes (pp. 12–34). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Folger, R. (2001). Fairness as deonance. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner, & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Research in social issues in management (pp. 3–31). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishers. Folger, R. (2005). The road to fairness and beyond. In K. G. Smith & M. A. Hitt (Eds.), Great minds in management: The process of theory development (pp. 55–83). New York: Oxford University Press. Folger, R., & Cropanzano, R. (1998). Organizational justice and human resource management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Folger, R., Ganegoda, D. B., Rice, D. B., Taylor, R., & Wo, D. X. (2013). Bounded autonomy and behavioral ethics: Deonance and reactance as competing motives. Human Relations, 66, 905–924. Folger, R., & Glerum, D. R. (2015). Justice and deonance: “You ought to be fair.”. In R. Cropanzano & M. Ambrose (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of justice in the workplace (pp. 331–350). New York: Oxford University Press. Folger, R., & Martin, C. (1986). Relative deprivation and referent cognitions: Distributive and procedural justice effects. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 531–546. Folger, R., Rosenfield, D., Rheaume, K., & Martin, C. (1983). Relative deprivation and referent cognitions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 172–184. Folger, R., Rosenfield, D. D., & Robinson, T. (1983). Relative deprivation and procedural justifications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 268–273. Folger, R., & Skarlicki, D. P. (2008). The evolutionary bases of deontic justice. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner, & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Research in social issues in management: Justice, morality, and social responsibility (pp. 29–62). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Folger, R., & Stein, C. (2017). Deonance: Expanding the concept. In C. Moliner, R. Cropanzano, & V. Martínez-Tur (Eds.), Organizational justice: International perspectives and conceptual advances (pp. 15–36). New York: Routledge. Folger, R., Stein, C., & Whiting, S. (2017, April). The ethics of business decision-making: Deontic defaults and override thresholds. Poster at the national meeting of the society of industrial and organizational society, Orlando, FL. Friedman, M. (1970, September). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. New York Times Magazine. Ganegoda, D. B., & Folger, R. (2015). Framing effects in justice perceptions: Prospect theory and counterfactuals. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 126, 27–36. Gilliland, S. W., Groth, M., Baker, R. C., IV, Dew, A. E., Polly, L. M., & Langdon, J. C. (2001). Improving applicants reactions to rejection letters: An application of fairness theory. Personnel Psychology, 54, 669–703. Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley. Helson, H. (1948). Adaptation-level as a basis for a quantitative theory of frames of reference. Psychological Review, 55, 297–313. Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., … Lesorogol, C. (2006). Costly punishment across human societies. Science, 312, 1767–1770. Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. (1986). Fairness as a constraint on profit seeking: Entitlements in the market. The American Economic Review, 76, 728–741. Kahneman, D., & Miller, D. T. (1986). Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychological Review, 93, 136–153. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). The simulation heuristic. In D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, & A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases (pp. 201–208). New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. Nebraska symposium on motivation. University of Nebraska Press. Konishi, N., Oe, T., Shimizu, H., Tanaka, K., & Ohtsubo, Y. (2017). Perceived shared condemnation intensifies punitive moral emotions. Scientific Reports, 7, 72–89. Konishi, N., & Ohtsubo, Y. (2015). Does dishonesty really invite third-party punishment? Results of a more stringent test. Biology Letters, 11, 20150172. Lewin, K. (1951). Force field analysis. New York: Harper & Row. McColl-Kennedy, J. R., & Sparks, B. A. (2003). Application of fairness theory to service failures and service recovery. Journal of Service Research, 5, 251–266. McNamara, P. (2006). Deontic logic. In D. M. Gabbay & J. Woods (Eds.), Handbook of the history of logic (pp. 197–288). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Naquin, C. E., & Kurtzberg, T. R. (2004). Human reactions to technological failure: How accidents rooted in technology vs. human error influence judgments of organizational accountability. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 93, 129–141. Nicklin, J. M. (2013). Expertise, counterfactual thinking, and fairness perceptions: A test of fairness theory. Social Justice Research, 26, 42–60. Nicklin, J. M., Greenbaum, R., McNall, L. A., Folger, R., & Williams, K. J. (2011). The importance of contextual variables when judging fairness: An examination of counterfactual thoughts and fairness theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,114, 127–141. Ohtsubo, Y., Masuda, F., Watanabe, E., & Masuchi, A. (2010). Dishonesty invites costly third-party punishment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31, 259–264. Pettigrew, T. F. (1967). Social evaluation theory: Convergences and applications. Nebraska symposium on motivation. University of Nebraska Press. Price, K. H., Lavelle, J. J., Henley, A. B., Cocchiara, F. K., & Buchanan, F. R. (2006). Judging the fairness of voice-based participation across multiple and interrelated stages of decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 99, 212–226. Roese, N. J. (1997). Counterfactual thinking. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 133–148. Shaw, J. C., Wild, E., & Colquitt, J. A. (2003). To justify or excuse?: A meta-analytic review of the effects of explanations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 444–458. Thibaut, J., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York: Wiley. Turillo, C. J., Folger, R., Lavelle, J. J., Umphress, E. E., & Gee, J. O. (2002). Is virtue its own reward? Self-sacrificial decisions for the sake of fairness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 89, 839–865. Van Den Bos, K., & Van Prooijen, J. W. (2001). Referent cognitions theory: The role of closeness of reference points in the psychology of voice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 616–626. Windscheid, L., Bowes-Sperry, L., Mazei, J., & Morner, M. (2017). The paradox of diversity initiatives: When organizational needs differ from employee preferences. Journal of Business Ethics, 145, 33–48.

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Zapata-Phelan, C. P., Colquitt, J. A., Scott, B. A., & Livingston, B. (2009). Procedural justice, interactional justice, and task performance: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108, 93–105.

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Procedural Justice and Policing Tom R. Tyler

Introduction The goal of procedural justice in policing is to promote long-term crime reduction through creating and maintaining widespread popular legitimacy among the people in policed communities. This popular police legitimacy has a set of desirable consequences. First, it lowers the rate of crime because those who view the law as legitimate are less likely to break it. Second, it transforms the relationship between the police and the public from coercive to consensual, with people more likely to willingly accept and defer to police authority. Third, it promotes voluntary cooperation facilitating police efforts to manage social order. And finally, it promotes community development by creating a climate of reassurance within which people more willingly engage with others, leading to economic, social and political vibrancy. This community climate helps neighborhoods and cities to develop out of the conditions promoting crime, rather than trying to arrest their way forward. This procedural justice based policing effort is based first on the evidence-informed finding that popular legitimacy motivates the previously mentioned behaviors. It is further developed by reference to studies making clear that there are mechanisms through which the police can create and maintain popular legitimacy. That research points to evaluations of the justice or injustice or the procedures through which the police exercise their authority (i.e. procedural justice) as the key antecedents of legitimacy. Hence, if the police build their policies and practices with sensitivity to their impact upon public evaluations of the procedural justice of police actions they can advance the goal of popular legitimacy. Such efforts can proceed in parallel with crime control, leading to both public safety and legitimate policing. There are several ways that this approach is distinct. First, it defines popular legitimacy as of equal importance to crime control when the goals of policing are defined. And, it argues that there are policing approaches that can achieve both objectives at the same time. Second, it is targeted at the long-term goal of crime reduction, rather than at short-term crime control.

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Through heightened acceptance of the law, criminal behavior is lower, cooperation is higher, and the basis is created for supporting community development. Community development both lessens the motivations for criminal activity and heightens the resiliency of communities to combat social disorder through feelings of collective efficacy and via stronger informal social networks. Procedural justice based policing policies have become central to discussions about twenty-first century American policing. As an example, Google Scholar cites over 30,000 references to my work on procedural justice in the last five years (Hagan & Hans, 2017), and I am only one of many people writing in this area. Considering the decidedly academic focus of early work in this area by Leventhal, Thibaut and Walker, this is a striking illustration of the potential of psychological theories and research to have a strong impact on society. And, although the focus of this chapter is on policing, a similar impact has occurred in the area of the courts, where court policies and practices have been powerfully shaped by the findings of procedural justice research on both civil and criminal courts. Anyone looking to illustrate the famous quote of Kurt Lewin that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory” can point to the way that these ideas have permeated the policies and practices of legal institutions.

Policing and Crime Control Crime in America today is at historically low levels. There have been steep and steady declines in both violent and nonviolent crime across the United States over the last several decades. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics the violent crime rate in 2015 is 23 percent what it was in 1993; while the property crime rate is 32 percent. Scholars have disagreed about whether or not these declines are the result of police actions, but whatever their cause the societal benefits of these low crime rates are obvious. As you would expect in an era of declining and relatively low crime, recent discussions about policing in America are not focused on crime rates. The public does not believe that crime is high or out of control. And irrespective of what scholars believe, the public generally believes that the police can and have controlled crime. This current era of low crime is important because it provides an opportunity to step back from a focus on crime control and to reexamine the role that we want the police to play in our democratic society. In particular, it provides an opportunity to address issues of popular legitimacy.

Popular Legitimacy What is popular legitimacy? Scholars use the term popular legitimacy to refer to public judgments about whether the police are entitled to exercise

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authority and the public is obligated to defer to and accept police decisions. As it is commonly measured by empirical researchers, legitimacy has three components. The first is perceived obligation. If people feel that the police are entitled to exercise authority, they conversely endorse the obligation to defer to them. The second is trust. Those who believe that the police are honest and motivated to act for the good of the community are more likely to defer to the police. The third is normative alignment. If people feel that they agree with the police about the basic values that guide police actions, they are more likely to accept police authority. These three elements are typically found to be intertwined and each distinctly leads to particular desirable law-related actions (Tyler & Jackson, 2014). Our suggestion is that policing in a democratic society needs to be attuned to the issues shaping public trust. A beginning point for discussing public trust is noting that declining crime rates have not led to increases in public trust in the police. In 1993, 52 percent of Americans indicated that they trust the police and in 2016 the percentage was 56 percent. So even though crime rates have declined significantly over the last 25 years, trust the police has not changed. Between 1993 and 2016 the percentage of Americans reported by Gallup polls to trust the police has ranged from 50 percent to 60 percent. There is also other evidence pointing to a substantial of distrust in the police. A recent Reuters poll found that 37 percent of all Americans believe that “police officers tend to unfairly target minorities,” while 31 percent believe that “police officers routinely lie to serve their own interests” (Schneider, 2015). The key question is whether we can identify a vision for policing that leads to both crime control and high levels of popular legitimacy. Since the police have generally defined their mission as crime control, it is striking that declining crime rates have not enhanced their popular legitimacy. Police leaders have widely assumed that the public primarily holds them to account for lowering the rate of crime and that as a result if they effectively control crime they will have public support. They have been consequently surprised that lower crime rates have not led to heightened public support. This lack of connection between crime rates and police legitimacy raises questions about how the public evaluates the police, an issue which will be addressed in this chapter. From an instrumental perspective perceived effectiveness in lowering crime ought to lead to public trust and support, but evidence suggests that the connection is weak. Neither estimates of the rate of crime nor evaluations of police effectiveness in controlling crime are the primary factors shaping public trust.

Does the Public Trust the Police? There is today considerable controversy about the police in the United States but it is about a different set of issues than crime rates. The degree of public controversy has been at such a high level that there was

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a recent national President’s Taskforce on 21st Century Policing. As would be expected when crime is not a salient public concern these recent controversies are not focused on whether or not the police can control crime. There are, of course, some exceptions, for example, the ongoing public concern about high-visibility gun-related deaths in Chicago and Baltimore. However, as a general matter the issue that has dominated recent discussions about policing is not crime but public trust in the police. The more salient issues about policing in America today are centered around the widespread consequences of a high level of public distrust. For example, in the aftermath of police shootings the police typically promise a fair investigation and urge public caution. Those assurances have been greeted with skepticism in several recent incidents. On a national level these issues have led Federal authorities and national police leaders to identify distrust as a central concern in policing, as evidenced by the testimony before and the conclusions reached by the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Issues about the police have historically been and are today intertwined with issues of race relations. African-Americans were found to be 25 percent to 30 percent less trusting of the police than are Whites (Tyler, Goff, & MacCoun, 2015). This gap has existed for decades and continues to exist today. It is therefore not surprising that the type of mistrust noted above is particularly strongly felt in the minority community. The PEW Research Center, for example, found that in 2014, 36 percent of whites had confidence in the police not to use excessive force and only 18 percent of African-Americans (PEW, 11/26/2014). In response to the Ferguson Missouri shooting of Michael Brown 52 percent of Whites trusted the police to investigate the shooting and only 18 percent of African-Americans (PEW, 8/18/2014). Irrespective of what is central to public concerns, it is important to consider what is most desirable in American policing. There are clearly differing views about this issue, with some leaders arguing that the police should restrict their focus to developing and implementing strategies for effectively managing crime; an issue about which they are particularly knowledgeable. Others suggest that it is important to engage more directly with public concerns to address the sources of distrust. A broader effort would lead to the need for the police to address issues beyond those related to how to manage crime. A key challenge to the police in trying to broaden their mission has been the lack of theories within criminology and criminal justice about how to create and build popular legitimacy. To gain policy traction there needs to be not only a problem, but also a solution. People are not typically persuaded to work for change by critiques of the status quo in the absence of evidence of viable alternative strategies. It is here that the psychology of procedural justice plays an important role. By importing the ideas of

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procedural justice from psychology, a model of the dynamics underlying legitimacy becomes available. And, this model has strong empirical support. Finally, it points to specific actions that can be taken by the police and other legal authorities to build popular legitimacy.

Procedural Justice and Policing How is procedurally just policing related to these issues? Procedural justice is a model for how to police. Its desirability flows from research suggesting that popular legitimacy is a key concern that ought to influence how the police behave so the police need to understand how their actions shape public views. Research then makes procedural justice important by demonstrating that public trust is rooted in procedural justice (Tyler et al., 2015). This finding is first important because it helps to explain why crime control does not lead to trust. Trust is not established by lowering the crime rate or by being seen to be effective in managing crime. Trust develops from a different set of evaluations and those are related to the procedural fairness through which the police exercise their authority. Procedural justice refers to four aspects of the exercise of police authority. First, people want a voice. People want the police to allow people to express their views or tell their side of the story before determining policies or making decisions. Second, people care about neutrality. People want the police to act in a transparent and impartial manner by making decisions based upon facts, not prejudices. Neutrality is also related to whether the police explain what their policies are and how they are being applied. Third, people want interpersonal respect. The public wants the police to treat people with courtesy and respect. This includes respect for people’s rights as citizens and for their dignity as people. People care about whether the police treat them in ways that communicate that they are viewed as good citizens and not suspects, deviants or marginal members of their community. Fourth, people want authorities with trustworthy motives. It is important to people to feel that the police are motivated to do what is good for the people in their community. They want to believe that the police are sincere and benevolent, focused on the needs and concerns of the public, and willing to acknowledge and address people’s concerns. These four elements: voice, neutrality, respect, and trustworthy motives are central to public judgments about how fairly the police are exercising their authority in the communities they police.

Why Procedural Justice? Why is being treated fairly or unfairly by the police important to community residents? As community authorities the police, like any representatives of the society, give people messages about inclusion and status in the community. When the police humiliate and demean people

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they tell them that they are marginal members of the community. Most people in any community are not actively involved in criminal activity and feel devalued if they are treated as suspects, deviants, and potential criminals. Even those who are involved in crime want to experience decent and respectful treatment from the authorities who represent the community and respect for their humanity even if their actions are condemned and they are punished. An important aspect of any contact with an authority is that their actions communicate identity relevant information and that information has an impact upon people feelings of self-worth and self-esteem, as well as opposite feelings of everyday anxiety and even symptoms of PTSD (Geller, Fagan, Tyler & Link, 2014; Tyler, 2017a; Tyler, Fagan, & Geller, 2014). This identity-based element of authority reflects the role of relational issues in the connection between people and legal authorities (Tyler & Lind, 1992).

Why Does Legitimacy Matter? Why would popular legitimacy matter to the police? Beyond the currently high salience of incidents of police misconduct and the problems they cause for communities the argument for the value of a focus on popular legitimacy exists on several levels. The first is that because popular legitimacy shapes law related behavior building legitimacy is a desirable crime fighting strategy. And, as such a strategy it has the advantage of building willing acceptance of the law and consent to legal authority, which reduces the need to create and maintain a viable surveillance presence on the part of the police. Policing based upon surveillance and possible apprehension to create risk perception and compliance is not based upon willing acceptance and depends upon the continued presence of the police. Policing based upon legitimacy supports rule following and deference to police authority via consent. A focus only on compliance with the law as the goal of policing obscures the potential for a more consensual model of legal regulation, a model that depends upon the ability of trust and confidence to generate public cooperation with the police to comanage social order and to further motivate public engagement in and identification with communities, which motives community development. The first point is that a recurrent complaint among the police toward the community is the lack of public cooperation in fighting crime. This includes reporting criminals and crimes; identifying criminals as a witness; and testifying in court when needed. It also includes being a juror and working with the police in community meetings and with groups such as neighborhood watch to support police efforts to maintain social order. All of these forms of citizen behavior are enhanced by trust in the police (Tyler & Fagan, 2008; Tyler & Jackson, 2014). The

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first important point that develops from these findings is that the efforts of the police to manage crime in the community are aided by having the public’s trust. Beyond fighting crime the long-term pay off of popular legitimacy is realized in the connection between policing and the economic, social, and political development of communities. Trust in the police promotes a climate of reassurance that motivates identification with one’s community and engagement in that community (Tyler & Jackson, 2014). Police leaders frequently note that you cannot arrest your way out of crime. The finding that trust in the police promotes the goal of community development is an additional advantage. It is important to compare the goal of building procedurally just policing to other contemporary reactions to policing. One is diversion. It is argued that wherever possible people with problems should be diverted away from dealing with the police. This includes during initial contacts and, when contact occurs, as quickly as possible. People should be rapidly moved to treatment centers or other community managed facilities. A parallel movement is the abolition movement, which argues for removing the police from poor communities or at least diminishing their authority and role in those communities.

What Shapes Legitimacy? The Centrality of Procedural Justice Legitimacy based models of policing are desirable forms of institutional design but their viability depends upon being able to create and maintain a reservoir of legitimacy within the population. For many years the legal authorities, including head judges and police commanders, have approached this task from an instrumental perspective, believing that by providing services or solving problems they built legitimacy. This includes courts being inexpensive and resolving cases swiftly, while the police have focused upon speed of response to calls and efforts to manage community problems like crime. At this time the procedural justice model is the most theoretically developed and empirically supported model for achieving the goal of legitimacy based policing. Hence, it is the most promising framework within which to conceptualize changes in the goals of policing and move from a “police force” model to a “police service” model in American policing. What empirical evidence supports the procedural justice model? Hagan and Hans (2017) note that there is today a large literature on procedural justice, ranging across a variety of authorities and institutions. It has played an important role in policy reform discussions beginning with the 2004 National Academy of Sciences report on

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policing (Skogan & Frydl, 2004) and culminating in the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (Meares, 2014).

The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice Support for the initial procedural justice model is found in the literature in social psychology (Leventhal, 1980; Thibaut & Walker, 1975). The first research efforts in this area are those of John Thibaut and Laurens Walker. Their research program is summarized in their book Procedural Justice (1975) and their research is reviewed in The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice (Lind & Tyler, 1988). The first important point about these studies is that they are well designed randomized control trials (RCTs). They are built around variations in courtroom procedures and they demonstrate that different procedures are rated differently in terms of their perceived procedural justice. Procedural variations are also shown to shape a variety of types of evaluations of judicial procedures and/or authorities. These procedural justice findings are replicated in a series of experimental studies conducted within this research group (Houlden, LaTour, Walker, & Thibaut, 1978; LaTour, 1978; Lind, Erickson, Friedland, & Dickenberger, 1978; Lind, Thibaut, & Walker, 1973; Thibaut & Walker, 1975; Thibaut, Walker, LaTour, & Houlden, 1974; Thibaut, Walker, & Lind, 1972; Walker, LaTour, Lind, & Thibaut, 1974). The studies have high internal validity, but were conducted in laboratory contexts so they involve college students (Damaska, 1975; Hayden & Anderson, 1979). They also often lack measurement of legitimacy as an outcome a person’s experience and in the context of this chapter they lack focus on the police. On the other hand, their experimental nature means that they have high internal validity in connecting objective variations in what authorities and institutions do to whether people feel fairly treated. The psychological literature on procedural justice has been reviewed by Miller (2001) and MacCoun (2005). Miller discusses two behavioral consequences of procedural injustice. The first is a lower willingness to comply with authorities. The second is a diminished motivation to pursue group goals and concerns. In addition Miller notes the absence of any downside consequences of fair procedures. He further notes that research valuably expands the universe of goals beyond compliance, something central to law, to include enhancing the viability of organizations. When the MacCoun (2005) review was conducted the psychological literature had over seven hundred articles on the topic of procedural justice. His review of this literature suggests that across the wide range of types of authority considered, procedural justice is consistently found to shape compliance and cooperation with authorities. In particular, these effects are found with both experimental and correlational research

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designs. The author notes that “the sheer heterogeneity of tasks, domains, populations, designs, and analytic methods provides remarkable convergence and triangulation” (MacCoun, 2005, p. 173) in support of the core propositions of procedural justice. This is particularly important in the light of subsequent methodological critiques of this literature (Nagin & Telep, 2017).

Procedural Justice in Management The central arguments of procedural justice models have subsequently been tested in management settings and a distinct literature on procedural justice has developed within organizational psychology/organizational behavior. An early example is a study by Earley and Lind (1987) in which workers were randomly assigned to work under different procedures varying in their perceived fairness. These differences were found to influence perceived justice and employee performance on the job. The literature on procedural justice in work settings has expanded broadly to include variations in many aspects of work organizations and their impact upon a number of dependent variables, including but not limited to adherence to rules and work requirements. A particular advantage of studies in work settings is that they also look at employee engagement and extra-role (e.g. nonrequired) behavior. Cohen-Charash and Spector (2001) reviewed 190 studies (148 field studies and 42 laboratory studies) and found that variations in workplace characteristics reliably shaped perceived fairness. They found this in both field studies (p. 293; r = 0.52) and laboratory studies (p. 293; r = 0.38). The studies provide direction for efforts to create policing procedures that build trust by showing that providing voice in procedures for work assignment, pay appraisal, grievance management and other similar issues is especially central to perceived fairness. They further show that procedural justice is reliably related to a number of evaluations, including satisfaction with one’s job; pay; supervisor; management; and performance appraisal procedures (their Table 7, p. 299). Procedural justice is further related to employee commitment to the job; normative commitment; trust in the organization; trust in one’s supervisor and turnover intentions (their Table 7, p. 300). Their review further suggests that variations in the workplace characteristics associated with differences in perceived fairness are found to have an uneven relationship to required workplace behaviors. Studies show a connection to workplace performance for field studies (p. 296; r = 0.45), but not for lab studies (r = 0.11, not significant). The studies consistently find a relationship to voluntary extra-role behavior (organization citizenship behavior) (p. 297; r = 0.23) and to undermining work behaviors (r = –.28; i.e. more fairness leads to less shirking, sabotage, etc.).

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Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, and Ng (2001) review the justice literature and Colquitt, Scott, Rodell, Long, Zapata, and Conlon (2013) re-review the original and the new literature and identify 493 distinct studies. In the larger re-review they find significant overall influences of procedural justice on trust in authorities (p. 210); organizational citizenship behavior (p, 207); task performance (p. 208) and (negatively) on counterproductive work behavior, i.e. rule breaking and destructive actions (p. 209). The review finds equally strong relationships for studies that focus upon particular personal experiences and those that make overall evaluations of the procedural justice of the workplace. This includes their own workplace and the overall organization (Tyler & Blader, 2000). It is particularly striking that both the justice of the particular workplace and the overall justice of the organization are important and distinct contributors to overall evaluations. For example, workers in a large multi-sight organization are influenced by the fairness of the actions of a remote central leader, as well as to the justice of the actions of their immediate superior. Perhaps most importantly, in terms of the model outlined, Colquitt et al. (2013), conducted a mediational analysis and found that the relationship between the organizational justice of the work organization and relevant employee behaviors was significantly, but not completely mediated by “social exchange quality” (see their Figure 1, p. 217). Social exchange quality was measured as a combined index that includes trust, mutual respect, perceived management support, and commitment. It is in many ways similar to the idea of legitimacy in a management context. This type of mediating role is also identified in more recent studies of management settings (Ma, Liu, & Liu, 2014). In the case of compliance with rules there are several studies illustrating workplace factors that have an influence on compliance, something which is treated in this literature as an aspect of task performance in this research. Greenberg (1994) manipulates the fairness of the enactment of smoking ban in a work setting and finds resulting compliance variations. Greenberg (1990) varies the fairness of pay changes and finds a later impact on employee theft. Lind, Kulik, Ambrose, and de Vera Park (1993) conduct a field study involving interviews with disputants and find that perceived fairness shapes the subsequent acceptance of arbitration awards. Dunford and Devine (1998) and Lind, Greenberg, Scott, and Welchans (2000) interview employees and find that variations in the perceived fairness of termination procedures predict whether people later file lawsuits. In a multinational setting Kim and Mauborgne (1993) conduct a survey based study and find that rule following is linked to perceived management fairness. More recently research has continued to find support for the importance of procedural justice in management (Organ, 2018), and has established links between particular actions by authorities and the attitudes and

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behaviors of employees (Karam et al., 2019). This is particularly important because it suggests that managers can be given clear guidelines concerning the type of actions which are connected with trust.

Procedural Justice in the General Criminal Justice System Another prior literature deals with criminal justice, but not with the police. Several studies deal with the courts, linking trust and confidence in courts to procedural justice (Abuwala & Farole, 2008; Farole, 2007; Kitzmann & Emery, 1993; Tyler, 2001; Wemmers, 1996, 2013). This effect is also found for willingness to accept court decisions (Baker, 2016; MacCoun, Lind, Hensler, Bryant, & Ebener, 1988; Tyler & Huo, 2002). Other studies deal with the government authorities more broadly (Murphy, 2004b; Murphy, Bradford, & Jackson, 2015; Poythress, 1994; Tyler, 2011; Vainio, 2011; Wenzel, 2002). In the case of recidivism following a court procedure Gottfredson, Kearley, Najaka, and Rocha (2007) study the influence of drug courts compared to traditional courts on later recidivism and find an impact that is mediated by procedural justice. Similarly, the Red Hook community court, which has features associated with procedural justice lowers recidivism (Lee et al., 2014) and Wales, Hiday, and Ray (2010) indicate similar recidivism effects in a mental health court. A study by Canada and Hiday (2014) indicates that procedural justice influences whether people terminate program participation.

Summary: Procedural Justice Outside Policing In summary, the theoretical model underlying the procedural justice approach has been widely supported in studies varying in their context and their methodology. What is striking is the convergence of the findings of these widely varied studies. Many studies, including experimental variations in procedures suggest that it is possible to reliably create policies and practices that influences perceived procedural justice. Studies also suggest that such variations shape not only perceived procedural justice but also compliance, cooperation and a variety of other types of organizationally relevant behaviors. This echoes the MacCoun (2005) suggestion that variations in method or the type of authority do not change the basic conclusions reached. Of particular importance is the finding that those studies which do conduct mediational analyses indicate that the impact of procedural justice upon behavior is mediated by social orientations toward the relevant authority or organization. It is important to acknowledge that procedural justice effects are sometimes direct and do not flow through broader attitudes or values about an organization. In particular, being treated fairly or unfairly by a particular authority often directly shapes

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behavioral reactions toward that authority irrespective of whether or not it influences broader views about the organization of which they are members. For example, a study of Muslims living in the UK found that the procedural justice of police actions directly shaped the willingness to cooperate, but that the influence was not mediated by changes in legitimacy (Huq, Tyler, & Schulhofer, 2011).

Procedural Justice in Policing In the case of the police a number of studies suggest that perceptions of the procedural justice of police actions are a key evaluation that shapes the popular legitimacy of both particular police officers and the police as an overall organization (Abuwala & Farole, 2008; Elliott, Thomas, & Ogloff, 2011; Farole, 2007; Hasisi & Weisburd, 2011; Hinds, 2007; Hinds & Murphy, 2007; Jonathan-Zamir & Weisburd, 2013; Kitzmann & Emery, 1993; Mazerolle, Bennett, Antrobus, & Tyler, 2012b; Myhill & Bradford, 2012; Tor, Gazal-Ayal, & Garcia, 2010; Tyler, 2006a, 2006b; Tyler, 1989; Tyler & Fagan, 2008; Wemmers, 1996). Donner, Maskaly, Fridell, and Jennings (2015) review 28 studies of the police and conclude that procedural justice activities during police interactions with the public positively influence public views of police legitimacy and trust in the police. Two recent meta-analyses examine the procedural justice literature on the police and evaluate the impact of procedural justice on compliance (Walters & Bolger, 2018) and cooperation (Bolger & Walters, 2019). The studies found 196 effect sizes from 95 samples for compliance. These were correlational studies, some of which were longitudinal. The results suggest that procedural justice influences legitimacy and legitimacy influences compliance, but the direct link between procedural justice and compliance is weak. In the case of cooperation the studies reviewed 200 effect sizes from 88 samples. The results indicate that procedural justice influences legitimacy and cooperation. Legitimacy also directly influences cooperation. The conclusions of these reviews are supported both by studies that use subjective measures assessing the willingness to cooperate (see Mazerolle et al., 2012a; Wolfe, Nix, Kaminski, & Rojek, 2016) and objective measures of citizen cooperation (Dai, Frank, & Sun, 2011; Mastrofski, Snipes, & Supina, 1996; Mazerolle et al., 2013b). There is also an emerging body of experimental studies of the impact of procedurally just treatment on citizen attitudes toward the police. These studies do not provide a clear conclusion regarding whether manipulations in the procedural justice of treatment by the police can improve perceptions of police legitimacy and cooperation. Mazerolle and colleagues (2013a) examine police stops in Australia and find that a single experience of heightened procedural justice generalizes to shape trust in the police in the community.

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The Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET) was a randomized controlled trial that provides for an experimental treatment in the form of scripted traffic checks for drunk driving. Officers were trained to follow a protocol designed to maximize the procedural justice of the brief interactions occasioned by the random breath testing (RBT). Scripts were formulated to incorporate the components of procedural justice into officers’ administration of the RBT. During 30 of 60 RBT operations, officers were directed to use the experimental script, and senior officers monitored their compliance with the protocol. These police–citizen encounters were quite brief: ordinarily (i.e., the control condition), they were “very systematic and often devoid of anything but compulsory communication” (Mazerolle et al., 2013a, p. 40). This is about 20 seconds in duration. The scripted procedurally just encounters were longer, at 97 seconds on average, but still quite brief. Each driver who was stopped during these 60 RBT operations was given a survey to be completed later and returned to the researchers. The procedural justice treatment had the hypothesized effects on citizens’ judgments. However, response rates, for both experimental and control drivers, were about 13 percent, raising concerns about the validity of the findings. The QCET’s design, but not its results, have been replicated (MacQueen & Bradford, 2015; Sahin, Braga, Apel, & Brunson, 2017). MacQueen and Bradford (2015) used a block-randomized design with pre- and post-test measures. The treatment was a police-stop procedure that involved key messages built around procedural justice and a leaflet to motorists that emphasized similar themes. The study found no significant improvements in general trust in the police or perceived police legitimacy. Similarly, a recent experiment using traffic stops in Turkey (Sahin, Braga, Apel, & Brunson, 2017) found that behavior during stops shaped views about the particular police officers involved, but did not generalize to overall perceptions about the traffic police. And Lowrey and colleagues (2016), who studied street stops by having observers view video clips of traffic stops, found an impact upon specific evaluations of the stop, including obligation to obey and trust and confidence in the officers, but not on generalizations to broader attitudes about the police. The particular forms of police contact used in the studies noted above are highly scripted and therefore do not vary in the ways that other forms of police contact do. Worden and McLean (2014, p. 34) comment: Traffic checkpoints that involve very brief encounters between police and citizens are susceptible to such prescriptions, but police-citizen encounters in most domains of police work – and especially in those with the strong potential for contentious interactions – do not lend themselves to such experimental or administrative manipulation. (Worden & McLean, 2014, p. 34)

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Studies of the police emphasize that the police normally deal with a wide variety of situations and have very different styles of addressing each one (Muir, 1977). Epp, Maynard-Moody, and Haider-Markel (2014) argue that it is investigatory street stops, not traffic stops that are central to creating feelings of injustice, since street stops are routinized and linked to understandable violations of known laws. Hence, such street stops are much less likely to create variations in perceived unfairness in treatment and hence and less likely to differentially impact upon perceived legitimacy. In other words, it is important not to overstate the importance of either the positive impact of the Mazerolle findings or of their subsequent disconfirmation in other studies. In the case of assessing the impact of police contact on later willingness to cooperate with the police, Mazerolle and colleagues (2013b) create a combined measure of self-reported behavior summarizing ongoing compliance and future willingness to cooperate. They evaluate five experimental studies that provide eight outcome measures. In three of eight cases there is a significant influence of police intervention upon compliance/cooperation. Mazerolle and colleagues (2013, p. 261) conclude that the results suggest that the “interventions had [a] large, significant, positive association with a combined measure of compliance and cooperation.” Mazerolle et al. (2014) contains an extended meta-analysis on procedural justice effects. In reviewing community policing efforts that contain procedural justice elements, the authors find four studies exploring influence upon compliance/cooperation and report three significant relationships in the expected direction (p. 28). With restorative justice conferencing, they find four studies examining influence on compliance/ cooperation and four significant relationships (p. 29). The authors conclude that procedural justice has positive effects upon perceived legitimacy, and that these jointly shape self-reported compliance/cooperation. Recent studies also suggest that perceived procedural justice may impact identification with the community, social capital, and engagement in the community (Kochel, 2012; Tyler & Jackson, 2014). Kochel (2012) studies the police in Trinidad and Tobago through interviews with 2,969 people in 13 police districts and finds that the nature of police–citizen interactions had an impact on collective efficacy. Collective efficacy is particularly strongly linked to judgments about the quality of police services, a combined measure which includes satisfaction with services, and judgments about whether the police are competent, respectful, and capable of maintaining order and willing to help citizens with their problems. Tyler and Jackson (2014) conduct a national survey and find that procedural justice and legitimacy policing is associated with identification with the community, collective efficacy and behaviors such

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as likelihood of shopping in the community and participating in local politics. This suggests that the perceived fairness of policing can have an impact beyond the arena of crime and criminal justice – it can also more broadly affect communities and their well-being. The central conclusion of the procedural justice literature is that when people deal with authorities their evaluations of the perceived fairness of the procedures through which authority is exercised influence legitimacy more strongly than does the perceived outcome of the encounter (Tyler, 2006a; Tyler et al., 2014; Tyler & Jackson, 2014). Similarly, when people are making overall assessments of the legitimacy of a criminal justice institution in their community, they focus upon how members of that institution generally deal with the public (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 2006a; Tyler et al., 2014; Tyler & Jackson, 2014).

Objective Coding of Police Behavior It is important to note that, in addition to subjective perceptions of police treatment along the four dimensions that matter to perceived legitimacy, researchers have also observed and coded officer conduct to determine how officer actions relate to subjective perceptions. That is, rather than relying upon the research subject’s personal perceptions and judgments about how the police treated him/her, researchers construct a protocol for observing and classifying officer behavior that satisfies the definition of procedural justice. This requires sufficiently clear and detailed instructions to create reliable measures of officer conduct that trained third party observers can replicate reliably from situation to situation and across observers (Worden & McLean, 2018). Interestingly, the relatively few studies that have explored objective measures of the components of perceived procedural justice have found that, unlike subjective measures, the elements of procedural justice are only modestly related, suggesting that they are best conceived as a formative index (Jonathan-Zamir & Weisburd, 2013; Worden & McLean, 2014). Further, the only study (Worden & McLean, 2014, 2018) to have compared objective and subjective measures of officer conduct along these dimensions found that the objective and subjective measures are themselves related but the magnitude of that connection varies across dimensions (see discussion below).

The Nagin-Telep Critique While there are a number of studies that support the argument that procedural justice influences legitimacy and that legitimacy shapes law related behavior a recent critique of this literature (Nagin & Telep, 2017) highlights several important points. First, most of the research on policing to date is nonexperimental. While a number of studies provide

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experimental support for the ideas concerning procedural justice and legitimacy which have been outlined, most are not on the police. The abundance of supportive work in policing is nonexperimental. Hence, further experimental research is needed on procedural justice and legitimacy in policing. That experimental research is already occurring and it is encouraging that recent experimental studies support the argument that police procedural justice shapes police legitimacy and decision acceptance when dealing with the police (Reisig, Mays, & Telep, 2017). Second, the existing studies on policing do not test the complete proposed causal model (procedural justice → legitimacy → behavior) within a single study; nor do they demonstrate that there is not a reverse causal flow, for example with prior legitimacy shaping the perceived procedural justice of an experience. For these reasons, it is important to recognize the need for further experimental research on procedural justice in policing. In responding to this critique Tyler (2017c) suggests that the reason that procedural justice models have drawn the attention of criminal justice authorities is that they reflect the most promising model for understanding how to build trust in the police. Because policing has focused so heavily upon models of crime control there is very little research in policing on how to build public trust in the police. Procedural justice models therefore draw heavily upon findings outside of policing to justify their validity and the need for any viable models of legitimacy in policing is what is motivating their widespread adoption. Future research on policing will hopefully provide more direct evidence in support of this model. It is also important for police researchers to explore other potential mechanisms for building trust. The National Academy of Sciences recently released a consensus study report on Proactive Policing (Weisburd & Majmundar, 2017). That review of the literature reached conclusions similar to those already outlined. The report concludes that already available evidence from areas outside policing suggests that the procedural justice→legitimacy→ behavior model receives strong and experimental support in many areas of authority. However, the report notes that at this time there is very little experimental support, demonstrating the effectiveness of this model in the area of policing. That is not to say that there is no evidence. There is already an abundance of nonexperimental research that supports this model (Tyler et al., 2015). However, further experimental studies are needed.

What Is Procedural Justice? The psychological literature on perceived procedural justice has identified the already outlined four elements of experience that are linked to whether people evaluate them as being procedurally just. Those

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dimensions are not normatively identified by legal scholars. Rather, they have been drawn from research on the criteria that people themselves use to rate their experiences (Tyler, 1988). Importantly, studies suggest that there is substantial agreement across race, gender and income levels in the criteria that define a fair procedure (Tyler & Huo, 2002). Two procedural justice elements are linked to how police officers are perceived to make decisions (voice; neutrality). Two other elements are linked to how the police are viewed as treating people (respect; trust). The key to understanding this model is that the elements are focused upon how people experience policing, i.e., whether they feel they have voice, whether they think the procedures are neutral, whether they feel respected, and whether they infer that the police are trustworthy. The underlying argument is that the way people perceive these features of police action shapes whether people do or do not judge the police to be legitimate. In its subjective form, procedural justice has been typically assessed in one or both of two ways. The first is to ask people how fairly “decisions were made” or how “they were treated.” The second is to ask about the four aspects of procedural justice that emerge from studies of the meaning of procedural justice (Tyler, 1988). When studies assess subjective voice, neutrality, respect, and trust, they typically find that these dimensions are highly inter-correlated and that all four dimensions correlate strongly with evaluations of overall justice in decision making and treatment (Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Fagan, 2008; Worden & McLean, 2018). This finding suggests that it is possible to view subjective procedural justice as an overall dimension, although it is equally possible to distinguish the four dimensions. Empirical studies indicate that people distinguish more strongly among these four dimensions when they are evaluating their personal experiences than when they are making ratings of general police behavior in their community (Tyler, 2006a). There are several ways that the utility of these elements of procedural justice can be assessed. One way is to train officers along the lines of these elements and see if they are experienced as fairer and more legitimate. The Australian work on police stops does this and shows impact on perceived legitimacy. Similarly, studies in management settings show that organizations can be proactively designed to heighten employee feelings of fairness, just as studies in court design support the finding that courts can be created that will be generally experienced as fairer by those who go through them. At the same time it has proven more challenging to link the ratings of the fairness of police behavior by observers in street interactions with the police to the perceptions of the people involved in those interactions. More research is needed before a clear set of police actions can be consistently linked to subjective justice judgments about police officers or the police more broadly.

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Internal Department Dynamics Another approach to improving policing that also draws upon procedural justice is to focus on creating fairer internal dynamics within police departments. When officers feel more fairly treated by their superiors, they act more fairly when dealing with the public (Bradford, Quinton, Myhill, & Porter, 2013; De Angelis & Kupchik, 2007, 2009; Farmer, Beehr, & Love, 2003; Harris & Worden, 2014; Taxman & Gordon, 2009; Tyler et al., 2007; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). These studies show that officers who feel fairly treated are more likely to view their department, as well as its policies and leaders, as legitimate and to comply with organizational rules and policies; to feel organizational commitment; to want to stay with the department; and to work cooperatively with their supervisors (Trinkner, Tyler, & Goff, 2016). Central to discussions of officer stress is the parallel finding that officers working in departments low in the procedural justice of their department culture experience higher levels of job-related stress. Working in stressful situations within a department that does not have the elements of procedural justice contributes to a set of occupational hazards associated with policing: suicide; alcoholism; divorce, depression, etc. This argument is supported by a large literature on how the general organizational climate of workplaces shapes health. The core health-related argument is that creating procedurally just organizational conditions promotes well-being and when such conditions are not present stress is high. The physical and mental ailments resulting from workplace stress include taking sick days, becoming ill, using drugs, drinking, experiencing marital problems, and even suicide. The public health literature on the influence of workplace conditions on stress has widely documented these as consequences of working within an unfair environment. While the focus of the studies varies, they all show a connection between unfair management practices and poor employee health (for a review see Robbins, Ford, & Tetrick, 2012). Studies indicate that, in particular, poor relationships between workers and their immediate supervisors produce stress on the job. What is the connection between the fairness of the experience that officers have in their stationhouse and what they do on the street? A recent study by Bradford and colleagues (2014) indicates that those officers who experience fair process and procedures in their department are not only more likely to comply with department rules and more likely to be committed to organization goals, but they are also more likely to be supportive of community policing models that emphasize cooperation with the community and building positive working relationships with community members. Trinkner and colleagues (2016) find the same results in a study of Chicago police officers. They link procedural justice in the department directly to stress levels among officers.

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Officer Safety An extension of issues of health and well-being is the issue of officer safety. While crime control may be a department mission, coming home safely is a central concern of many field officers. It is for this reason that police carry a variety of weapons and view intimidation as a strategy for safety. An alternative view is that the police are safer if they do not provoke counter-aggression by using approaches which deemphasize force and seek to keep levels of conflict low. McCluskey (2003) directly addresses this issue using data from observations of police–public interactions combined with interview data. His findings suggest that “Surprisingly, the coercive power that police bring to bear on a citizen in the form of commanding, handcuffing, arresting and so on, has a minimal impact on citizen’s compliance decisions” (p. 100). In fact “For every one unit increase [in] the index of coercions citizens are about twice as likely to rebel against the self-control request” (p. 108). In contrast, he found that greater procedural justice consistently heightened voluntary compliance. Further, studies indicate that a procedurally just style of communication is associated with members of the public viewing the police as having higher authority and being more professional (Lowrey-Kinberg, 2018).

Self-Legitimacy While there have not been studies of the police that focus upon issues of identity and status in policing, in particular studies that identify police actions shaping these judgments, several studies have argued for the importance of identity issues. Murphy and colleagues (Murphy et al., 2015) use longitudinal data to study the influence of procedural justice upon tax payments. They find that the effects are mediated by impact upon social identity as reflected through tax payer identification with the government. Bradford and colleagues (Bradford et al., 2014) study traffic offenders and find that social identity as evidenced by their identification with their community, mediates between procedural justice and selfreported propensity to offend. Finally, in a sample of the residents of England and Wales, Bradford (2014) found a strong association between police procedural fairness, social identity, and police legitimacy. On the other hand, police unfairness undermines the sense of shared identity with the police (Reicher, Stott, Cronin, & Adang, 2004). One especially important aspect of police officer identity is selflegitimacy (Bradford & Quinton, 2014). Do officers feel confident in their own authority? Bradford and Quinton (2014) suggest that when officers identify with their organization, they feel legitimate in their role. This, in turn, supports a commitment to democratic modes of policing.

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Implications for Policing Why should the police care about procedural justice? The procedural justice model argues that focusing on procedural justice matters if the police want popular legitimacy. And, they should want popular legitimacy because it facilitates doing their jobs in more desirable ways. This is the case because procedural justice builds and maintains legitimacy, which promotes obeying the law and cooperating with the police. Although it is possible to seek to exercise social control by the threat or use of force, and although the police are well equipped to do so because they are vested with instruments of force (guns, tasers, clubs, etc.), it is in fact not most desirable for the police to approach situations with a force orientation or to use force in their interactions. This approach defines situations as conflicts and frames them as force based. If officers instead focus on acting fairly, they build legitimacy and gain voluntary deference. Such deference is not based upon force, but upon obligation and responsibility. Hence, the issue of power and forces is minimized, and conflict is avoided as much as possible and when it exists, is deescalated as much as is possible. But the broader point from our perspective is why society should care about how the police act when dealing with the community? Societies’ goal ought not to be the maintenance of large police forces, especially in an era of low crime and when local budgets are working for scraps. Rather it should be to determine the most effective way to balance managing public safety against other goals. A dollar used to fund the police is a dollar that is not used to repair a bridge; fund a school or help people with healthcare. Is that dollar being well spent? It is not an argument in favor of high crime to ask this question. It is valuable to point to evidence that other types of policing besides those that dominate America today are equally effective in managing crime and more effective in advancing other community goals like community engagement and solidarity, as well as engagement in economic, social and political. One important emerging research finding is that focused policing (hot spots policing) is particularly effective in reducing crime (Weisburd & Majmundar, 2017). Parallel to this development the ability to identify criminals through mechanisms such as network analysis has allowed for an increasing focus on the small group of violence offenders in any given community (Green, Thibaut, & Papachristos, 2017; SierraArevalo & Papachristos, in press). These evidence informed advances in policing practice further suggest that the size of police forces might reasonably decline. And this could happen without crime rates rising if those officers that remained were deployed strategically. Ironically it was 50 years ago that policing last received national attention on the level it is seeing today. President Johnson convened the

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Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (Katzenbach Commission) and the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission). These reports argued that the police should become more involved in social welfare functions. The same issue is important today. Police leaders resist efforts to transform the police into an agency that deals with a broader range of social problems and express frustration that they must deal with issues such as mental health populations on the street. On the other hand, they resist efforts to reduce the size of police forces, although the crime rate has dramatically declined since the 1970s. At this point in time there are several paths that the police might choose (Tyler, 2017b). One is to focus on building popular legitimacy and to become involved in efforts to build the social, economic and political viability of communities. The studies already outlined indicate that changes in police philosophy (from a police force to a police service) could result in contacts that build trust. The future of policing could be about building trust. This would move the police more in the direction of performing tasks that address social issues. Policing would not be focused largely or solely upon harm reduction via crime control. On normative democratic grounds it is important to recognize that the police are at the end of the day public servants and the community residents they deal with are their clients. Our structure of government in particular emphasizes that that police and other government agencies should intrude only sparingly into our lives and only when justified to protect people and communities from crime and disorder. As it stands studies suggest that the general impact of contact with the police, especially among juveniles, is to lower perceived legitimacy (Petrosino, Guckenburg, & Turpin-Petrosino, 2010; Tyler et al., 2014). Hence another approach would be to minimize public contact with a harm reduction oriented police force and thereby minimize alienation and distrust. Some communities already seek to minimize police intrusion or to at least limit investigatory stops. This approach creates another problem in leaving vulnerable people without protection. And, as noted above it raises the question of what to do with the police forces that have grown in past decades to combat much higher crime rates. Is there enough political will to reduce such forces and reallocation social resources? The feasibility of advancing the goal of transforming the mission of the police develops out of the movement of evidence informed law. It draws from theoretical models in the social sciences that define alternative ways of organizing the relationship between the police and the community and provides evidence for the value of those approaches. These findings both point to new directions for policing goal and for the policies and practices of the police and suggest the importance of theory based research on the police.

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Finally, as this review suggests it is important to recognize the important role that psychology and psychological research has played in this important social movement toward police reform. It is through their ability to draw upon psychological theories that police and other legal authorities have had a model available for trying to build and sustain popular legitimacy. When authorities have a crisis they draw upon the knowledge they can find and in this case psychology provided a theoretically novel and empirically supported roadmap for changing the way legal authorities think about their goals and how to achieve them.

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Injustice and Violent Extremism Methodological Directions for Future Justice Research Kees van den Bos

The current chapter discusses how judgments of injustice (and related issues such as perceptions of unfairness and immorality) play a role in instances of Muslim radicalization, right-wing radicalization, and leftwing radicalization. In doing so, I define radicalization as a process of growing willingness to pursue and/or support radical changes in society (in an undemocratic manner, if necessary) that conflicts with or could pose a threat to the democratic legal order (Van den Bos, 2018). Specifically, radicalization can be viewed as a process in which people move from staying within the law (as in the case of activism) to deliberately breaking the law (as in the case of extremism), possibly using violent means (as in the case of violent extremism). The ultimate endpoint of radicalization on which I focus is terrorism, which is defined here as the engagement of individuals or groups in ideologically motivated violence or other destructive acts against persons, property or the fabric of society (Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service, 2009). In discussing how injustice judgments play a role in growing radicalization I rely on an earlier review of these issues (Van den Bos, 2018). Building on this review I describe how perceived injustice can fuel various radicalization processes, ultimately leading to violent extremism and terrorism. I then will zoom in onto some of the key challenges the social psychology of justice is currently facing and how the study of radicalization may contribute to what I see as what is needed for the next generation of justice studies.

Radicalization by Means of Injustice Judgments Many different factors are important in understanding, predicting, preventing, and fighting of radicalization. Various scientific disciplines offer different explanations of radicalization and incorporate several important variables in doing so (see, e.g., Bongar, Brown, Beutler, Breckenridge, & Zimbardo, 2007; De Graaf, 2010; Moghaddam, 2005; Rahimullah, Larmar, & Abdalla, 2013; Reich, 1990; Victoroff

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& Kruglanski, 2009). Several explanations do not include judgments of injustice in their analyses of radicalization. That being said, many social psychological approaches to radicalization pay at least some attention to injustice judgments as pivotal variables in processes of radicalization (Feddes, Nickolson, & Doosje, 2015; Kruglanski et al., 2014; McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008; Moghaddam, 2005; Van den Bos, 2018). Indeed, perceptions of unfairness, injustice, and immorality play a crucial role in Muslim, right-wing, and left-wing radicalization. These perceptions include judgments of unfair treatment, group deprivation, inequity of outcome distributions, perceived immorality, and general impressions that things are not right and that the world is not a just place (Van den Bos, 2018). Two injustice concerns seem to stand out in the social psychology of radicalization, group deprivation and immorality. People who perceive that they or their group are deprived of important goods in society—whether money, justice, status or privilege—may join social movements with the hope of redressing their grievances. Thus, relative deprivation is a potential cause of social movements and societal protest (Klandermans, 1997). Extreme perceptions of relative deprivation may lead to political violence and terrorism (Gurr, 1970; Merton, 1938). The perception that one’s own group is being deprived plays an important role in right-wing and Muslim radicalization. For example, research on extreme right-wing attitudes in the Netherlands showed that right-wing “autochthonous” respondents felt that their group was deprived of important material and immaterial goods. They perceived that Muslims were taking away these goods (Van den Bos, Loseman, & Doosje, 2009). This can be labeled as an instance of horizontal group deprivation. Experiences of group deprivation also played an important role among Muslim citizens in the Netherlands as they felt deprived of important goods, including how important symbols of their religion were treated in Dutch society, compared to how other religions were treated in the same society. Interestingly, the Muslim respondents were not so much focused on right-wing groups, but were oriented on important authorities in society and attributed their group deprivation to those societal authorities (Van den Bos et al., 2009). This can be called an instance of vertical group deprivation. Of course, perceived vertical deprivation can also take place among right-wing respondents and horizontal deprivation among Muslim citizens, and both groups can also experience individual (as opposed to group) deprivation (Crosby, 1976; Runciman, 1966). However, for the moment I conclude that both horizontal and vertical deprivation seem to play an important role in the psychology of right-wing and Muslim radicalization, respectively (for more details, see Van den Bos, 2018).

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The notion of perceived relative deprivation is important for our understanding of radicalization processes because it shows that it is not only or primarily people’s objective circumstances or absolute deprivation that determines injustice-based grievance, but that it is especially the relative injustice as perceived by individual people or members of groups compared to other individuals or other groups. Thus, people’s perceptions of their social conditions are key to the understanding of the radicalization process. Because these perceptions depend on the referent comparisons that people make (Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Star, & Williams, 1949), this implies that those individuals from radical groups who are themselves relatively well-off may show extreme levels of grievance and resentment. This is because they can become frustrated when they can imagine improving their conditions, but in reality they do not get access to a good job or high societal status (Crosby, 1976). Although such perceptions may be biased or colored, they can also have real consequences on people’s behaviors (Thomas & Thomas, 1928). Therefore, to understand radical behaviors we need to take seriously people’s perceptions of unfairness, including their perceptions of horizontal and vertical group deprivation. Once we understand what is perceived to be wrong, we get hold of a major antecedent of why people may engage in radicalization processes. Another concern that motivates radicalization processes is morality. For example, left-wing radicalizing individuals in The Netherlands indicated that how the government is treating people who seek asylum or how commercial companies are treating animals is morally wrong (IVA, 2010; Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service, 2010). Morality and moral concerns are strongly related to the essence of who we as humans are (Haidt, 2012). We want to be moral beings (Cramwinckel, Van Dijk, Scheepers, & Van den Bos, 2013) and moral concerns drive human behavior, in part because we have elaborate reasoning skills and sophisticated cognitive skills that allow us to come to important conclusions about what is right or wrong. Perceiving that things are morally wrong upsets us, in part because these immoral events threaten our notion that we live in a world that is understandable and predictable (Van den Bos, McGregor, & Martin, 2015) and involve strongly felt moral emotions. After all, core emotions such as anger and disgust are strongly associated with important moral codes of how to behave (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999). Feelings and moral emotions also provide meaningful input for how to interpret moral issues (Haidt, 2001). For instance, in many circumstances information about moral issues is not available or too complex to digest in all its nuances. Feelings and emotions then serve as important sources on which people build their moral judgments (Van den Bos, 2003). Thus, when a certain situation feels right you infer that

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the situation probably is morally right. And when another event makes you disgusted you tend to conclude that the event in all likelihood is wrong (see also Hume, 1739). Morality is important for its own sake, not only because of evolutionary concerns, but also because we deeply and innately care about morality and about what is right (Greene, 2013). Moral concerns thus motivate people to approve or disapprove of certain behaviors. People can feel mandated to take firm stances with regard to important moral issues (Skitka, 2002). Therefore, people may protest and fight against what they see as morally wrong. This morality-based opposition clearly has yielded behaviors that are important and good for society at large. This being noted, people sometimes behave too much in principled ways. For example, we may not only adhere to certain political or religious beliefs but can also be convinced easily that these beliefs are right, and thus that other points of view are wrong. This may lead to the denigration of those other views without appropriate attention to the validity of the views in question (Haidt, 2012). Focusing on our own moral values and extensive reasoning processes why these values are valid and honorable can lead us to overlook the possible importance of other viewpoints out there. Judgments of morality may lead to feelings of moral righteousness (Haidt, 2012). In fact, individual moral righteousness has been observed in my country with respect to left-wing radicalization pertaining to asylum and animal rights. Individuals fighting for these rights felt justified and entitled to do something about these issues, even when this implied that they then broke the law or acted in anti-democratic or even violent ways to achieve their goals (IVA, 2010). Thus, because perceptions of moral righteousness are deeply felt they can legitimize violent behavior that violates core democratic values (Van den Bos, 2018). Perceived moral superiority and strong group identification may help people to downplay rule-breaking behavior of ingroup members (Iyer, Jetten, & Haslam, 2012). Moral superiority may also underlie people’s inclination to think that others are more influenced by egoism-based considerations whereas they themselves are more influenced by considerations of right and wrong (Peters, Van den Bos, & Bobocel, 2004). Related to this, people may be tempted to engage in processes of moral disengagement in which they convince themselves that ethical standards do not apply to them. People do this by rethinking or reframing their own destructive behavior as being morally acceptable, something that is achieved by inhibiting mechanisms of self-condemnation and not thinking in moral terms about immoral conduct (Bandura, 1999). To conclude for now, judgments of injustice are a key antecedent of Muslim, right-wing, and left-wing radicalization processes. This is especially the case when these judgments are combined with feelings of personal uncertainty or group threats and when this is coupled with

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insufficient correction of people’s self-centered impulses, such as their emotions of anger and contempt or their self-oriented views of moral righteousness. I discuss these issues in more detail in my Why People Radicalize book (Van den Bos, 2018).

Towards Violent Extremism A crucial step in any attempt to understand processes of radicalization is to determine when people will move from thoughts and feelings to behavioral action. Indeed, the social psychology of justice is probably better at describing people’s thoughts and feelings about justice than at explaining and predicting their justice behaviors (Lind, Kanfer, & Earley, 1990). The same applies for social psychology in general, which is more heavily oriented toward understanding cognition and affect than toward understanding actual behavior (Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007). I argue that in understanding the link between injustice judgments and radical behavior a key issue concerns when people will move from legal and non-violent behaviors to illegal and violent actions to achieve their desired outcomes that reflect their beliefs and feelings and what they see as the right cause. This is a pivotal issue, in part because it distinguishes radicalization that stays within the law (activism) from radicalization that basically views the law as irrelevant or an obstacle to obtain what is desired (extremism; Van den Bos, 2018, in press-b). I propose that insight into the social psychological processes that underlie pathways to violent extremism may help to get a better grip on the understanding and prediction of radical and extremist behavior. One relevant concern in this respect is the rejection of democratic principles and principles of constitutional state law. To understand why people start to reject these principles, I argue that it is important to understand the psychological process of delegitimization. Delegitimization is the psychological withdrawal of legitimacy, for example from some institution such as a state, or from judges in the constitutional democracy in which one lives, or from important principles of democracy in constitutional states. There is evidence that delegitimization of government, law, and other societal institutions plays a crucial role in right-wing radicalization, left-wing radicalization, and Muslim radicalization (Van den Bos, 2018, in press-b). With respect to right-wing radicalization, Sprinzak (1991, 1995, 2009) argues that far-rightist groups usually start with focusing on other groups, usually minority groups that they perceive to hold inferior legal and social status. Thus, right-wing extremists believe these groups should be expelled or even eliminated. Sprinzak (1995) argues that this belief in delegitimacy of the other is rooted in deep-seated social psychological processes and cultural traditions. The hated other group may be defined by race, nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.

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These characteristics cannot be altered easily and make the subgroup intrinsically inferior and deserving of their status. According to Sprinzak (1995), right-wing groups at the first stage of radicalization engage in political activities designed to strengthen and perpetuate existing social and cultural mechanisms of discrimination. During this stage, right-wing groups accept the government’s legitimacy, even though they are disillusioned with its policies, and seek to accomplish their goals through legitimate political activities. Group violence targeting minorities such as hate crimes, are sporadic in this stage and only emerge if the group feels threatened (Kerodal, Freilich, Chermak, & Suttmoeller, 2014). Sprinzak (1995) further argues that when far-right extremist groups become convinced that the government is not using sufficient energy to protect the interests of majority members as legitimate citizens, it will progress to the next stage of radicalization. At this stage, the right-wing group loses confidence in the government and its policies. As a result, the far-right extremist group attempts to restore the status quo by engaging in low-level intimidation such as harassment of the other, minority, group. In this stage, right-wing groups may also begin to disobey laws. Political action shifts towards protests, which can lead to unplanned violent altercations with law enforcement. The groups may eventually splinter as the members become convinced the leaders are not radical enough (Kerodal et al., 2014). Sprinzak (1995) also proposes that if far-right extremist groups become convinced that the government is controlled by the other, minority groups a third stage of radicalization occurs. In this stage, both the hated minority group and the government are deemed illegitimate and systematic terrorism could occur. Although Sprinzak (1995) did not believe all far-right extremist groups would follow this pattern, he argued that this framework explained the violent behavior of most far-right extremist groups (Kerodal et al., 2014). Left-wing radicalization has also been associated with processes of delegitimization. For example, left-wing groups operating within functional democracies often undergo a profound political and psychological change in its members such that they delegitimize politics in their constitutional democracies. This has been observed among members of the Red Army Faction in West Germany (Sprinzak, 1991). The violent extremist actions of the Red Army Faction also spread to the Netherlands. When judging these acts, the relevant court of law in the Netherlands noted that it is completely unacceptable when people engage in violent actions merely because they disagree with the politics and policies of the democratic states in which they live. These acts corrode the basic principles of constitutional law and democratic states (Pekelder, 2007).

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Muslim radicalization, too, has been linked to delegitimization of democracy and democratic principles. For instance, Muslim radicalization and support for violence are linked to changing attitudes towards democracy and democratization, which often are associated with negative reactions to modernization. As such, radical Muslim groups ideologically reject electoral democracy as well as the legitimacy of political and ideological pluralism (Ashour, 2009). Ashour states that jihadism is characterized by the rejection of democracy as well as intolerance and the frequent use of violence against political rivals. Thus, through processes of delegitimization radicalizing persons distance themselves psychologically from politics, societal institutions such as government and law, and principles of democracy and open societies (Popper, 1945). I argue here that key to understanding the ontogenesis of violent extremism and terrorism is people’s rejection of constitutional democracy and the rule of law (Mak & Taekema, 2016). After all, when it is hard or impossible for you to work within principles of constitutional democracy (such as when you cannot really force yourself to be open-minded about different opinions and at least be willing to tolerate them to such a degree that you try to make your case heard through majority rule or other democratic rules), then you might easily get frustrated that your wishes and opinions are not put into action and then you are more likely to take action yourself to ensure that things will go your way. Furthermore, violent extremism and terrorism constitute illegal acts and when you do not care about what the law says, or when you even sympathize with illegal behavior, it is easier to prepare or prompt yourself to engage in illegal actions. Related to this, Ashour (2009) notes that jihadist groups are those movements that ideologically reject democracy as well as the legitimacy of political and ideological pluralism (see also Hagan, Kaiser, & Hanson, 2016; Nivette, Eisner, Malti, & Ribeaud, 2015; Sampson & Bartusch, 1998). Radicalization of those groups thus is a process in which a group undergoes ideological and/or behavioral transformations that lead to the rejection of democratic principles (including the peaceful alternation of power and the legitimacy of ideological and political pluralism) and possibly to the utilization of violence or to an increase in the levels of violence, to achieve political goals (see also Meeus, 2015). Based on these kinds of insights I reason that when radicalizing people start to reject the law in democratic states and open societies this is a pivotal signal that indicates that something is going seriously wrong. In other words, I do think it is fine when people hold radical opinions that differ from others drastically, but when this is coupled with a certain disdain for law and democracy this may well serve as an important next phase of radicalization that ultimately may end in violent extremism and terrorism.

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A distinction should be made here between those people who are willing to use violence as part of their not complying with the law and as such engage in such acts as vandalizing the private property of politicians versus those who do not engage in a violent rejection of the law. Many people occasionally oppose certain aspects of the law but this does not lead them to engage in a violent rejection of the law. It is therefore interesting to investigate why some extremists engage in a violent rejection of the law while other radicals oppose this behavior. This might be even more important, psychologically speaking, than is often realized. I propose, therefore, that rejection of the law and democracy constitutes a turning point in the radicalization process of many people. It is important to realize that to be a radical is to reject the status quo, but not necessarily in a violent or even problematic manner (Bartlett & Miller, 2012). Some radicals conduct, support, or encourage terrorism, while others actively and often effectively agitate against it (Bartlett & Miller, 2012). Therefore, rejection and non-compliance with the law (and related democratic principles) is considered to be a key aspect of cognitive and behavioral radicalization. Indeed, the point where one decides to reject the law (and act accordingly, in violation of rules that protect democratic principles) can be seen as a fundamentally new phase in any process of radicalization. There obviously can be a gap between what people think is just and legitimate and what society considers being legal. Furthermore, nonviolent engagement in forms of civil disobedience in which people act in non-violent ways to convey in an open way about their conscientious thoughts and feelings should be distinguished from violent breaking of the law. Once people have formed intentions to engage in violent extremism and reject principles of law in open and democratic societies, they can be tempted to actively engage in violent and illegal extremist behaviors. In this process, evil as a motive and the justification of violence are important antecedents of political violence, religious violence, and terrorism. Thus, I argue that when people are willing to break the law to obtain their goals, if needed by violent means, this is an important signal that something is seriously going wrong.

Future Directions in Psychological Research Injustice judgments can fuel radicalization into violent extremism, especially when this is coupled with people feeling threatened and being unable or unwilling to regulate their outwardly oriented negative emotions such as anger and contempt. These judgments of injustice include perceived unfair treatment, inequity of outcome distributions, impressions that things are not right, and the belief that the world is an unjust place. Injustice-related judgments that have a prominent role in

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the social psychology of Muslim extremism, right-wing extremism, and left-wing extremism are vertical group deprivation, horizontal group deprivation, and perceived immorality (Van den Bos, 2018). Interestingly, the social psychology of injustice and radicalization into violent extremism does not only constitute an application of social psychological insight on radicalization processes, the study of radicalization also feeds into basic social psychology and informs researchers how perhaps best to conduct future psychological research on social psychology in general and judgments of justice and injustice in particular. This may help to develop what I see as a new era of research needed in social psychology, including the social psychology of justice and injustice. One of the issues that I want to raise explicitly is that studying radicalization can be very difficult. People radicalize about different issues in different ways. The extent to which respondents are radicalized is also important. When studying radicalization at least a minimum of radicalization is often present (and in fact, from a methodological point of view, desirable) among research participants. However, once radicalized, potential participants may be difficult to get into contact with and may not trust the interviewer from a university or research institute and who hence belongs to the status quo or to groups different than the respondents’ groups. Furthermore, ideally one wants to study how radical beliefs transfer into extremist behaviors, but it is often not doable to reliably examine the actual engagement in extremist behaviors and researchers therefore often refer to assessing sympathy for extremist behaviors among their participants instead. In short, there are several difficulties when studying the topic of radicalization. Some of the difficulties that researchers may encounter include the problem of small samples, the non-linear quality of models explaining processes of radicalization, and the historical context in which these processes take place. I have argued that part of the solution may be found in careful conceptual analysis which should complement the empirical study of unfairness and radicalization (Van den Bos, 2018). As such, the psychological study of injustice and extremism is perhaps best viewed as a “hub science,” bridging thoughtful conceptual analysis and careful quantitative and qualitative empirical studies (see also Van den Bos, in press-a). In my view both micro-oriented approaches to radicalization research (such as quantitative psychological studies on individual processes pertaining to radicalization) and macro-oriented approaches (such as qualitative research from the social sciences and humanities on social and societal issues relevant to radicalization) suffer from important limitations. An obvious problem for quantitative psychological research is the fact that data are hard to come by on radicalizing persons. This especially applies to those who are committed to violent extremist

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behaviors and the problem is even worse for getting data from terrorists. As a result, systematic data about these groups of respondents are lacking (McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008). Quantitative scientists studying radicalization often have to rely on groups of respondents that can be sampled in a relatively convenient way, relying on voluntary participation and snowball methods in which a radicalizing respondent suggests possible other respondents. These non-random sampling methods easily yield problems of differential selection and participation bias and thus quickly violate important assumptions of research designs (Cook & Campbell, 1979; Kirk, 1995; Smith, 1981). Furthermore, the samples in radicalization studies often tend to be much smaller than those that quantitative psychologists are used to or are comfortable with (Webber et al., 2018). Although it can be argued that the population of radicalizing people (and especially those who engage in violent extremism or terrorism) is relatively small, and hence the sample that is studied does not need to be very large, it is a fact that the power of many samples in radicalization studies is debatable (see Cohen, 1988, 1992; Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007). It can also be difficult to meaningfully compare different persons or groups of respondents and to make sure that these groups are calibrated on important background variables, such as when examining violent and nonviolent far-right groups in the United States and exploring the violent and legal behavioral patterns over their lifecycles (see Kerodal et al., 2014). Moreover, it is typically very difficult or impossible to replicate findings of studies that are conducted with radicalized persons such as violent extremists and terrorists. There tend to be too few of these kinds of participants and how they interpret their individual and contextual background variables tends to vary too much to be able to conduct meaningful replication studies. The difficulty to replicate results is worsened because issues of radicalization tend to be rather unique. This attests to the difficulty of solid quantitative radicalization research. This is an important limitation for current psychological research in which replication is a very important issue (e.g., Kruglanski, Chernikova, & Jasko, 2017; Schooler, 2014a, 2014b) and in which testing for statistical significance of hypotheses tends to be valued a lot (Cohen, 1994). It may also be difficult to share confidential data about radicalized participants with other scientists, hence not contributing to an open science account preferably used in modern research projects. It also can be difficult to conduct experiments on radicalization, extremism, and terrorism (Hogg, Adelman, & Blagg, 2010). Because experiments are the most-widely preferred and best-accepted method in modern psychological science this can be viewed as a potentially serious problem to the study of radicalization, although there are some solutions to this, for example by conducting worldview defense experiments

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(see, e.g., Hogg et al., 2010). In short, a simple usage of quantitative empirical methods may not necessarily work very well when examining processes of radicalization, extremism, and terrorism. Moreover, the quantitative study of justice and injustice judgments is not without problems. For example, Martin, Scully, and Levitt (1990) noted that methodological and ethical concerns make it difficult to study injustice under conditions in which economic inequality is extreme, people are severely disadvantaged, livelihoods are at risk, the surrounding context is delegitimated, and feelings of injustice are sufficiently intense to provoke bloodshed. (p. 281) Indeed, in-depth insight into what respondents experience when we interview them in quantitative surveys about what they think is unfair and unjust tends to be underdeveloped (Finkel, 2001). Qualitative approaches to the study of radicalization, such as those conducted in the social sciences or the humanities, are not without problems either. For example, anthropological researchers may sympathize or empathize too much with their radical, extremist, or terrorist respondents. The subjective interpretation is another potential caveat of qualitative studies. Furthermore, narrative methodologies and the reliance on autobiographies of (former or current) radicals may also suffer from important limitations. For example, Wilner and Dubouloz (2011) note that readers of autobiographies can only interpret the events, characteristics, and relationships the author makes public. Researchers using these autobiographies thus have to rely on the information that the author wants published. As a result, the author of the autobiography controls the scope of the empiricism, not the researcher. Moreover, autobiographies can be self-serving or can portray biased accounts of the author’s historical importance. What most quantitative and qualitative studies of radicalization share is a reliance on self-reports from radicalized persons or individuals who state they have deradicalized. But how can you trust radicalized or deradicalized people to tell the truth? And even if they do this, how can you be sure that they have accurate insight into their reactions and behaviors? Having to rely on self-reported data can severely undermine the quality of studies conducted among normal, non-radicalized participants and the validity of the interpretation of the findings that follow from these studies (see, e.g., Baumeister et al., 2007; Goldstone & Chin, 1993; Lelkes, Krosnick, Marx, Judd, & Park, 2012). This can be an even bigger problem when interviewing radicalized people (see also Koerner, 2017).

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In short, researching radicalizing processes in solid, scientific ways can be challenging. Quite often, empirical studies on radicalization, using either quantitative or qualitative research methods, yield data that are less strong than one wants these data to be. This implies that the various accounts on radicalization that are out there tend to be based on a relatively weak empirical basis, that is, a basis that is weaker than most experimental social psychologists are used to and have been trained to like and appreciate. However, processes of radicalization are too important in this world to leave them alone and to return to the psych lab to focus instead on controllable and hence sometimes somewhat narrow concepts and research topics. In contrast, what is needed, I propose, is to rely on a variety of research methods to addresses the multi-faceted issues of radicalization, extremism, and terrorism. The complexity of radicalization processes brings ambiguity in the interpretation of these processes and how to intervene in the processes. This also implies that it is likely that there is no single “magic bullet” or one single research method that will nail down all various instances of radicalization that are present in our world (see also Devine, Forscher, Austin, & Cox, 2012). Instead, several methods are more likely to work in combination to meaningfully analyze what is going on in terms of radicalization. This obviously involves more or less qualitative interviews with former lone wolfs (Hamm & Spaaij, 2017), incarcerated Middle Eastern terrorists (Post, Sprinzak, & Denny, 2009), and detained Tamil Tigers (Kruglanski et al., 2017; Webber et al., 2018). But this also includes the quantitative study of the spreading of Islamist ideology in different Spanish jails (Trujillo, Jordán, Gutiérrez, & González-Cabrera, 2009) or the application of “Big Data” approaches to processes of radicalization. And, in my view, this also warrants the reliance on studies with non-radicals and nonextremists and non-terrorists, such as more traditional laboratory experiments done toward revealing basic social psychological processes. Taken together, these insights can then be used to better understand both normal and abnormal roots of radicalization processes (Van den Bos, 2018). I also argue that is pivotal to complement the insights from these different empirical studies with conceptual reasoning. For example, conceptually reflecting on various psychological models of radicalization, extremism, and terrorism one notices a tendency to depict the psychology of radicalization into violent extremism and terrorism as a slow and particularly a gradual process (Horgan, 2005, 2009; McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008; Moghaddam, 2005; Wilner & Dubouloz, 2011). Feddes et al. (2015) and other recent authors note, however, that radicalization tends to be a non-linear and dynamic process (Bartlett, Birdwell, & King, 2010; De Wolf & Doosje, 2015; Feddes, Mann, & Doosje, 2013; King & Taylor, 2011; McCauley & Segal, 1989). That is, growing radicalization does not necessarily need to develop in continuous ways such that people slowly but gradually

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move into violent extremism and terrorism. Indeed, some people radicalize, but a lot more people do not. And sometimes the radicalization process takes some time, whereas at other moments it takes place very rapidly. Thus, the different pathways in various psychological models of radicalization do not imply that radicalization will always follow these pathways or always will develop along gradual lines. Quite the contrary, there is more and more evidence that radicalizing individuals may jump to different phases of radicalization quite quickly, often quite unexpectedly for their previous social contacts, including their families and former friends. Furthermore, when studying radicalization so that we can prevent or fight it, one realizes that we need to pay explicit attention to the historical and societal contexts in which concrete instances of radicalization take place. After all, radicalization does not take place in a vacuum, but depend on how the state responds as well as on how groups in society respond back to instances of repression or alienation. The historical and societal contexts of these processes of interaction and radicalization matter. It matters where, how, when terrorism and counterterrorism unfold to explain the next step and stage of the radicalization ladder. Indeed, key publications have paid ample attention to the theatrical aspects and historical context of radicalization processes (see, e.g., Crenshaw, 1990, 2009; De Graaf, 2010; Della Porta, 1995, 2009; Hoffman, 1982; Waldmann & Dieterich, 2007). Furthermore, Gergen (1973, 1978, 1980) has rightfully criticized social psychology as neglecting the historical processes that are relevant to understand what people believe, feel, and do in social contexts. The social psychology of injustice and violent extremism could profit from a more in-depth examination of the historical and societal contexts in which various radicalization processes take place. Moreover, the primary level of the psychology of radicalization tends to be the individual and his/her relationship with groups, culture, and society. This psychological or in-depth micro-level approach to radicalization processes has many advantages, I argue, but should be complemented with other approaches that focus more explicitly or more strongly on group processes (meso approaches) and societal or structural factors (macro approaches). The field of terrorism studies generally distinguishes micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis (Della Porta, 1995; Schuurman, 2017). The methodology I adopted in my approach to radicalization starts at the micro level and includes elements from group-level theories and societal factors when considered appropriate. The added value of this approach may be exactly this methodological bridge: the connection between perceptions and feelings of injustice.

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Coda The study of injustice and radicalization into violent extremism is more complex and involves many more issues than I can discuss in the current chapter. For a more extensive treatment, please see earlier reviews on this issue (e.g., Feddes et al., 2015; Kruglanski et al., 2014; McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008; Moghaddam, 2005; Victoroff & Kruglanski, 2009), including the review on which I relied in this chapter (Van den Bos, 2018; see also, Van den Bos, in press-a, in press-b). I hope to have made clear in the condensed discussion that I put forward here that the social psychology of justice and injustice matters when studying violent extremism in such a way that we can do something about it, whether it is by preventing it or combating it once it occurs. The study of injustice and radicalization into violent extremism may also help to pinpoint at key issues needed to be incorporated in future social psychological research. This includes the focus on actual violent behaviors, and also the limitations of relying on quantitative studies only or predominantly, and the need to start embracing qualitative research studies and more thoughtful and multi-disciplinary conceptual thought and reflection. This may force social psychologists to move out of their zone in which they are comfortable, and this is precisely needed, I argue, to make our science more interesting and more relevant for the understanding of multi-faceted and important social and societal issues, such as injustice and violent extremism.

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New Directions of Research in Fairness and Legal Authority A Focus on Causal Mechanisms Jonathan Jackson and Krisztián Pósch

Decades of research into procedural fairness and criminal justice have shown the importance of procedural justice and injustice in the generation, maintenance and erosion of people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of legal institutions (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 2006a, 2006b; Tyler & Fagan, 2008). While most of this work has addressed people’s relationship to the police using city-wide or nationally representative sample surveys (for a review of the international literature see Jackson, 2018), the past few years have seen an increasing amount of experimental work, with researchers using online and offline textual and video vignettes of police–citizen encounters (e.g. Barkworth & Murphy, 2015; Lowrey, Maguire, & Bennett, 2016; Maguire et al., 2016; Pósch, 2019; Radburn, Stott, Bradford, & Robinson, 2018; Solomon, 2019; Trinkner, Mays, Cohn, Van Gundy, & Rebellon, 2019) and randomised controlled trials to estimate causes and consequences of police and legal legitimacy (e.g. MacQueen & Bradford, 2016; Mazerolle, Antrobus, Bennett, & Tyler, 2013; Pósch, Jackson, Bradford, & MacQueen, 2019). The evidence from this expanding body of work supports two points that are central to the current contribution. On the one hand, citizens place more importance in their direct and indirect encounters with the police on whether officers treat people with respect and dignity (the quality of treatment) and make neutral, unbiased decisions (the quality of decision-making) than whether they deliver satisfactory outcomes, are effective in the fight against crime, and/or allocate outcomes fairly across social groups – albeit that respecting the limits of one’s rightful authority may also be an important consideration (Huq, Jackson, & Trinkner, 2017; Trinkner, Jackson, & Tyler, 2018). On the other hand, police officers create legitimacy through their interactions with the public (Geller & Fagan, 2019) and people update their beliefs about the legitimacy of the police – perceptions of institutional appropriateness (right to power) and entitlement (authority to govern) – largely on the basis of fair treatment and fair decision-making from the actors who embody the institution. Because procedural justice is more closely tied

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to perceptions of police legitimacy than the effectiveness of officers to fight crime and satisfaction with outcomes – and because legitimacy is typically a stronger predictor of legal compliance than more instrumental concerns about the likelihood and cost of punishment – scholars have called for consensual modes of policing based on restrained use of authority over more pro-active, coercive modes of policing (Bradford, Jackson, & Hough, 2013; Tyler, Goff, & MacCoun, 2015). The behaviours that foster perceptions of police procedural justice are generally classified under the headings of (1) decision-making (giving people a voice, making impartial decisions that are free from bias, and explaining the reasoning behind decisions) and (2) interpersonal treatment (behaving in respectful ways, showing care and concern, being honest, and conveying trustworthy motives). Procedural justice is an important cultural norm regarding the appropriate exercise of police authority, and procedurally (in)just treatment and decision-making shapes people’s belief that the police is a normatively appropriate institution that has the right to dictate appropriate behaviour (Tyler, 2006a, 2006b). In turn, legitimacy seems to help strengthen people’s normative motivations to comply with the law (de Puiseau, Glöckner, & Towfigh, 2019; Murphy, Bradford, & Jackson, 2016; Trinkner et al., 2018; Tyler & Jackson, 2014). There is also some early evidence that some of this statistical effect of procedural justice on legitimacy is mediated by social identity, whereby people are motivated to legitimate authority figures of groups that they identify with (Bradford et al., 2014). Yet, despite the growing number of experimental studies testing procedural justice theory, there has been an over-reliance on correlational cross-sectional methodology (Nagin & Telep, 2017a, 2017b; Tyler, 2017). The arrow of causality is generally assumed to flow from perceptions of procedural justice to perceptions of legitimacy. But Nagin & Telep (2017) have recently raised the possibility that the relationship between procedural justice and legitimacy is bi-directional. Prior levels of legitimacy may shape how people make sense of the dynamics of direct and indirect police–citizen encounters – in the words of Trinkner et al. (2019, p. 3): “… one could imagine a case in which individuals who believe police officers are legitimate authorities would be more likely to judge police behavior as procedurally fair than individuals who believe the police are illegitimate”. By motivating people to see police as fair, high levels of legitimacy could render fairness perceptions difficult to change, with people giving the police the benefit of the doubt in the face of ambiguity. In this chapter we discuss three new directions of research into police–citizen authority relations: (a) the subjectivity of fairness perception, (b) the mechanisms linking procedural justice to legitimacy, and (c) statistical methods to estimate causal mechanisms. Our goals are threefold. The first is to discuss the idea that fairness is a subjective

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experience/perception motivated by a range of individual and environmental factors. We outline a motivation cognition framework of fairness perception (Barclay, Bashshur, & Fortin, 2017) that revolves around people “reading” the dynamics of an encounter with the police in a way that is shaped by instrumental, relational and moral motives, with directional and non-directional goals. The idea is that people attend to, and process, information that helps them to reach their desired conclusion regarding fairness, especially when those dynamics are ambiguous, i.e. where it is not an immediately obvious instance of fair or unfair treatment and/or decision-making. We speculate about the possibility of “temporal stickiness” of fairness perceptions. We discuss (1) fairness heuristic theory (Lind, Kray, & Thompson, 2001), where people initially form general justice judgments regarding how fair they think the police are, and then, once a relatively stable fairness heuristic is “set”, it takes a particularly vivid and unexpectedly fair or unfair encounter to change one’s general impression of fairness. We also discuss (2) the idea that the deference part of the legitimacy construct means letting the police dictate appropriate behaviour between citizens and officers, meaning that people who see the police as legitimate are more likely to side with them when it comes to ambiguous (un)fairness. The second goal of this chapter is to consider another underresearched issue – namely, the causal mechanism(s) that transmit and/or modify the effect of procedural justice onto legitimacy. Research tends to address the direct effect of both the experience of procedural (in)justice and general perceptions of police procedural (un)fairness on legitimacy. This is a direct (i.e. unmediated or moderated) effect that is about respecting social norms regarding the appropriate exercise of authority. Legitimacy is the belief that the institution is appropriate coupled with an internalised obligation to obey, and procedural justice a key core legitimating norm regarding how power should be wielded. There has, however, been some non-experimental work on the idea that social identity is a (partial) mediator of this effect (Bradford, Milani, & Jackson, 2017; Bradford, Murphy, & Jackson, 2014; Radburn & Stott, 2018). This account is in line with the group engagement model (Blader & Tyler, 2009; Tyler & Blader, 2003) and it argues that procedural justice sends a message of status and value to the justice recipient, which in turn encourages the justice recipient to identify with the social group that the police represent, thereby strengthening the legitimacy of authority figures of the group that one merges one’s identity with. We consider the idea that social identity and personal sense of power/autonomy are two (not mutually exclusive) causal mechanisms that transmit some of the effect of the experience of procedural (in) justice (and more general perceptions of procedural (un)fairness) onto legitimacy. Personal sense of power refers to one’s subjective belief regarding the ability to influence the police during potential future

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encounters, where a strong sense of personal power reflects the belief that police have little power over oneself (i.e. one has considerable autonomy) and a weak sense of personal power reflects the belief that police have a lot of power over oneself (i.e. one has little autonomy). Personal sense of power and autonomy may shape legitimacy if some basic level of personal autonomy is central to the psychological phenomenon of believing power is rightfully held and willingly accepting the authority of another to dictate appropriate behaviour. Legitimacy defines a consensual rather than a coercive relationship (Anderson, Hildreth, & Howland, 2015) and procedural justice signals less of an assertive and/or aggressive stance that conveys a power-holder/subordinate relationship, and more of what Mentovich (2012, p. 15) calls: … a community, equity prioritising cue … By emphasizing shared values, goals and equal entitlements, procedural justice may conceal the power structure of a given community in favor of a more communal perspective, resting on a perception of equality. The enactment of procedural justice in a personal encounter with the police may thus send not just a symbolic message that the citizen has status and value within hierarchical group settings, but also that the officer respects the autonomy of the citizen. These two messages signalled by procedural justice (of status/value and of more equal power relations) may, in turn, help to encourage the justice recipient to view the institution that the officer embodies as legitimate. The third goal is to highlight a burgeoning subfield of the causal inference literature that has the potential to estimate causal mechanisms (Keele et al., 2015; Pósch, 2019; VanderWeele, 2015; VanderWeele & Richardson, 2012). Experimental studies commonly only estimate the effect of a randomised treatment on a certain outcome, and while this simple setup can be useful to evaluate the effectiveness of certain initiatives, it does fall short in explaining why and how the treatment reached or failed to reach its goal. Our empirical illustration of causal mediation and causal interaction analyses focuses on social identity as a mediator and moderator of the effect of a treatment (showing pictures of police officers vs civilians) on different aspects of police legitimacy. We show how to decompose the average treatment effect in a way that allows for the estimation of causally mediating and moderating effects, provided of course that certain causal identifying assumptions are satisfied (VanderWeele, 2014). To round up the discussion of causal mechanisms, we revisit two potentially confounding factors emphasised by Nagin and Telep (2017) – “third common causes” and “reverse causality” – and suggest a few ways to tackle them.

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The rest of the chapter proceeds as follows. In the next section we provide a brief criminological introduction into the nature of policing and the complexities of police–citizen encounters. Drawing then on Barclay et al.’s (2018) recent review, we outline a motivated cognition approach to police procedural fairness. After this we discuss two reasons why there may be “temporal stickiness” to people’s perceptions of police fairness, and to motivate why perceptions of fairness may be difficult to surprisingly stable in the face of evidence, we consider (a) Lind’s fairness heuristic theory and (b) the idea that the deference part of legitimacy shapes non-directional and directional goals. We then turn to the issue of causal mechanisms. While we do not (yet) have the data to test the outlined ideas, we do have a parallel dataset that provides a good example for an illustration of appropriate statistical analysis.

Everyday Policing It was Bittner (Bittner, 1967, 2005; Bittner & Bish, 1975) who first pointed out that the police are in the unique position of being able to impose immediate solutions to the constant flow of small conflicts, irregularities and problems that need to be dealt with in society. Actual crime-fighting is only a fraction of what the police do – whenever there is “something-that-ought-not-to-be-happening-and-aboutwhich-someone-had-better-do-something-now!” (Bittner, 2005, p. 161) it is a task for the police. Because police officers develop skills for handling complex and ambiguous social environments by learning from colleagues and practice, they are better understood as craftsman rather than bureaucrats. The relationship between the police and the public is also partly characterised by efforts by the police to reaffirm their power and their ability to exercise this power and authority to varying degrees (Waddington, 1996a, 1996b). What characterises their activity is their authority and ability to coerce using force, where the ability to threaten force is often enough to control a situation (Skolnick, 1966). The police dramatise the appearance of control, manage the information available to judge their success, and seek to establish an appearance of unity of purpose. Because they desire public confidence, but they cannot show that they are successful with their mission of public control, they look to establish their authority and legitimacy by employing the sort of interpersonal communication strategies that Goffman (Goffman, 1958, 1961, 1967) so classically described (Manning, 1977). There are a variety of different types of police–citizen encounters: there are involuntary foot and road stops; there are citizens reporting a crime; there are third-party observers observing an officer patrolling the streets; and so on and so forth. Different dynamics can emerge and develop, even in short encounters, depending on the context, the behaviour of the

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citizens, and the behaviour of the officers. Take a police stop. In such an instance, in the words of Nagin and Telep (2017, p. 3): “Hostile and disrespectful behavior on the part of authority figures is likely to provoke an angry response or only grudging compliance with their orders”. Equally, hostile and disrespectful behaviour on the part of citizens is likely to provoke a more assertive show of authority from officers. Indeed, the levels of hostility, respect, compliance and resistance could ebb and flow over the course of a single encounter – e.g. an officer could encounter an initially friendly and compliant citizen, but the citizen could then turn less compliant to the officers requests, leading the officer to assert her authority in a stronger manner, with the citizen grudgingly backing down as a result. There can, as a result, be considerable ambiguity in the culpability, appropriateness and deservingness of police and citizen behaviour in a given encounter. To explore how different people make sense of policing, Waddington, Wright, Williams, and Newburn (2018) presented recordings of four different policing events to people taking part in a series of focus groups. There was a group of officers turning up at the scene of a robbery of an elderly man in his home; there was a group of officers stopping a suspected stolen car on the motorway; there was a suspected car theft in a supermarket car park; and there was a violent arrest outside a nightclub. The discussions that emerged from these focus group brought to life the fact that officers are both protectors and regulators; that discretion is fundamental to policing; and that the speed with which officers make sense of ambiguous and complex situations and apply legal categories can be dizzying to those of us who do not do this job. Waddington et al. (2018) also showed that the same encounter can be seen by different observers in quite different ways. While the evaluative criteria used by research participants were largely the same – people in the focus groups generally focused on (a) the procedural justice displayed by officers and (b) whether officers seemed to respect the limits of their rightful authority, particularly in the case of regulatory encounters involving violence or the potential for violence – there was striking variation in the application of these criteria. This variation often seemed to be linked to the degree to which research participants identified either with the citizen or with the officer. For instance, while an officer giving a second fine for the same traffic rules violation seemed reasonable to members of a neighbourhood watch, young offenders serving their community service believed that the officer was just “taking the piss” (Waddington et al., 2018, p. 61).

Why Might Prior Levels of Fairness and/or Legitimacy Play a Role in Fairness Perception? Procedural justice theory (PJT) is an increasingly popular theoretical approach through which to view police–community relations (e.g., Bradford et al., 2014; Tyler, 2006a, 2006b, 2009, 2017; Tyler et al.,

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2015; cf. Weisburd et al., 2019). With its central focus on what generates consensual rather than coercive relationships, PJT resonates strongly with the ideology of policing by consent. Premised on the idea that most people obey the criminal law most of the time because they think it is the “right thing” to do so, and not simply because it is in their own best interests to do so, core tenets of PJT – e.g. the idea that “fair” policing builds legitimacy and the idea that legitimacy enhances consent-based relationships between police and public – have become widely among some academics and policy-makers (e.g., Hough, Jackson, & Bradford, 2013; President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, 2015). PJT makes four main predictions: 1. that it is the style of social interaction and the neutrality of decision-making in encounters between individuals and justice officials that are crucial in shaping behaviour; 2. that the social bonds between individuals and institutions are strengthened when authorities make fair and neutral decisions, and when people are treated in ways that are recognised to be fair, respectful and legal – and not based on bias and stereotypes; 3. that out of these social bonds comes a sense that legal authorities are legitimate – that the police and courts have the right to power, the right to dictate appropriate behaviour, and are morally justified in expecting cooperation and compliance; and, 4. that legitimacy promotes normative modes of compliance and cooperation that are both more stable and more sustainable in the long run than models of policy based on deterrence, sanction and fear of punishment. PJT specifies the direction of causation as going from perceived procedural fairness to legitimacy. Yet, as outlined earlier, legitimacy could plausibly shape fairness perception. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder and different people might come to different conclusions about the same police–citizen interaction because their perceptions are influenced by subjective frames emergent from different previous experience. In this section we consider the idea that motivated cognition (Barclay et al., 2017) provides a framework through which we can develop a programme of research into police fairness perceptions. A Motivated Cognition Approach to Perceived Police Fairness According to Barclay et al.’s (2018) review, there are instrumental, relational and moral reasons why people care about fairness, and these different (instrumental, relational, and moral) motives can differentially focus attention on fairness-relevant information to either highlight or

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ignore unfairness. Non-directional goals are focused on accuracy and reaching the right conclusion – when activated, people make more effort to attend to and process information, use more complex rules, and so forth. Directional goals encourage people to use strategies (of attending to and processing information) that will help them reach a desired conclusion – they shape the beliefs and strategies that are used to guide and support conclusions (albeit with the constraint that the conclusions can be rationally justified). Non-directional and directional goals can operate at the same time, e.g. people could put more effort in, with the goal of reaching a desired conclusion. As Barclay et al. (2018, p. 13) also state: “These goals may also activate different emotions; instrumental motives may activate envy, relational motives may enhance loneliness, whereas moral motives can spark moral outrage.” What is the relevance of motivated cognition to police fairness perceptions? Instrumental motives start with the idea that when police act and make decisions in fair ways, this can help people feel that they have control over – and can more generally expect – beneficial outcomes (see, for example, Thibaut & Walker, 1975). Respectful treatment is more pleasant than disrespectful treatment, but it also signals to the justice recipient that she may receive a positive outcome from the interaction, and having a voice in the interaction helps her feel that she can avoid something negative happening, as does neutral and unbiased decision-making from the officer. How might instrumental motives shape the experience and perception of direct (personal) and indirect (third-party observer) police– citizen encounters. On the one hand, instrumental motives may shape someone’s behaviour in a personal (direct) encounter with an officer; she wants a positive outcome so she acts respectfully, is compliant, and so forth; and she pays self-interested attention to cues of fairness from the officer to ascertain whether she will benefit or avoid a negative outcome. On the other hand, instrumental motives may shape the perceptions of a third-party observer of a police–citizen interaction. As Barclay et al. (2018, p. 11) state: “…observing unfairness can spark self-interested concerns because observers want to avoid comparable treatment and/or have internalised the harm caused to another.” Instrumental concerns could motivate people in a non-directional way. Someone might put more effort into reaching as accurate a judgement as possible regarding the fairness of the officer to, for instance, avoid comparable treatment. Instrumental concerns could also motivate fairness perceptions in self-interested directional ways. One might be more likely to perceive unfairness when one identifies with the injustice recipient (Brockner & Greenberg, 1990) and feels that one’s own outcomes may be threatened in a similar encounter (Chaikin & Darley, 1973).

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Relational motives focus on the symbolic messages that fairness (particularly procedural justice) send to justice recipients regarding their status, value and inclusion/exclusion within the group that authority figures represent (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Lind, 1992). The superordinate group is plausibly “law-abiding members of the community” (Bradford et al., 2014) and relational motives could shape a person’s behaviour in a direct encounter with an officer: she wants to receive positive messages of her standing in the community, so she treats the officer with respect and dignity, shows deference to the uniform, and generally tries to signal to the officer that she is respectable. She would also pay attention to how the officer is behaving because of the relational issues at stake. As a third-party observer she might be motivated to perceive unfairness when she identifies with an injustice recipient – she internalises the negative relational message that is being sent to the other individual. Conversely, she may be more motivated to perceive fairness – she tries to avoid internalising the negative relational message so she views the injustice recipient as outside of her “scope of justice” (Opotow, 1990), blames the victim and identifies with the officer. Moral motives are about internalised values and norms. People care about fairness for moral reasons – they believe that the police should exercise authority in fair ways because that is the right thing to do. Procedural justice is a strong societal value dictating how authority should be exercised (Hough, Jackson, Bradford, Myhill, & Quinton, 2010; Stanko, Jackson, Bradford, & Hohl, 2012; Tyler, 2006a, 2006b) and there may also be a widely-shared belief that citizens should, in reciprocation, treat police with respect and deference. In a direct encounter, people with strong moral motives might be respectful and deferent because (a) that is the right thing to do and (b) it encourages reciprocity. People may also pay extra attention to the quality of treatment and decision-making of the officer. As a third-party observer, the extent to which individuals internalise these norms may shape directional goals regarding how they make sense of the fairness of the officer. If one observer believes that citizens should respect the police, any deviation from the expected level of deference from the (in)justice recipient might lead an observer to “side” with an officer and believe that the citizen got what she deserved. Conversely, the belief in a just world could be threatened when one sees unfairness, leading to moral outrage and a desire to restore justice (Skarlicki, O’Reilly, & Kulik, 2015). On the “Temporal Stickiness” of Perceived Police Fairness In addition to the possibility that there are instrumental, relational and moral motives to care about fairness that shape non-directional and directional goals of judgement, there may also be some kind of

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“temporal stickiness” at play in perceived police fairness. Once an individual has arrived at an initial judgement regarding the general fairness of police, this judgment may be difficult to change. One possibility is nicely elaborated in Allan Lind’s fairness heuristic theory (Lind et al., 2001; Van den Bos, Lind, & Wilke, 2001). Another, not mutually exclusive, explanation revolves the deference part of legitimacy. According to Lind (2001), people use fairness (not just procedural fairness, but also distributive and interactional fairness) as a short-cut to understanding the positive or negative nature of their relationship to a social group. Believing that one has been treated fairly encourages one to shift one’s perspective from the individual to the group. The social group could be something like an individual’s relationship to the organisation within which she works. The positive or negative relationship manifests itself in terms of levels of trust, acceptance of authority and rules, identification and the willingness to proactively cooperate. People need to quickly make decisions in the presence of a possible cost to cooperation and risk of exploitation, and the fairness heuristic helps them to do this. As Lind (2001, pp. 65–66) says: I am suggesting that people use overall impressions of fair treatments as a surrogate for interpersonal trust; that they refer to their impressions of fair or unfair treatment as they process the requests, demands, and potential obligations that are so much a part of social and organizational life. People use fairness judgments in much the same way that they would refer to feelings of trust – if they had an independent basis for forming trust – to decide how to react to demands in a long-standing personal relationship. It is important to note that I am not suggesting that people are generally conscious of either the social contract implicit in the foregoing discussion of the fundamental social dilemma or the solution of the dilemma through the use of fairness judgements. I am suggesting instead that over the course of socialization and especially in the course of learning about the potential costs and benefits of associating with and identifying with others, we come to use our impressions of fairness as a guide and to regulate our investment and involvement in various relationships to match the level of fairness that we experience. At the beginning of a group relationship, when someone first encounters authority figures, for instance, one begins a “judgment phase” in which one attends to signals of procedural, distributive and interactional fairness. Once a general justice judgement is formed, people shift to the “use phase”, in which the now relatively stable judgement guides not only trust, behaviour, identification etc, but also procedural, distributive

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and interactional fairness judgements. Importantly for the current discussion, the justice judgement is likely to be revised only when the relationship clearly seems to be changing or when an unexpectantly vivid, fair or unfair thing happens. As Lind (2001, pp. 70–71) describes: I am suggesting that once a general justice judgment, it will be assumed to be accurate, and any incoming information relevant to the fairness of treatment will be reinterpreted and assimilated to be congruent with the existing general fairness judgement. While fairness heuristic theory is clearly relevant to organisational group settings, how applicable might it be to police–citizen relations? Lind et al. (2001, p. 190) states that: “… the fairness heuristic is activated when people expect substantial interaction with a person or group (and thus run the risk of exploitation) or when they identify with a group or relationship (and therefore can suffer identity loss from exclusion).” While only a relatively small proportion of people in most societies may have “substantial interaction” with the police, identification with a superordinate law-abiding member of community group seems on the face of it to be meaningful for most people. The police can be considered condensation symbols of the state enforcing and maintaining order to the surrounding social world (Loader, 2008) and the police patrol the boundaries of respectability (Waddington, 1999). People may therefore be motivated to have a stable and positive relationship with the police and the demands that the police make on people’s behaviour. Thus, even though most people do not have significant early interactions with the police – they are socialised into the idea of the police and law through parents, teachers, the media, their peers, etc – they may nevertheless form a general justice judgement about the police that does not change very much, using the relatively stable heuristic to understand their own personal relationship with the police. Legitimacy may play a similar role in rendering fairness perceptions “sticky” and unlikely to change. As a perception of the rightfulness of the institution that officers embody – a structural quality that gives the individuals who hold the officer power and authority – legitimacy is typically defined and measured along two connected dimensions. The first is the belief that the institution is normatively appropriate, i.e. moral, just and appropriate within the given societal context. The second is the belief that the institution has the right to dictate appropriate behaviour, where individuals internalise the moral value that they should obey the police because they’re the police. Legitimacy means ceding the right of a power-holder to dictate appropriate behaviour – not only of citizens and police, but also the appropriate interpersonal dynamics between citizens and officers – and deference is

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about an individual respectfully submitting to the judgement of a power-holder. When it comes to people’s own experience, if people view the police as legitimate they will defer to them more readily; compliant behaviour from citizens reduces the propensity of officers to be more aggressive. With indirect experience with the police (as a thirdparty observer), it may be that legitimacy leads people to give the officer(s) the benefit of the doubt in the event of ambiguous dynamics and ignore or overlook unfairness. For example, it may not be abundantly clear to the third-party who instigated a turning point in which an officer moved from more respectful (consensual) language to more aggressive (coercive) language. An observer who viewed the police as a legitimate institution might reason that the officer was correct to act in the way she acted; deference means allowing the officer to decide how all those involved should rightfully behave (e.g. the movement to more assertive language was justified). In terms of non-directional (accuracy) goals, deference may mean that one makes little effort in attending to and processing information about fairness, assuming without much cognitive effort that the officer was fair. In terms of directional goals, deference may mean that one processes information in a way that comes down on the side of the officer. Perhaps one decides that the citizen was to blame for the dynamics of an interaction that meant that the police went in the direction of more assertive and aggressive behaviour?1 Just as the fairness heuristic might mean that it takes an unexpectedly fair or unfair encounter to move around someone’s general sense of police fairness, high levels of legitimacy might render people uncritical and/or unquestioning of police behaviour, whether specific or general. At the same time there is a fair amount of correlational criminological evidence regarding the asymmetry of impact of police–citizen interactions. In particular, negatively received encounters tend to correlated with a good deal lower levels of perceived trustworthiness, confidence and legitimacy, while positively received encounters tend to correlated with at best only slightly higher levels of perceived trustworthiness, confidence and legitimacy (Bradford, Jackson, & Stanko, 2009; Jackson et al., 2013; Skogan, 2006). Consistent with the idea that perceptions of fairness can change as a result of negative encounters with the police (which may be more likely to stimulate a shift in goals), a motivated cognition perspective suggests that fairness perceptions could change more readily, as Barclay et al. (2018, p. 8) outline: …motivated reasoning would suggest that a single shift in goals (e.g. from accuracy to feeling good) can just as easily lead to “phase shifting.” Applying a motivated perspective can allow predictions about the extent to which the new heuristic would be bound by

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both accuracy and directional goals, thereby providing a more finegrained approach to the phase shifting process. It is for future research to provide empirical evidence on what shapes fairness perceptions and how responsive trust, confidence and legitimacy is to people’s direct and indirect experience.

Identity and Power as Mechanisms for the Procedural Justice-legitimacy Relationship The second discussion point of the current chapter revolves around the social psychological mechanisms linking procedural justice to legitimacy. The standard approach to interpreting the impact of the experience of procedural justice and/or injustice on legitimacy focuses on norms of conduct and the normative appropriateness of an institution. Most criminological work looks only at the direct relationship from procedural justice to legitimacy, whereby people draw on information about procedural justice to infer that the institution that she represents is normatively appropriate. Procedural justice is a core societal value dictating the appropriate use of police authority, and when an officer is seen to act in procedurally fair ways, this enhances and/or maintains legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. However, it may be that social identity mediates some of the effect of procedural justice on legitimacy. There is a good deal of evidence that people care about procedural justice, in part because of the relational message conveyed by fair process (Blader & Tyler, 2009). As Blader and Tyler (2015) note: “Procedural justice conveys a positive message to justice recipients about their relationship with the entity enacting justice, whereas procedural injustice conveys a negative message about that relationship.” When an officer acts fairly in terms of decisionmaking processes and interpersonal treatment, this sends a message of status and value to the justice recipient, encouraging the justice recipient to identify with the social group that the police represent (Tyler & Blader, 2002, 2003) – as, perhaps, a law-abiding citizen (Bradford et al., 2014). When one merges one’s self-concept with a group with authority figures that make demands on one’s behaviour, one is motivated to legitimate those authority figures to help maintain one’s positive connection to the group. It may be that there is one more psychological mechanism linking procedural justice to legitimacy. It was Mentovich (2012) who first looked at the effect of the enactment of procedural fairness by highpower authorities on people’s psychological experience of power. Procedural fairness has a relational effect via the signalling of status and value, but it also has a relational effect via a “… community, equity prioritising cue…By emphasizing shared values, goals and equal

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entitlements, procedural justice may conceal the power structure of a given community in favor of a more communal perspective, resting on a perception of equality” (p. 15). By activating a communal rather than hierarchical schema, the experience of procedural justice reduces perceptions of differential power. This works through the heightened sense of control that procedural justice instils and the greater sense of in-group status. We define personal sense of power and autonomy as the subjective belief about one’s ability to have some sort of influence and agency in some future (hypothetical and actual) encounter with the police (Pósch et al., 2019). Why might personal sense of power and autonomy of behalf of individuals (in relation to the police) shape people’s perceptions of police legitimacy? Legitimacy transforms someone’s orientation towards the police away from coercive power (to arrest, to use violence, and so forth) towards a sense of willing and active consent to the demands that the police make over one’s freedom. This consent is most obviously with respect to enforcing the law, but it also refers to the police’s implicit and explicit claim to generally dictate appropriate behaviour. Legitimacy has been linked to greater empowerment of police powers (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003), the belief that the police do not view oneself as an object of suspicion (Tyler et al., 2015), and an acceptable of the right of the police to monopolise violence (Jackson et al., 2014). Criminologists talk about procedural justice policing being a consensual rather than a coercive mode of policing, where officers police as part of the community not against the community. Part of this dynamic may be the downplaying and/or concealing of the imbalance of power through procedurally fair treatment and decision-making. For example, making citizens feel that they are not an object of suspicion may encourage consent. For it to be true legitimacy, consent must be an active, autonomous choice, and there may be an important “sweet spot” in terms of how much coercive power one feels the police to have over oneself (and the extent to which one believes that the police look at oneself as an object to control). If one feels that one has little power, it may be difficult to willingly consent.

Statistical Tools to Estimate Causal Mechanisms To empirically test whether social identity and personal sense of power mediate some of the effect of procedural justice to legitimacy, one needs to estimate causal mediation. The focus on causal mechanisms in the social sciences is relatively novel, with Sampson, Winship, and Knight (2013) viewing causal mechanisms as one of the largest challenges of translating research findings to actual policy. They argue that while randomised controlled trials (RCTs) can establish strong internal

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validity and can derive unbiased average treatment effects from an intervention to the outcome, they come short in explaining why and how the intervention was (in)effective. This makes it challenging to assess the transferability and generalisability of the findings. In response, Sampson et al. (2013) recommend a greater focus on causal mechanisms for at least three reasons: (1) they can help disentangle real causes from confounders, (2) they can inform policy-makers why a certain route needs to be taken during the implementation, and (3) they permit comparison of alternative pathways by juxtaposing mechanisms. Others have also advocated focussing on causal mechanisms for methodological (Matsueda, 2017) and theoretical (Kirk & Wakefield, 2018) reasons. While it is difficult to come up with a single definition of causal mechanisms because of the multitude of philosophical approaches to causation (Beebee, Hitchcock, & Menzies, 2009), Hedström and Ylikoski (2010) put forward four notable characteristics shared by most definitions, where causal mechanisms: 1. … are construed by the causal effect or phenomenon that produced them (e.g., perceived legitimacy of the police is produced by the perception of procedural justice); 2. … are causal notions which correspond to the process that creates the effect of interest (e.g., procedural justice produces an effect on police legitimacy); 3. … establish structure, which makes the black box of causality transparent (e.g., initial views of procedural justice influence later views of procedural justice via the deferential aspect of police legitimacy); and, 4. … create a hierarchy, where certain effects precede other effects (e.g., procedural justice affects police legitimacy but not the other way around). The most confusing aspect of causal mechanisms is that they possess dual properties: they simultaneously describe the causal process and how certain effects arise (i.e., “how does perceptions of procedural fairness change over time?”) and produce the subsequent effect explaining why the intervention works (i.e., “why does procedural justice influence legitimacy?”). There are several methodological approaches, including focus groups and interviews (Haberman, 2016; MacQueen & Bradford, 2017), mixed methods (Johnson, Russo, and Schoonenboom 2017; Weller & Barnes, 2016), process tracing (Fairfield & Charman, 2017; Saylor, 2018), and network analysis (Papachristos et al., 2012; Papachristos, Wildeman, & Roberto, 2015), but they all have major limitations. For example, qualitative research has been primarily conducted ex post

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facto, addressing only cases that have turned out to be notable or startling (Carson & Wellman, 2017; Hassell & Lovell, 2015), while network analysis is still in its infancy and generally incapable of deriving causally interpretable effects (Ogburn, Sofrygin, Diaz, & van der Laan, 2017; VanderWeele, Ogburn, & Tchetgen Tchetgen, 2012). We advocate using a family of methods that has been largely developed in the past decade: the analysis of causal mediation and causal interactions (e.g., Imai, Keele, Tingley, & Yamamoto, 2011; Keele, 2015; VanderWeele, 2015). These methods rely on the potential outcome framework to describe causal effects by decomposing the average treatment effect and providing insight into the extent to which the treatment effect is mediated, is due to an interaction, or to do mediation and interaction together (VanderWeele, 2014). We consider a randomised experiment to mirror the virtual reality experiments we are planning to conduct to address the two gaps in the literature we have described in this chapter. We briefly discuss causal mediation analysis and causal interactions and effect heterogeneity. Then we demonstrate the use of these methods with an empirical example. Finally, we address some common criticisms regarding “reverse causality” and “third common causes”. Causal Mediation Analysis The intuition behind causal mediation analysis is similar to the mediation analysis routinely used in structural equation modelling (Baron & Kenny, 1986), postulating that the average treatment effect (or the total effect) can be decomposed into direct and indirect effects if the causal identification assumptions are met. The direct effect is the unmediated effect of the treatment on the outcome and the indirect effect is the part of the treatment effect that is transmitted by an intermediate variable towards the outcome. The traditional Baron and Kenny (1986) approach to mediation analysis suffers from several limitations, including (1) the assumption of unit-level effect homogeneity (the treatment effects need to be the same for each individual), (2) the linearity assumption (the additivity of the effects is not possible in non-linear models), and (3) the no-interaction assumption (the decomposition breaks down in the presence of a treatment-mediator interaction that affects the outcome). Causal mediation analysis can overcome these limitations by offering nonparametric identification of the direct and indirect effects that can effortlessly integrate the interaction. This permits more flexible modelling (Imai, Keele, & Tingley, 2010; Imai et al., 2011). For the causal identification of the direct and indirect effects the sequential ignorability assumption needs to be satisfied (Imai et al., 2010; Pearl, 2001). This is a set of no-unmeasured confounding

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assumptions (akin to matching) that states that, controlling for influential pre-treatment covariates, there is no unmeasured confounding for: 1. 2. 3. 4.

The treatment–outcome relationship The mediator–outcome relationship also controlling for the treatment The treatment–mediator relationship and also, There is no other mediator that has been affected by the treatment

From these assumptions, the first and third are satisfied in randomised experiments. However, there is no easy way to rule out that an unmeasured confounder might affect the relationship between the mediator and the outcome (second assumption). The fourth assumption can also be untenable in many instances as often multiple mediators are presumed to mediate the effect of the treatment on the outcome. This includes the procedural justice literature, wherein several studies into police legitimacy have been presumed to have two aspects: normative alignment and duty to obey (Jackson et al., 2012, 2013). The second assumption of the sequential ignorability assumption could be easily remedied by the manipulation of the mediator. Although there are special experimental designs, such as the crossover (encouragement) and parallel (encouragement) designs (Imai, Tingley, & Yamamoto, 2013; Pirlott & Mackinnon, 2016), which are ideally capable of direct manipulation of the mediator, these are usually difficult to implement and are less informative than a traditional experiment, as the point estimates are not estimable in all cases. Pósch (2019) used parallel (encouragement) design in the context of procedural justice policing that exemplifies the challenges of these techniques. Modelling multiple mediators at the same time is also a demanding exercise that requires either stricter parametric assumptions, more limited decomposition or complex model specification (Imai & Yamamoto, 2013; Kim, Daniels, & Hogan, 2018; VanderWeele & Vansteelandt, 2014). Pósch (2019) published a review of causal mediation analysis techniques with multiple mediators. The motivating example focused on police legitimacy as mediators of the effect of procedural justice on willingness to cooperate with the police. Causal Interactions and Effect Heterogeneity Studies with randomised experiments tend to focus on the “firstgeneration question”, which seeks to answer whether, and to what extent, a treatment had an effect on the outcome (i.e., average treatment effect). In comparison, a “second-generation question” investigates whether there are contexts which accentuate or attenuate a treatment effect or whether there are certain individual characteristics which make people more or less affected by the treatment (Na, Loughran, &

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Paternoster, 2015). In experimental studies, it is worth differentiating between three analytically equivalent but substantively different interactions: (a) design-induced causal interactions, (b) effect heterogeneity, and (c) causal interactions with third variables. Factorial and balanced conjoint experimental designs provide the most straightforward cases of design-induced causal interactions (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014; Egami & Imai, 2016; Liebe, Moumouni, Bigler, Ingabire, & Bieri, 2017). In such studies, multiple parameters are manipulated independently of each other and researchers are interested not only in the main effects of each parameter but also the potential causal dependency between them. A good example is Reisig, Mays, and Telep’s (2018) experiment where procedural justice and the outcome of the encounter were independently manipulated. Because each parameter is randomly allocated to the respondents, the emerging interactions are guaranteed to have causal properties. Factorial designs can determine whether the effects of certain treatments are better combined for increased effect or they are independent and hence can be introduced separately. Policy-makers often want to gain the best returns for their investment and effect heterogeneity can help identifying subpopulations which can benefit the most or least of a given intervention (Green & Kern, 2012; Imai & Ratkovic, 2013). For instance, evaluating the impact of the introduction of parental leave on subjective well-being is expected to find a larger positive effect on women than men, who are more likely to stay home with their newborn(s) after giving birth. In such cases, the lack of heterogeneity would be a potential cause for alarm regarding the policy. It is also possible, however, that certain subpopulations can suffer as an unintended consequence of an otherwise beneficial treatment. Legewie and Fagan (2019) found that as a side-effect of “Operation Impact”, the increased police activity in New York’s high crime areas had a statistically significant negative effect on educational performance, but only for older, male and African American students. Importantly, however, and unlike with factorial designs, effect heterogeneity cannot inform us whether the differential effects are due to the pre-treatment characteristic or another unmeasured factor associated with them. For instance, in case of Legewie and Fagan (2019) it is not possible to discern whether the change in effects was due to the students’ gender, age, ethnicity, all of them combined, or whether they were only proxies for the more important variable(s) (VanderWeele & Knol, 2014). Accordingly, knowing how the treatment effect varies across individuals or distinct groups can influence the decision which subpopulations (not) to target with a certain treatment for maximum returns. However, the emerging interactions (sometimes referred to as covariate average treatment effects or CATE) are not causal parameters. Another issue with treatment effect heterogeneity is that often a large number of covariates can be considered for interactions. Pósch’s

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(2019) article uses the Scottish Community Engagement Trial and demonstrates how a machine learning algorithm can estimate treatment effect heterogeneity in randomised experiments. A third and relatively rarely explored interpretation is causal interactions with third variables (Vanderweele, 2009a, 2009b). This approach considers cases where the effect of the intervention might be dependent on a third variable that – despite not being randomised itself – possesses causal properties. Take, for instance, the paternal leave policy discussed earlier, but instead of using gender as the other variable, consider the number of hours spent resting. It is conceivable that the effect of the parental leave policy might be dependent on whether it managed to secure more hours of rest for the caretakers. If the effect of the treatment is only “activated” in the presence of another third variable, these cases are referred to as “sufficient cause interactions” or “mechanistic interactions” (VanderWeele & Richardson, 2012). Thus, the reason why someone might want to consider this interpretation of the interaction is that certain times only the interaction between a randomised treatment and a third variable can produce (an augmentation of) the desired outcome. Crucially, effect heterogeneity and causal interactions with third variables only differ in the assumptions used. The derived conditional average treatment effects can only be considered true causal estimates if the relationship between the parental leave policy, “hours spent resting”, and subjective well-being has no unmeasured confounding, which usually requires a long list of covariates being entered to the model. In addition, the monotonicity assumption needs to be satisfied which is also a strong and untestable assumption (i.e., the interaction between treatment and a third variable cannot have the opposite effect for any individual – e.g., the parental leave cannot reduce the time spent resting for anyone) (VanderWeele & Knol, 2014).2 Notably, and as with causal mediation analysis, this model can be extended to more than two-way interactions as well (Vanderweele, 2009b). A Unified View of Causal Mechanisms and A Demonstration So far we have discussed causal mediation and causal interactions separately. When it comes to its relationship with perceived procedural fairness, perceived legitimacy can be either a mediator, a moderator, or both. As a mediator, prior levels of perceived procedural fairness of officers in general could be altered by direct or indirect experience with the police (specifically, the procedurally just or unjust actions of the officer involved), changing levels of general levels of perceived police procedural fairness, thereby changing levels of perceived legitimacy. In the next interaction with the police, perceptions of legitimacy could shape how people behave, thereby shaping the experience of procedural justice. As a moderator, legitimacy (specifically the deference part of the

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concept) may shape how people view the fairness of an officer in a direct or indirect encounter, thereby moderating the effect of that experience on subsequent levels of perceived procedural fairness in general (perhaps a more positive effect when deference is high and a less positive effect when deference is low). As outlined by VanderWeele (2014), it is possible to test both hypotheses simultaneously by relying on a four-way decomposition of the average treatment effect. This approach divides the total effect by isolating four components, the sum of which will be equal to the average treatment effect. Notably, this decomposition is only viable provided that the sequential ignorability assumption (outlined in the causal mediation section) is satisfied. The four components are: 1. The controlled direct effect (CDE) or the unmediated and unmoderated part of the average treatment effect 2. The reference interaction (RI) or an additive interaction between the treatment and the intermediate variable 3. The pure indirect effect (PIE) or the main (mediated) effect that goes through the intermediate variable towards the outcome 4. The mediated interaction (MI) where the mediated effect is dependent on an interaction between the treatment and the intermediate variable To demonstrate the utility of this approach, we use a recent online policing experiment where participants from the UK (Prolific Academic, n = 438) were shown pictures of either plain-clothes civilians (control) or police officers in uniforms (treatment).3 This experiment assessed whether the sheer (visual) presence of officers increased the legitimacy of the police (normative alignment and duty to obey). It had been assumed that any potential increase in legitimacy was due to stronger identification with the police (Bradford, 2014; Bradford et al., 2014). In other words, social identification with the police was chosen as the intermediate variable to explain why and how the treatment affected police legitimacy. Social identity was measured by a “Strongly disagree-Strongly agree” five-point Likert-scale, with three items: “I identify with the police”, “I feel similar to the police”, and “I feel a sense of solidarity with the police”. Normative alignment with the police was captured by a similar Likert-scale and three items: “The police generally have the same sense of right and wrong as I do”, “The police usually act in ways consistent with your own ideas about what is right and wrong”, “The police stand up for moral values that are important to people like me”. Finally, duty to obey the police was measured by a five-point “Not at all my duty– Completely my duty” Likert-scale. The prompt read “To what extent is it your moral duty to …”, which was followed by three items: “… back

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the decisions made by the police because the police are legitimate authorities?”, “… back the decisions made by the police even when you disagree with them?”, and “… do what the police tell you even if you don’t understand or agree with the reasons?”. Component scores were derived for these three scales using principal component analysis. The following covariates were controlled for in all models: gender, age, ethnicity, foreign-born/UK-born, nationality (British/other), political orientation (left-right scale and attitude towards Brexit), and criminal justice experience (citizen- or police-initiated contact, and victimisation in the past two years). Linear modelling strategy was pursued, and the standard errors were estimated with 1,000 bootstrap samples. The results are shown in Table 9.1. The average treatment effects of seeing pictures of police officers instead of civilians were significant both for normative alignment (ATE = 0.340, p < 0.001) and duty to obey (ATE = 0.275, p < 0.001) with a slightly higher effect size for the former. The decomposed ATEs of normative alignment and duty to obey showed a very similar picture. The unmediated and unmoderated part of the treatment effect (CDE) was significant for both normative alignment (CDE = 0.152, p < 0.01) and duty to obey (CDE = 0.139, p < 0.01). In comparison, the effect sizes of the reference interactions (normative alignment: RI = 0.009, p > 0.05; duty to obey: RI = –0.003, p > 0.05) and mediated interactions (normative alignment: MI = 0.017, p > 0.05; duty to obey: MI = 0.006, p > 0.05) were all non-significant and very close to zero. Simply put, there were no signs of causal dependencies either between the treatment and the intermediate variable, or the mediated effect, the treatment, and the intermediate variable. By contrast, the mediated effects on their own were significant

Table 9.1 Parameter Estimates from the Policing Experiment Effects Average Treatment Effect (ATE) Controlled Direct Effect (CDE) Reference interaction (RI) Pure Indirect Effect (PIE) Mediated Interaction (MI) *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

Normative alignment

Duty to obey

0.340*** [0.224, 0.456] 0.152** [0.064, 0.240] 0.009 [0.002, 0.019] 0.196*** [0.112, 0.279] 0.017 [0.035, 0.002]

0.275*** [0.171, 0.379] 0.139** [0.050, 0.228] 0.003 [0.013, 0.006] 0.133*** [0.077, 0.189] 0.006 [0.012, 0.024]

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for normative alignment (PIE = 0.196, p < 0.001), as well as duty to obey (PIE = 0.133, p < 0.001). These results imply, that the treatment effect of seeing pictures of police officers on police legitimacy was partially mediated by social identification with the police. Nevertheless, the significant direct effects suggest that social identification only partially explains how and why seeing the pictures increased subjective police legitimacy. Limitations: Addressing “Third Common Causes” and “Reverse Causality” Due to their direct relevance, we think it is best to discuss the limitations of the proposed methods through revisiting Nagin and Telep’s (2017) influential commentary on the state of the procedural justice literature. In their recent review, they argued that there is only limited and insufficient causal evidence for procedural justice policing. Despite Tyler’s (2017) powerful response, we largely agree with Nagin and Telep’s analysis, and we would encourage researchers to carry out more sophisticated causal analyses. Hence, we believe that it is useful to engage with two of Nagin and Telep’s criticisms: the issue of “third common causes” and “reverse causality”. Starting with “third common causes”, Nagin and Telep (2017, p. 7) voiced their scepticism whether police encounters can meaningfully affect subjective procedural justice and police legitimacy, or these attitudes cannot be disentangled from other influences, such as “extreme poverty, racial isolation, and various forms of social dysfunction”. If indeed the perception of procedural justice and police legitimacy are determined by other factors, such as the neighbourhood context or legal socialisation irrespective of police action, this can be an insurmountable problem. However, well-executed RCTs can address this issue through random assignment, which makes the treatment and control groups on average the same in all measured and unmeasured ways. In other words, random assignment can do away with third common causes making the average treatment effect a valid causal estimate. As pointed out in the discussion about causal interactions, this ought not to mean that certain personal characteristics (such as ethnicity) cannot have an influence creating potentially heterogeneous treatment effects. However, even in such cases, the available toolkit can readily examine and tackle the possibility of such effects (Green & Kern, 2012; Imai & Ratkovic, 2013). Third, common causes are more problematic in the case of causal mediation analysis and causal interactions, where the relationship between the mediator/interaction and the outcome could be possibly caused by an unmeasured confounder. As this is an untestable assumption, it is impossible to ascertain whether this was the case. Yet, there are still ways to address this limitation, such as adding a long list of

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potentially influential covariates to the model (akin to “comprehensive SEMs”, MacKinnon & Pirlott, 2015) and using sensitivity analysis techniques to quantify the robustness of the results (Cox, KisbuSakarya, Mio Evi, & MacKinnon, 2013; Imai et al., 2010; Pósch, 2019). Hence, future studies should establish sensitivity benchmarks making it possible to differentiate real and spurious effects. The issue of “reverse causality” – an oxymoron in the causal inference literature – only emerges in case of causal mediation analysis, where there is no empirical method which could tell whether the mediator caused the outcome or the other way around. There have been several unsuccessful attempts in the mediation analysis literature to quantitatively assess this problem (Spencer, Zanna, & Fong, 2005; Wiedermann & Sebastian, 2018) but most of them have been refuted (Bullock, Green, & Ha, 2010; Lemmer & Gollwitzer, 2017; Thoemmes, 2015) with the main issue being that this is also a non-testable assumption. There have been notable developments in statistics that allow distinguishing between cause and effect (Mooij, Peters, Janzing, Zscheischler, & Schölkopf, 2016), but these rely on restrictive and unrealistic assumptions such as deterministic relationship (i.e., no measurement error) and no unmeasured confounding, which only makes them usable in the natural sciences such as astronomy. An alternative way to test for “reverse causality” is through establishing temporal order. Indeed, some argue that causal mediation analysis ideally needs to be longitudinal (Preacher, 2015; Walters & Mandracchia, 2017), however, others dispute the necessity of this (Imai et al., 2010; VanderWeele, 2015). Yet longitudinal studies – even RCTs and traditional difference-in-differences analysis – are incapable of addressing the problem of “reverse causality”, because they can only control for time-invariant covariates such as age, gender, etc. (Imai & Kim, 2019). There are ways of evaluating cases with time-variant treatment and mediation (Clare, Dobbins, & Mattick, 2018; Daniel, De Stavola, & Cousens, 2011), but these cannot solve the problem either. Importantly, statistical (non-)significance can only provide an indication of the presence/absence of a theorised relationship, but not clear evidence of it. This means that even experiments that were designed to manipulate the mediator, such as the parallel (encouragement) design (Imai, Tingley, & Yamamoto, 2013; Pósch, 2019), cannot rule out “reverse causality”. Due to these intractable difficulties, and unless clear theoretical and temporal order can be irrefutably established, “reverse causality” remains both an untestable and unsolvable problem. As a result, the best thing researchers can do is to get some indication (but not proof) from the statistical significance of the results and make their a priori theorydriven case based on the existing empirical evidence.

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Discussion We started this chapter by outlining some of the complexities of police– citizen encounters. We then considered the dominant theoretical account of police–citizen relations: namely, procedural justice theory (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 2006a, 2006b; Tyler & Jackson, 2014). This led us to discuss two gaps in the literature. The first relates to fairness perception, particularly the idea (a) that different people can come to different conclusions regarding police fairness according to instrumental, relational and moral motives directing non-directional and directional goals, and (b) that social identity and personal sense of power may be two partial mediators of the procedural justice to legitimacy relationship. In the third section we provided a brief roadmap for future analysis, and we demonstrated that causal mediation and causal interaction analyses are effective tools to test the model of procedural justice policing outlined earlier. In summary, there are at least five reasons to pursue this approach: 1. Causal mediation and causal interaction analyses originate in Structural Equation Modelling, which is a commonly used modelling technique in the procedural justice literature, making the concepts discussed familiar to people working on the field. 2. These methods utilise the potential outcome framework which provides rigour and clarity regarding the modelling and causal identifying assumptions. 3. The methods discussed here decompose the average treatment effects estimated for RCTs, thus directly building on and extending existing analytical strategies. 4. Sensitivity analysis techniques are available for most methods which can quantify the robustness of the effects in relation to certain causal identifying assumptions, such as “unmeasured third causes”. 5. Finally, these models allow for more flexible modelling and weaker causal identifying assumptions compared to usual models of Structural Equation Modelling. Nevertheless, we want to end our chapter with a word of caution regarding causal mechanisms. Due to the stringent no unmeasured confounding assumptions, we do not recommend assessing causally mediating and moderating effects as an exploratory exercise. As with all rigorous scientific research, the first steps ought to be theory building, followed by empirical tests of associations, then assessment of the average treatment effects, and, only then should causal mechanisms be sought. Without extensive knowledge and clear understanding of the

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place of a construct in a broader causal hierarchy, it is difficult to determine whether emerging effects have true causal properties or are caused by influential unmeasured third sources. Therefore, scrutinising causal mechanisms is only advisable in case of well-developed theories that have been severely examined and are supported by ample empirical evidence. Fortunately, procedural justice policing is one of these mature theories, where testing causal mechanisms is a natural next step.

Acknowledgements The analysis and writing of this paper was funded by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council: •

ES/R011397/1. From Coercion to Consent: Social Identity, Legitimacy, and a Process Model of Police Procedural Justice.

Notes 1 In addition to the effect that legitimacy may have on fairness perceptions in the context of a single interaction, prior levels of legitimacy may also moderate the impact of a given encounter on subsequent beliefs about general police procedural fairness. More specifically, deference may encourage citizens to differentiate between one unjust police–citizen encounter and the general pattern of police behaviour. Even in the face of an unfair encounter, one gives the institution the benefit of the doubt, by discounting this particular officer’s behaviour as atypical and not representative of a general trend. 2 Although there have been models allowing to relax the monotonicity assumption, the standard tests of interaction do not apply to such cases (Vanderweele, 2009b). 3 The ethnicity of the officer was also manipulated but for the sake of simplicity we disregard this aspect now.

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Imai, K., Tingley, D., & Yamamoto, T. (2013). Experimental designs for identifying causal mechanisms. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A-Statistics in Society, 176(1), 5–51. Imai, K., Keele, L., & Tingley, D. (2010). A general approach to causal mediation analysis. Psychological Methods, 15(4), 309–334. Imai, K., Keele, L., Tingley, D., & Yamamoto, T. (2011). Unpacking the black box of causality: Learning about causal mechanisms from experimental and observational studies. American Political Science Review, 105(4), 765–789. Imai, K., & Kim, I. S. (2019). When should we use unit fixed effects regression models for causal inference with longitudinal data? American Journal of Political Science, 00(0), 1–24. Imai, K., & Ratkovic, M. (2013). Estimating treatment effect heterogeneity in randomized program evaluation. Annals of Applied Statistics, 7(1), 443–470. Imai, K., & Yamamoto, T. (2013). Identification and sensitivity analysis for multiple causal mechanisms: Revisiting evidence from framing experiments. Political Analysis, 21(2), 141–171. Jackson, J. (2018). Norms, normativity and the legitimacy of legal authorities: International perspectives. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 14, 145–165. Jackson, J., Bradford, B., Hough, M., Myhill, A., Quinton, P., & Tyler, T. R. (2012). Why do people comply with the law? Legitimacy and the influence of legal institutions. British Journal of Criminology, 52(6), 1051–1071. Jackson, J., Bradford, B., Stanko, E. A., & Hohl, K. (2013a). Just authority? Trust in the police in England and Wales. Oxon: Routledge. Jackson, J., Huq, A., Bradford, B., & Tyler, T. R. (2013b). Monopolizing force? Police legitimacy and public attitudes towards the acceptability of violence. Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 19(4), 479–497. Keele, L. (2015). Causal mediation analysis warning! Assumptions ahead. American Journal of Evaluation, 46(4), 500–513. Kim, C., Daniels, M. J., & Hogan, J. W. (2018). Bayesian methods for multiple mediators: Relating principal stratification and causal mediation in the analysis of power plant emission controls. Biostatistics, 1–36. Kirk, D. S., & Wakefield, S. (2018). Collateral consequences of punishment: A critical review and path forward. Annual Review of Criminology, 1(9), 1–24. Legewie, J., & Fagan, J. (2019). Aggressive policing and the educational performance of minority youth. American Sociological Review, 84, 220–247. 10.1177/000312241982602. Lemmer, G., & Gollwitzer, M. (2017). The ‘true’ indirect effect won’t (always) stand up: When and why reverse mediation testing fails. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 69, 144–149. Liebe, U., Moumouni, I. M., Bigler, C., Ingabire, C., & Bieri, S. (2017). Using factorial survey experiments to measure attitudes, social norms, and fairness concerns in developing countries. Sociological Methods & Research. First published online. Lind, E. A. (2001). Fairness heuristic theory: Justice judgments as pivotal cognitions in organizational relations. In J. Greenberg & R. Cropanzano (Eds.), Advances in organizational justice (pp. 56–88). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Lind, E. A., Kray, L., & Thompson, L. (2001). Primacy effects in justice judgments: Testing predictions from fairness heuristic theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 85(2), 189–210. Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Springer Science & Business Media. Lowrey, B. V., Maguire, E. R., & Bennett, R. R. (2016). Testing the effects of procedural justice and overaccommodation in traffic stops: A randomized experiment. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 43(10), 1430–1449. MacKinnon, D. P., & Pirlott, A. G. (2015). Statistical approaches for enhancing causal interpretation of the M to Y relation in mediation analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 19(1), 30–43. MacQueen, S., & Bradford, B. (2017). Where did it all go wrong? Implementation failure—and more—In a field experiment of procedural justice policing. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 13(3), 321–345. Matsueda, R. L. (2017). Toward an analytical criminology: The micro–macro problem, causal mechanisms, and public policy. Criminology, 55(3), 493–519. Mazerolle, L., Antrobus, E., Bennett, S., & Tyler, T. R. (2013). Shaping citizen perceptions of police legitimacy: A randomized field trial of procedural justice. Criminology, 51, 33–63. Mooij, J. M., Peters, J., Janzing, D., Zscheischler, J., & Schölkopf, B. (2016). Distinguishing cause from effect using observational data: Methods and benchmarks. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 17, 1–102. Murphy, T., Bradford, B., & Jackson, J. (2016). Motivating compliance behavior among offenders: Procedural justice or deterrence? Criminal Justice & Behavior, 43(1), 102–118. Na, C., Loughran, T. A., & Paternoster, R. (2015). On the importance of treatment effect heterogeneity in experimentally-evaluated criminal justice interventions. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 31(2), 289–310. Nagin, D. S., & Telep, C. W. (2017a). Procedural justice and legal compliance. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 13, 5–28. Nagin, D. S., & Telep, C. W. (2017b). Reponse to “Procedural justice and policing: A rush to judgment?”. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 13, 55–58. Ogburn, E. L., Sofrygin, O., Diaz, I., & van der Laan, M. J. 2017. Causal inference for social network data. Unpublished Manuscript, 1–43. Papachristos, V. A., Fagan, J., & Meares, T. L. (2012). Why do criminals obey the law? The influence of legitimacy and social networks on active gun offenders. The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 102(2), 397–440. Papachristos, A. V., Wildeman, C., & Roberto, E. (2015). Tragic, but not random: The social contagion of nonfatal gunshot injuries. Social Science and Medicine, 125, 139–150. Pearl, J. 2001. Direct and indirect effects. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, 411–420. Pirlott, A. G., & Mackinnon, D. P. (2016). Design approaches to experimental mediation ☆. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 66, 29–38. Pósch, K. (2019). Testing complex social theories with causal mediation analysis and G-computation: Toward a better way to do causal structural equation modeling. Sociological Methods and Research. First published online.

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10 Organizational Justice is Alive and Well and Living Elsewhere (But Not Too Far Away) Joel Brockner and Batia M. Wiesenfeld

Organizational justice refers to employees’ perceptions of fairness as well as the impact of such fairness perceptions on what they think, feel, and do in the workplace (Greenberg, 1987). In their overview of historical trends in the organizational justice literature, Colquitt, Greenberg, and Zapata-Phelan (2005) noted that it consisted of four waves, in the following chronological order. First, the distributive justice wave focused on outcome fairness (e.g., Adams, 1965). Second, the procedural justice wave concerned itself with the fairness of the methods used by authorities to make decisions (e.g., Lind & Tyler, 1988; Thibaut & Walker, 1975). Third, the interactional justice wave centered on the appropriateness of authorities’ interpersonal behavior while carrying out decisions (e.g., Bies, 1987). Fourth, the integrative wave examined the joint and often interactive effect of various elements of fairness (e.g., Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). Whereas the four waves differed in several respects, the emphasis in each was on the consequences of fairness. Having established the pervasive effects of fairness, organizational justice researchers have changed the paradigm in the years since the Colquitt et al. (2005) review, focusing heavily on the antecedents of fairness. Elsewhere, we referred to this shift as the “fifth wave” of organizational justice (Brockner, Wiesenfeld, Siegel, Bobocel, & Liu, 2015). Moreover, we provided a taxonomy to organize the many ways in which fairness has been and continues to be studied as a dependent variable. For instance, a spate of theoretical (e.g., Molinsky & Margolis, 2005; Scott, Colquitt, & Paddock, 2009) and empirical papers (e.g., Blader & Chen, 2012; Zhao, Chen, & Brockner, 2015) have sought to explain when and why managers will behave more versus less fairly. Nevertheless, it is our impression that theory and research considered to fall under the banner of organizational justice may have plateaued. Importantly, we are not suggesting that conceptual and empirical work in justice has become less relevant to the study of employees’ beliefs and behaviors. By way of clarifying the latter assertion, we refer to an observation made decades ago by Levine and Moreland (1990) in their

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review of small group research in social psychology. In a paragraph entitled, “Groups are Alive and Well, but Living Elsewhere,” Levine and Moreland wrote: Despite all the excellent research on small groups within social psychology, that discipline has already lost its dominance in this field. The torch has been passed to (or more accurately, picked up by) colleagues in other disciplines, particularly organizational psychology. They have no doubts about the importance of small groups and are often in the forefront of group research. So, rather than lamenting the decline of interest in groups, we should all be celebrating its resurgence, albeit in a different locale (1990, p. 620) We believe that a related point can be made about organizational justice: it, too, is alive and well but living elsewhere. Unlike Levine and Moreland (1990), however, we are not suggesting that the study of organizational justice is being dominated by scholars working in a different discipline; quite the contrary. Organizational psychologists continue to study justice-related matters with great vigor. However, they are doing so in related areas that are not explicitly labeled as “organizational justice.” Our chapter’s purposes are two-fold. First, we describe a host of literatures in organizational psychology which are undergirded by notions of fairness or key constructs from the organizational justice literature. We make no attempt to be exhaustive. Rather, we have selected topic areas that help us to achieve our second goal, which is to show how theory and research in these related literatures contribute to our understanding of organizational justice. We seek to dismantle the boundaries between these literatures in the service of enhancing scientific progress.

Chapter Overview One way to organize many of the areas we discuss centers on the aspect of fairness that is emphasized: distributive justice, procedural justice, or interactional justice. Given that the first three waves of justice theory and research appeared in that particular order (Colquitt et al., 2005), we follow suit here. First, we consider two bodies of work that pertain to distributive justice: (1) the consequences of organizational practices that are designed to engender greater outcome fairness for groups that have historically been disadvantaged (women and minorities), and (2) research on how people react to the experience of privilege, in which outcomes are construed as undeservedly positive. Next, we discuss an emerging literature related to procedural justice: employee voice and

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 215 silence. Initially, procedural justice was equated with voice (Thibaut & Walker, 1975), that is, whether authorities allowed people to have input into decisions affecting them. More recently, organizational scholars have been examining voice differently (Morrison, 2014). Rather than studying authorities granting voice to their subordinates, researchers have investigated the causes and consequences of whether employees take it upon themselves to provide input or to remain silent. We then consider a body of work on interactional justice, or more specifically, the effects on employees of various manifestations of low interpersonal fairness: abusive supervision, workplace incivility, and harassment. Two other areas we describe do not necessarily emphasize different aspects of justice but do shed light on the practically and theoretically important question of how injustice may be perpetuated. Specifically, we discuss evidence showing that: (1) when people behave ethically or fairly, they may be subsequently less likely to behave ethically or fairly, and (2) when employees are subjected to flawed (e.g., unfair) organizational practices they may engage in system justification and thereby react in surprisingly supportive ways towards their organization, rather than respond negatively. We conclude by providing commentary on the work reviewed herein and by offering a broader agenda for future research. Distributive Justice How Redressing Distributive Injustice May Be Easier Said Than Done. Minorities and women have long been the recipients of distributive injustice when it comes to hiring, promotion, and compensation (Catalyst, Inc., 2013; Diversity, Inc. staff, 2012). This is the case even though various organizational initiatives intended to level the playing field have been introduced. Castilla and Benard (2010) raised a related and more intriguing possibility: the presence of organizational practices intended to level the field can heighten the very distributive injustices that they were designed to remedy. For example, presumably one way to counter gender bias is to adopt a meritocratic reward system in which employees are compensated in proportion to their contributions. Indeed, this is part of how Adams (1965) defined equity in his seminal theory of distributive justice. As Castilla and Benard suggested, the equity principle also known as meritocracy “has been culturally accepted as a fair and legitimate distributive principle in many advanced countries and organizations” (p. 543). Castilla and Benard (2010) asked participants to make pay raise recommendations for equally high-performing men and women, while having participants consider the cultural values of their organization. Half of the participants were led to believe that their organization valued meritocracy (“All employees are to be rewarded fairly,” and

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“Raises and bonuses are based entirely on the performance of the employee”). The other half in the control condition were told that the organization had values that were neutral rather than decidedly nonmeritocratic (“All employees are to be evaluated regularly,” and “Raises and bonuses are to be given based on the discretion of the manager”). The results of three studies showed that participants’ pay raise recommendations were significantly higher for men than women in the meritocratic condition but not in the control condition. Another presumed way to counter unfair treatment of women and minorities is for organizations to explicitly indicate that they are committed to diversity. Kaiser et al. (2013) noted that organizations have a variety of ways (“diversity structures”) to signal their interest in promoting diversity, such as adopting diversity statements, instituting mandatory diversity training, and publicizing when they have won diversity awards. Across six studies, Kaiser et al. found that participants (always white men) rated organizations as more fair when they adopted a diversity structure relative to when they did not. Ironically, this tendency held even when there was clear evidence that the organizations were treating historically underrepresented groups (minorities, women) distributively unfairly. Originally, organizations’ diversity statements were directed towards legally protected categories of employees, most notably women and minorities. For example, as one law firm put it, Our philosophy is simple: include women and minority lawyers at all levels of firm leadership and promote diversity in the legal profession. Our talented mix includes minority and women lawyers serving as heads of offices, members of the firm’s Board of Directors and management team, and chairs of some of the firm’s most important practice groups (Akinola et al., 2019) More recently, however, many organizations have adopted broader definitions of diversity (Akinola et al., 2019) which include dimensions that are not legally protected (e.g., personality traits and worldviews). For example, as another law firm indicated, diversity is not simply a philosophy; it is about who we are and how we do business, both with our clients and with each other. We strongly believe that diversity in perspectives, backgrounds and experiences enhances the quality of our work and augments our lives, and we are resolute in our mission to continue to weave difference into the fabric of the firm. (Akinola et al., 2019)

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 217 At first blush, it may seem that organizations that have adopted broader definitions of diversity are making a greater effort to foster a sense of inclusion among their employees, which is a cardinal element of fair treatment (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Lind, 1992). However, in several studies Akinola et al. (2019) found that organizations with broader definitions of diversity had fewer women and minority employees in their ranks relative to organizations that defined diversity based on legally protected categories. Akinola and her colleagues speculated that the adoption of broader definitions of diversity makes organizations less focused on groups that are legally protected and/or more focused on groups that are not legally protected. Consistent with the results of Castilla and Benard (2010), these findings suggest that even when organizations adopt policies intended to redress distributive injustice they may reinforce or heighten the injustice rather than reduce it. Privilege While the desired states of equality, diversity, and inclusion in work organizations have yet to be fully realized, continuous progress has been made in the representation of women and minorities both in the workforce in general and in managerial ranks in particular (Dobbin, Schrage, & Kalev, 2015). In US-based work organizations, overt discrimination based on racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice has become quite rare. Instead, negative attitudes toward minorities and women are more likely to emerge in covert and suppressed forms, such as modern racism and implicit bias (Noon, 2018). Yet, inequality in our institutions and organizations may as easily result from the distributive injustice that benefits some groups as it does from the distributive injustice that harms other groups. Reflecting this recognition, scholarly attention has begun to focus on the prevalence of privilege, in which dominant or high-status groups receive unearned or unfair advantages (Branscombe, 1998; Lowery, Knowles, & Unzueta, 2007; McIntosh, 1989; Phillips & Lowery, 2015). This shift from a focus on the attitudes, behaviors, and policies that generate distributive injustice that disadvantages to the dynamics that generate distributive injustice that advantages may provide insight into a neglected antecedent of inequity, making the relationship between privilege and distributive injustice explicit (e.g., Lowery, Chow, Knowles, & Unzueta, 2012; Lowery et al., 2007). Initial research in this area focused on gender (Branscombe, 1998) and race (i.e., white privilege; Knowles & Lowery, 2012; Lowery et al., 2012, 2007). These studies examined the psychological reaction of beneficiaries of privilege when their group-based privilege was made salient to them (e.g., Branscombe, 1998; Knowles & Lowery, 2012; Phillips & Lowery, 2015). Salient unearned group-based privilege calls into question the extent to which people are deserving of the outcomes

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they receive, and thus raises the possibility that their outcomes are not fair, but rather reflect undeserved advantage. Consistent with this reasoning, research has found that Whites who endorse meritocracy are more likely to deny the existence of white privilege (Knowles & Lowery, 2012). Notably, perceiving that one is the beneficiary of unfair over-advantage may be self-threatening, suggesting that people are motivated to maintain the perception of distributive justice at least partially to protect their positive self-views (Lowery et al., 2007; Unzueta & Lowery, 2010). To illustrate the psychological implications of benefitting from white privilege, in two studies Phillips and Lowery (2015) manipulated the salience of white privilege by giving some Whites information about the prevalence of group-based advantages for Whites relative to Blacks. They then created an opportunity for participants to report the extent to which they experienced life hardships in the past. The results showed that participants were more likely to claim personal hardships when white privilege was made salient, suggesting that such claims are motivated by beneficiaries’ desire to perceive their (at least partially unearned) outcomes as fair and deserved. In a third study in which selfaffirmation was also manipulated, the opportunity to self-affirm reversed the prior pattern: participants given an opportunity to selfaffirm showed marginally less propensity to claim personal hardship when white privilege was made salient to them whereas in the control condition salience of white privilege continued to be associated with the claiming of personal hardship. This pattern of findings suggests that acknowledging white privilege is self-threatening to Whites. It might be especially so among those who have stronger meritocracy beliefs (Knowles & Lowery, 2012) and those whose White racial identity is stronger (Lowery et al., 2007). Denial of white privilege also has implications for the basis of Whites’ support for redistributive policies designed to rectify inequity, such as affirmative action. Affirmative action can be framed as a way of reducing advantage for Whites or as a means of reducing disadvantage for Blacks. People who acknowledge White privilege were more likely to support affirmative action policies that were described as reducing White advantage, but not when those same policies were described as reducing Black disadvantage (Lowery et al., 2012). Recent work suggests that class-based privilege may operate similarly to White and male privileges (Phillips & Lowery, 2019). Across nine experiments, when class privilege was made salient people were more likely to claim that they had suffered from life hardships, presumably to protect the self from acknowledging that the outcomes they enjoy may be undeserved. Indeed, as with White privilege, engaging in selfaffirmation attenuated the tendency to claim life hardships when class privilege was made salient than when it was not. Research has also

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 219 begun to consider privilege as an antecedent of subjective perceptions of fairness (Phillips & Jun, 2019). While both negative group-based disadvantage (e.g., racism) and positive group-based advantage (e.g., privilege) are forms of unfairness, Phillips and Jun found that their impact on people’s fairness perceptions were asymmetrical. Specifically, people perceived advantage or privilege as less unfair than disadvantage and were less likely to define group-based privilege as discrimination. The research on privilege extends justice theory and research in several ways. While justice theory has long acknowledged that inequity can take the form of unfair over-advantage as well as unfair underadvantage (Pritchard, 1972), the vast majority of justice studies has focused on situations in which outcomes are unfavorable, in which people receive less than they expected or desired (cf. Blader, Wiesenfeld, Fortin, & Wheeler-Smith, 2013; Brockner, Davy, & Carter, 1985). Research on privilege directs needed attention toward the psychology induced by perceptions of undeserved and therefore unfair advantage. While prior justice research has shown that being on the receiving end of low procedural fairness may be experienced as self-threatening (Wiesenfeld, Brockner, & Martin, 1999), the research on privilege offers parallel evidence that being advantaged unfairly may also be experienced as self-threatening. In highlighting unfairness directed toward one’s group, the research on privilege also draws attention to how justice recipients may be collectives rather than the individual, who have been the focus of justice research in the past. Furthermore, the types of privilege that have received attention in the literature to date (e.g., male privilege, white privilege, class privilege) remind us that organizations are embedded in a broader society that is stratified in myriad ways. Work organizations are responsible for many of the resource allocation decisions (e.g., pay, benefits, and promotion opportunities) that give rise to inequality in society at large (e.g., the distribution of income, wealth, and power). Moreover, the causal arrow also flows in the opposite direction: societal norms and historical precedent shape organizational decisions that give rise to that very inequality. Procedural Justice Employee Voice and Silence Voice, the process of allowing decision recipients to offer their input, is one of the most prominent dimensions of procedural justice. Potentially empowering recipients, voice is the dimension that perhaps best reflects Thibaut and Walker’s (1975) notion of process control. Moreover, the possibility that recipients’ input may have an impact on current or future decisions even holds the promise of some

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influence over decision outcomes themselves (i.e., a form of decision control). One recurrent focus of attention in the justice literature is the effects of voice opportunity, or the availability of systems and processes allowing recipients to provide input (ranging from managers’ direct requests to the availability of ombudspersons or suggestion boxes). Another is voice instrumentality, or decision makers’ use of that input to shape their decisions (e.g., Folger, 1977; McFarlin & Sweeney, 1996; Tyler, Rasinski, & Spodick, 1985). The justice literature implicitly assumes that voice opportunity and voice instrumentality are generally controlled by decision makers and are experienced or reacted to by decision recipients. A growing literature on voice and silence has emerged with roots in justice theory (Morrison, 2014) and Hirschman’s (1970) work on responses to organizational decline. It differs from the justice research on voice in that it focuses on the proactive voice behaviors of employees. Voice in this context is most commonly defined as informal or discretionary input about workplace issues intended to bring about improvement or change (Morrison, 2014). Merely complaining or resisting change is not voice (cf. Maynes & Podsakoff, 2014). Thus, unlike in traditional justice theory and research (e.g., Lind & Tyler, 1988; Thibaut & Walker, 1975), the voice and silence literature envisions employees as taking charge and influencing the organization rather than merely behaving as passive recipients waiting for invitations to provide input. Two different forms of proactive voice have attracted research attention: (a) promotive voice, in which employees speak up about their ideas and creative suggestions for improvement; and (b) prohibitive voice, in which employees speak up in a challenging but constructive way about troublesome behaviors and practices, including but not limited to injustice (Morrison, 2014). Prohibitive voice (sometimes referred to as remedial voice) is the form that overlaps most heavily with the justice literature, in which voice is generally seen as an opportunity to prevent or reverse an injustice. Early work in the voice and silence literature focused primarily on prohibitive voice in a variety of forms (whistle-blowing, constructive criticism, etc.) and thereby explicitly addressed its connection to procedural justice. For example, research on employee participation in performance appraisals shows that people have stronger positive reactions to their appraisals (i.e., higher satisfaction, perceived fairness, and perceived utility of the appraisal) when their participation is value-expressive (intended to offer insight into their experiences, perceptions and beliefs) rather than instrumental (intended to influence the outcome of their specific performance appraisal; Cawley, Keeping, & Levy, 1998). Research on silence defined it as the failure to speak up in response to perceived injustice (Pinder & Harlos, 2001). This research differentiated recipients’ passive

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 221 tolerance of injustice (labeled acquiescence) from their passive disapproval (labeled quiescence), both of which could reflect silence. Recent meta-analytical evidence suggests that as the literature on voice and silence has evolved, promotive voice has become a more common area of inquiry than prohibitive voice (Chamberlin, Newton, & Lepine, 2017). Both forms of voice are perceived as risky because they involve speaking up to advocate for change, and thus are likely to be threatening to those invested in maintaining the status quo. Supervisors, who are common targets of proactive voice behavior, may perceive voice on the part of their subordinates as criticism, perhaps especially when voice is prohibitive because such forms of speaking up draw attention to problematic policies and practices for which managers may feel responsible. Promotive and prohibitive voice diverge most clearly with respect to their consequences. Whereas engaging in promotive voice has repeatedly been found to improve ratings of job performance, engaging in prohibitive voice appears to have a negative effect on ratings of job performance (Chamberlin et al., 2017). Notably, in this research job performance is frequently measured via supervisor evaluations, which are likely to be influenced by the degree to which managers feel threatened by the expression of voice. While the literature on promotive voice has diverged somewhat from its origins in justice theory and research, the justice literature has much to learn from this work. Perhaps the most important message to justice scholars is that fairness can be actively enacted not only by decision makers, who may provide opportunities for voice to their subordinates, but also by lower level employees, who may be anything but passive recipients. In our recent review of justice as dependent variable (Brockner et al., 2015), we noted that in principle it is possible to examine recipients’ fairness judgments, their desire for fairness, and their fairness behaviors. However, in prior waves of justice theory and research (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2005), there has been relatively little research on the fairness behaviors of decision recipients. This neglected part of the story seems to be “alive and well and living elsewhere” with one location being the voice and silence literature. The notion that fairness is the product of a social negotiation process with active engagement by those who are directly impacted by decisions (as well as by decision makers) also offers insight into the fundamental social dilemma highlighted in fairness heuristic theory (Lind, 2001). The nature of the dilemma is that whenever decision recipients are inclined to cooperate with authorities they also may be concerned about their vulnerability to exploitation by those with power. Being treated fairly helps alleviate those concerns by enhancing trust in authorities. We surmise that fairness, and perhaps trust itself, also may be determined by the proactive behaviors of the very recipients who are vulnerable to exploitation. The implications of this possibility for how the

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fundamental social dilemma is experienced and resolved have not been sufficiently explored. Future insight can also be derived from reconciling the consistent finding in the voice literature suggesting that prohibitive voice has negative effects on job performance (Chamberlin et al., 2017) with meta-analytic findings in the justice literature suggesting that voice has positive effects on job performance (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001). It is possible that perceived voice opportunity, commonly studied in justice research, is motivating to those on the receiving end of the opportunity and thus enhances performance. On the other hand, when people respond to the opportunity to provide input it may be experienced as threatening by supervisors, who lower their subjective perceptions of employee performance as a result. Managers who offer employees the opportunity to provide input but then punish those who avail themselves of that opportunity may not be perceived as authentically open to input (Roloff, Brockner, & Wiesenfeld, 2012). Clearly, further research is needed to evaluate the relationships between giving employees the opportunity to express voice, whether employees take it upon themselves to express voice, how they do so, and subsequent outcomes for both employees and employers alike. Interactional Justice Abusive Supervision and Workplace Incivility Two research topics in which organizational justice looms large are abusive supervision and workplace incivility. There are many parallels in the development of these two literatures. The earliest articles in these streams appeared at approximately the same time, with Tepper’s empirical study on the consequences of abusive supervision published in 2000 and Andersson and Pearson’s conceptual analysis of workplace incivility published in 1999. Many studies have appeared in both areas in the ensuing decades (more so for abusive supervision than workplace incivility), summarized in review articles by Tepper, Simon, and Park (2017) on abusive supervision and by Schilpzand, DePater, and Erez (2014) on workplace incivility. Both constructs refer to a component of the broader concept of interactional justice, which was originally introduced by Bies (1987) and his colleagues (Bies & Moag, 1986; Tyler & Bies, 1990). The component of interactional justice known as interpersonal fairness is defined as “the degree to which people are treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by authorities or third parties involved in executing procedures or determining outcomes” (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001, p. 427). Abusive supervision and workplace incivility reflect low levels of interpersonal fairness.

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 223 One of the useful extensions offered by research on abusive supervision and workplace incivility is its specification of behavior that is impolite, undignifying, and disrespectful. This specification can be found in two of the most widely used measures, namely, the Abusive Supervision Scale developed by Tepper (2000) and an updated version of the Workplace Incivility Scale (Cortina, Kabat-Farr, Leskinen, Huerta, & Magley, 2011), which was originally published by Cortina, Magley, Williams, and Langhout (2001). These scales consist of numerous examples of behaviors that are disrespectful and impolite. One clear difference between abusive supervision and workplace incivility is the source of the negative interpersonal treatment. Whereas abusive supervision is shown by those in positions of authority, the perpetrator of workplace incivility may not only be those in authority positions but also co-workers and even customers. Another alleged difference between the two is the perceived intensity/ intentionality of the behavior. As Schilpzand et al. (2014) put it, “The seemingly related constructs of aggression, bullying, and abusive supervision are more overt, and therefore, targets of these behaviors more easily interpret them as purposely intended” (p. S57). However, the items appearing in the measures of abusive supervision and workplace incivility do not necessarily suggest that the perceived intentionality/ intensity of the behaviors comprising abusive supervision is greater than those reflecting workplace incivility. Indeed, several items from the two scales are quite similar. For example, abusive supervision includes, “gives me the silent treatment,” “tells me I’m incompetent,” and “is rude to me,” whereas workplace incivility includes, “ignored you or failed to speak to you (e.g., gave you “the silent treatment”),” “accused you of incompetence,” and “made insulting or disrespectful remarks about you,” respectively. Authors of the seminal works on abusive supervision and workplace incivility clearly indicated that they drew heavily from theory and research on organizational justice. Tepper (2000) predicted and found that various forms of organizational justice (interactional primarily but also procedural and distributive) mediated the tendency for more abusive supervision to elicit more negative attitudes (lower job and life satisfaction) and affective reactions (greater depression, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion). In their analysis of the incivility spiral, Andersson and Pearson (1999) suggested that it begins with low interpersonal fairness: “When norms concerning demeanor, consideration, and politeness are not met, perceptions of unfairness concerning interpersonal treatment occur. Perceptions of interactional injustice then create negative affect and stimulate a desire to reciprocate the perceived unfair act” (p. 458, 460). However, as suggestive evidence that research on abusive supervision and workplace incivility may have lost track of their ancestry in the organizational justice literature, none of the

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foundational pieces of interpersonal fairness by Bies and his colleagues (Bies, 1987; Bies & Moag, 1986; Tyler & Bies, 1990) is cited in the recent review articles of abusive supervision (Tepper et al., 2017) and workplace incivility (Schilpzand et al., 2014). Scholarship in these two areas offers important insights for justice research. For instance, whereas the bulk of the evidence has shown how the work attitudes and behaviors of recipients are adversely affected by these two forms of interpersonal mistreatment, Porath and Erez (2009) showed that merely witnessing others being treated rudely causes witnesses to experience negative affect and consequently to perform poorly on routine and creative tasks. These results suggest that the harmful influence of workplace incivility may be quite far-reaching indeed, given that an act of incivility directed towards a single individual may be witnessed by many others. Moreover, one of the more interesting findings in the abusive supervision literature is that the negativity of recipients’ reactions depends upon how the boss behaves towards the recipient’s peers. The more that the boss also behaves abusively towards the peers of the focal recipient, the less likely is the recipient to feel singled out or take the abuse personally, thereby attenuating its negative effects on the recipient (Tepper et al., 2017). The latter finding is reminiscent of anecdotal evidence from the world of sports. Commenting on the leadership style of the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, one of his players famously proclaimed: “He treats us all equally – like dogs.” The literature on workplace incivility opens new pathways for justice researchers by emphasizing that multiple parties including but not limited to bosses can serve as sources of mistreatment (e.g., peers, subordinates, and customers). This contrasts with the modal paradigm in organizational justice, which examines how those in positions of authority influence their subordinates. In other words, future research on workplace incivility provides an opportunity to address an important error of omission, as reflected in the following assertion by Rupp, Shapiro, Folger, Skarlicki, and Shao (2017): “[e]ven work that has argued for the consideration of multiple sources (or foci) of justice … has tended toward studying organizational and supervisory sources of justice as opposed to considering how team members treat each other” (p. 233). Given that workplace incivility can be exhibited by multiple sources, an intriguing question for future research is whether the same act of incivility is differentially impactful as a function of from whence it came. An important assumption of uncertainty management theory (Van Den Bos & Lind, 2002) is that people are especially likely to be influenced by the (un)fairness shown by those upon whom they see themselves as dependent. Therefore, on the one hand it may seem that workplace incivility will have more of an adverse effect on employees’

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 225 attitudes and behaviors when it comes from bosses, who have the power to influence outcomes employees care about (e.g., pay, promotion, and desirable work assignments). On the other hand, justice theory and research have shown that employees also care about relational considerations such as feeling valued and included (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler & Lind, 1992). If so, then incivility coming from a peer may be just as, if not more, bothersome than that coming from a boss, especially when the peer is seen as prototypical, in which case the peer’s incivility may be perceived as emblematic of how the recipient is viewed by many of his/her peers. Yet another possibility is that incivility expressed by a boss versus a peer may elicit negative reactions that vary less in intensity and more in the reasons why the incivility does so. Incivility from their bosses heightens employees’ concerns about receiving tangible outcomes whereas incivility from their peers threatens employees’ desire to feel valued and included. A form of negative deviance even more extreme than abusive supervision and workplace incivility is bullying and harassment at work. Recently, gender-based and sexual harassment have drawn attention which, thanks to the #MeToo movement, has cast a spotlight on their prevalence and harmful effects. While much of the literature on harassment has failed to explicitly connect to organizational justice theory, a handful of studies do relate harassment to perceived unfairness. Moreover, the effect of harassment on workplace outcomes such as attitudes and behaviors toward the organization, one’s job, and the perpetrator may be mediated by justice perceptions (see Bowling & Beehr, 2006, for a review and meta-analysis). Bowling and Beehr (2006) further suggest that victims’ attributions for the harassment explain the relationship between harassment and victims’ perceptions of different forms of justice. Harassment attributed to the organization, its culture, policies and procedures likely lead to perceptions of procedural and distributive injustice, while harassment attributed to a single alleged perpetrator (e.g., someone like Harvey Weinstein) are likely to lead to perceptions of interactional injustice. Interestingly, when victims attribute harassment to themselves, Bowling and Beehr (2006) report that injustice is less likely to be perceived, a finding consistent with just world theory (Lerner, 1980). Scholars who study workplace harassment examine a set of reactions that go beyond the workplace, including general stress and well-being as well as other physical and mental health indicators (Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007). Justice scholarship may be informed by considering this expanded set of dependent variables over and above the ones commonly considered in justice research, such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and work motivation. Prior justice research has shown that fair procedures accompanying unfavorable outcomes may buffer against

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harmful effects on organizationally directed dependent variables (e.g., commitment) while simultaneously heightening negative responses on self-directed dependent variables (e.g., self-esteem; Brockner, 2002). More generally, justice research may fruitfully explore the spillover effects of workplace fairness on dependent variables that are less relevant to the workplace (e.g., Elovainio, Kivimaki, & Vahtera, 2002).

Additional Evidence that Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well and Living Elsewhere The large literatures on ethics and system justification provide further support for our central thesis that organizational justice is alive and well and living elsewhere. Moreover, both provide empirical extensions to the organizational justice literature while simultaneously delineating processes that help to explain the perpetuation of injustice. Ethics Organizational research on ethics has proliferated in the past two decades (e.g., Ariely, 2012; Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2012; Darley, Messick, & Tyler, 2001). Ethics and justice are tightly interwoven. Partand-parcel of what it means to be ethical is to be guided by issues of morality or fairness. Moreover, part-and-parcel of whether a decision is fair is based on ethical considerations. For example, one of Leventhal, Karuza, and Fry’s (1980) criteria for determining whether a decisionmaking process is fair is the “ethicality” rule, which refers to the extent to which the process is in alignment with people’s fundamental values. The ethicality rule of procedural fairness is predicated on the notion that people’s fairness judgments reside in their larger personal context of moral and ethical values. Whereas it is beyond our scope to show how organizational justice is being examined in all theory and research on ethics, we have selected one phenomenon that has attracted a great deal of interest and that has also yielded intriguing results. More specifically, recent studies have shown that when people behave ethically/fairly at Time 1 it can make them less likely to behave ethically/fairly at Time 2 (Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010). The fact that the same individuals can show widely varying forms of ethical behavior has long fascinated psychologists, philosophers and even novelists. Indeed, the title of one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s most famous works was, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (our emphasis added). However, theory and research suggest that the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde may not be so strange after all. Behaving ethically like Dr. Jekyll can activate psychological processes that make people more likely to behave unethically like Mr. Hyde.

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 227 Recent research by Lin, Ma, and Johnson (2016) showed that when supervisors behaved ethically towards their subordinates they were more likely to behave abusively towards them the very next day. Moreover, Lin et al. provided evidence of two mediating processes. One is moral licensing (Merritt et al., 2010), such that supervisor’s initial behavior allowed them to see themselves as ethical. As a result, they felt freer to behave unethically. Those who behaved more ethically at Time 1 were more likely subsequently to agree with statements such as, “My previous good deeds earned me credit as a moral person.” The other mediator is ego depletion (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998), in which the self-control supervisors may have exerted in behaving ethically left them with fewer self-control resources needed to keep themselves from behaving abusively the next day. That is, those who behaved more ethically at Time 1 also were more likely subsequently to agree with statements such as, “Right now, I feel my willpower is gone.” More generally, the finding that initial acts of ethicality may lower decision-makers’ subsequent ethicality provides an important extension to the first four waves of organizational justice research (Colquitt et al., 2005) which examined the consequences of decision-makers’ acts of fairness. Not only is it important to examine how engaging in fairness influences the work attitudes and behaviors of recipients, but also it is worth looking at how behaving ethically or fairly influences the subsequent ethicality or fairness of the decision-maker. Many organizational justice studies take a static approach, looking at how subordinates are affected by their bosses’ expressions of fairness at a single point in time. However, if bosses’ expressions of ethicality can negatively influence the ethicality of their subsequent behavior, it would be important to examine the consequences of these “Jekyll and Hyde” tendencies for recipients. This will, of course, require research methods that allow for examining fairness dynamically rather than statically. For example, Matta, Scott, Colquitt, Koopman, and Passantino (2017) recently found that bosses who behaved like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which they expressed high interpersonal fairness on some occasions and low interpersonal fairness on others, elicited greater stress and more job dissatisfaction in subordinates not only relative to bosses who were consistently fair (Dr. Jekyll) but also, and more interestingly, relative to those who were consistently unfair (Mr. Hyde). The notion that behaving ethically/fairly at Time 1 can cause less ethical/fair behavior at Time 2 also helps to account for the perpetuation of injustice. The viewpoint that emerges is that any movement towards more consistently fair managerial behavior is likely to take place in fits and starts, given that the initial ethical/fair behavior can activate multiple psychological processes (moral licensing, ego depletion) that lead to subsequent actions that are less ethical or fair.

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System Justification A typical organizational justice study within the first four waves (Colquitt et al., 2005) examined how different forms of fairness (distributive, procedural, and interactional) influenced employees’ work behaviors and attitudes (e.g., performance, organizational commitment). Overwhelmingly, the results showed that employees responded more negatively when they perceived that they had been treated less fairly (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2001, 2013). Moreover, a host of explanations help to explain these findings such as the instrumental model (Thibaut & Walker, 1975), the relational model (Tyler & Lind, 1992), and the deonance model (Cropanzano, Goldman, & Folger, 2003). Another way to conceptualize organizational justice is how employees’ motivation to be treated fairly influences their behaviors and beliefs (Bobocel & Hafer, 2007). This is what Lind (2019) referred to earlier in this volume as a “motivated” justice effect. An early example (not limited to the workplace) of fairness as a motivated process is provided by just world theory (Lerner, 1980). According to this viewpoint, people have a fundamental desire to believe that the world is a fair place, one in which people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Among other things, just world theory can explain why observers often blame victims of negative treatment (Furnham, 2003). That is, if people are treated negatively they may be perceived as having brought it upon themselves. Another framework that views fairness as a motivated construct is system justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994). Proudfoot and Kay (2014) suggest that whereas just world theory reflects a general motivated tendency to see the world as fair, “individuals’ motivation to see their systems as fair has been shown to impact the way people explain specific forms of social inequality” (p. 177). A basic tenet of SJT is that people do not want to believe that the system in which they are embedded is flawed or illegitimate. Proudfoot and Kay further suggest that people’s desire “to justify their systems and avoid acknowledging their system’s faults may be responsible for shaping a diverse range of cognitions” (p. 174) and associated behaviors. We posit that one such cognition is perceived fairness (Proudfoot & Lind, 2015). The system justification motive extends how we think about the typical effects of perceived fairness. More specifically, it helps us to understand why, when people are on the receiving end of unfavorable or unfair treatment, they may not respond in summarily negative ways. That is, being treated unfairly poses a predicament to employees in which they are forced to confront the possibility that the system in which they are embedded is flawed or illegitimate. One way to deal with this predicament is to engage in system justification which can

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 229 have the effect of reducing the negativity of their system-referenced reactions (e.g., organizational commitment). Prior theory and research also have specified the circumstances under which system justification is more likely to occur (Proudfoot & Kay, 2014). These conditions reflect either the extent of threat or people’s ability to control the threat (primary and second appraisal, respectively, as set forth in the stress model of Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Thus, people’s tendencies to engage in system justification are stronger when the likelihood of threat to the system is higher or when the magnitude of the threat is higher (e.g., when people are more dependent on receiving favorable outcomes from the system). System justification also is more likely when people believe that they are less able to take action to counteract the threat (e.g., the ability to escape the system and/or their sense of personal control is relatively low). The conditions that elicit system justification make people more likely to evaluate the system and the authorities who represent it positively, even when the system has behaved badly (e.g., unfairly). For example, Laurin, Shepherd, and Kay (2010) evaluated the extent to which Canadian citizens justified the gender gap in compensation in Canada. It seems likely that participants in this study, all of whom were women, perceived distributive injustice upon being told that men’s starting salaries in Canada are 20% higher than those of women. Participants were previously informed that Canada was either easy to emigrate from (high escapability condition) or hard to emigrate from (low escapability condition). Participants were much more likely to justify a system that was unfair and unfavorable to them when they believed that escapability was low. SJT has important implications for employees’ work beliefs and behaviors. For example, Proudfoot and Kay (2014) suggested that the system justification motive may help us to better understand people’s resistance to organizational change, their tendencies to engage in organizational citizenship behavior, and their openness to diversity in the workplace. Nonetheless, Proudfoot and Kay’s piece is also a call to action to management scholars in that “little research has explored the system justification motive in organizational contexts” (p. 175). Indeed, several studies have heeded the call (Hafenbrädl & Waeger, 2017; Proudfoot, Kay, & Mann, 2015). For example, Li et al. (2019) recently drew on system justification theory to examine employees’ reactions to an increasingly prevalent trend in the workplace: status incongruence, in which the usual markers of status such as age, education, and tenure associated with the roles of supervisor and subordinate are reversed (Triana, Richard, & Yücel, 2017). For example, in 2014 nearly 40% of the US workforce had a boss younger than themselves (CareerBuilder Survey, 2014). Li et al. examined the effect of status (in)congruence as well as the perceived

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level of competence of the boss on subordinates’ perceptions of the fairness of the organization’s promotion system. An interaction effect emerged. When the boss was competent, the promotion system was judged to be fair regardless of status (in)congruence. However, when the boss was perceived to be less competent, the promotion system was judged to be fairer under conditions of status congruence (e.g., the boss was older than subordinates) than incongruence (e.g., the boss was younger than subordinates). By way of explanation, Li et al. (2019) posited that one way for employees to deal with the threat of being in a flawed or illegitimate system is by focusing on evidence that enables them to justify the appropriateness of the system. When the boss is competent the principle of meritocracy reassures employees about the fairness of the organization’s promotion system regardless of whether the level of status was congruent or incongruent. However, when the boss is less competent subordinates may draw on other information to rationalize to themselves that the system is fair. For example, the principle of seniority may be used to justify the legitimacy of the promotion system, which could explain why the organization’s promotion system was rated as fairer under conditions of status congruence than status incongruence. Further support for the system justification explanation of these findings is that they were found to be more pronounced when the system justification motive was more strongly activated. For instance, in one study Li et al. (2019) found that the interactive relationship between status (in)congruence and the competence of the boss was stronger when employees experienced lower levels of personal control. In a second study in which the boss always was described as low in competence, Li et al. found that the tendency for status congruence to be positively related to promotion system fairness was stronger when escapability was lower, i.e., when employees perceived that they had relatively few alternatives to remaining with their current employer. Another way in which SJT contributes to organizational justice theory is that it helps to account for the perpetuation of unfairness in the workplace. Intuitively, it may appear that employees on the receiving end of unfair treatment would be inclined to engage in flight or fight. Some may find the unfairness to be so aversive that they will seek employment elsewhere. Others will remain with their employers even while they try to find ways to redress the unfairness. A third possibility is “neither of the above,” which may be explained by SJT. To deal with the psychological threat of remaining in an organization seen as flawed or illegitimate, employees may find ways to rationalize to themselves that the system is “not so bad.” Of course, in so doing, they increase the chances that the injustices spawned by the system will persist. Importantly, SJT also offers insight into the conditions under which

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 231 system justification with its accompanying perpetuation of unfairness is likely to occur. Previously, we suggested that managers’ actions that are ethical/fair can induce them to subsequently behave less ethically or fairly, that one explanation of this tendency is moral licensing, and that the moral licensing mechanism helps to account for the perpetuation of injustice in the workplace. It may be useful to consider ways in which the perpetuation of injustice elicited by moral licensing and system justification are similar and different. One similarity is that both reflect justification processes. In moral licensing, the initial actions taken by decision makers provide evidence that they are ethical or fair, thereby making it more justifiable for them to engage in actions that are less ethical or fair. In system justification, people rationalize away potential problems of the system in which they are embedded. One difference lies in the specifics of that which is being justified. In moral licensing, decision makers justify unfair or unethical behavior because they have “proven themselves” to be fair or ethical based on their prior action. In system justification, employees justify organizational actions to ward off the discomforting possibility that they are embedded in a flawed or illegitimate system. Another difference between the two is the party engaging in justification. In moral licensing, it is the action-taking party who is doing the justifying whereas in system justification it is the recipient of threatening information who is doing the justifying. In different ways, then, moral licensing and system justification delineate processes that may serve as obstacles to redressing unfairness in the workplace.

Discussion Various research streams carried out after Colquitt et al.’s (2005) review demonstrate that organizational justice research is indeed alive and well and living elsewhere. Whereas we organized the streams based on: (1) the aspect of fairness they emphasized, and (2) the emergence of intriguing findings with implications for the perpetuation of injustice, we recognize that there is crossover between the two classification schemes. For instance, the “paradox of meritocracy” findings of Castilla and Benard (2010) are intriguing in that the presence of certain organizational practices designed to reduce distributive injustice produced the opposite effect. Moreover, the finding that an initial ethical action can subsequently reduce managers’ tendencies to behave fairly could have been included in the section on interactional fairness, in that the dependent variable was managers’ tendencies to behave abusively towards their subordinates (Lin et al., 2016). Nonetheless, we believe that there is some utility to our classification of research streams relative to merely providing a laundry list of topic areas.

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Having shown how and where organizational justice is alive and well, we believe it useful to discuss some cross-cutting themes relative to prior work in organizational justice (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2005). As in much scholarly work in management, the predominant research paradigm in organizational justice is to examine the influence of managerial/ organizational variables on the work attitudes and behaviors of employees in subordinate roles. The research which we have reviewed demonstrates that this is an unnecessarily narrow way to examine questions that are both theoretically and practically relevant to the study of organizational justice. For example, research on workplace (in)civility recognizes that the dignity and respect shown to employees by people in roles other than bosses (e.g., co-workers and customers) can affect employees over and above the influence of their bosses (Schilpzand et al., 2014). This reality raises a practical challenge for managers. It has been wellestablished that employees respond much more positively when they are treated with greater interpersonal fairness. However, managers sometimes find it difficult to treat their subordinates with dignity and respect (Brockner, 2006; Molinsky & Margolis, 2005). Complicating matters even further, studies show that even when managers do behave respectfully towards their subordinates, the latter can be adversely affected (e.g., showing reduced organizational commitment) when they are not treated respectfully by their peers (Bendersky & Brockner, 2019). Hence, managers not only have a responsibility to behave interpersonally fairly towards their subordinates, but also to create work climates in which subordinates are treated respectfully by other key actors, such as peers and customers. Moreover, the literature on voice and silence implies that it is not only those in authority positions who may be in a position to influence the climate for respectful interpersonal behavior. Employees also can take it upon themselves to suggest to their bosses ways to improve the civility with which people treat, and are treated by, one another. An intriguing finding from the ethics literature is that the behavior of bosses not only influences that of their subordinates; it also can influence the bosses’ subsequent behavior. As several studies have shown (e.g., Lin et al., 2016), when managers behave ethically they can subsequently be less likely to behave ethically or fairly. Much has been written in the past several decades about how organizations need to create conditions that motivate and enable employees to behave more ethically (Treviño, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006). However, if acting ethically at Time 1 can induce people subsequently to lose track of their moral compass, then the question becomes not only what can be done to engender greater ethicality but also what can be done to sustain it. Whatever form those interventions to sustain ethicality might take, they probably will be more effective if they counteract the experience of

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 233 moral licensing and/or ego depletion that can be activated by initial acts of ethicality. The point of departure in the literature on employee voice and silence (e.g., Morrison, 2014) is not the actions taken by authorities but rather the behavior of those in subordinate roles. Whereas some of the antecedents of employee voice and silence have a top-down quality (e.g., whether there is a climate for justice in the organization), other factors do not, such as employees’ dispositional tendencies to take initiative. Hence, the traditional conceptualization of voice in the justice literature (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Thibaut & Walker, 1975) would be making an important error of omission if it only focused on the expression of employee voice as resulting from how much those in authority positions provide opportunities for employees to provide input. Another recurring theme of the research that we have reviewed is the movement away from one-time, static approaches to forms of research that allow for the study of dynamic processes. For example, if behaving ethically or fairly can cause managers to behave less ethically or fairly, then it becomes meaningful to discuss not only managers’ general tendencies to behave ethically/fairly but also the consistency with which they do so over time (e.g., Matta et al., 2017). Moreover, one of the most pervasive findings in the justice literature is that being treated unfairly causes people to show a range of negative work attitudes and behaviors, such as reduced levels of organizational commitment (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001). However, system justification theory suggests that as employees spend or merely anticipate spending more time in organizations that have treated them unfairly, they may need to justify why they are doing so, which may lead them to soften the negativity of their attitudes towards their employers. Dynamism is also implied in research on employee voice and silence. Initially, justice scholars examined the influence of authorities giving subordinates the opportunity to express voice on subordinates’ work attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Lind & Tyler, 1988). How might this play out over time? Once subordinates have exercised the voice that was given to them, it is not too difficult to imagine that they may subsequently express voice proactively, and not simply wait for opportunities to be provided by authorities. This may be the case when, for example, people know that the views they expressed initially were seriously considered by the voice-granting authorities. A related dynamic may even apply to instances in which expressions of voice in response to an authority’s request are not implemented. King et al. (in press) recently examined “voice resilience,” which refers to employees’ tendency to continue to express voice even when their prior expressions of voice in a different context were not implemented by authorities. The results showed that when authorities provided a socially sensitive explanation of why employees’ initial

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expressions of voice were not implemented, employees were more likely to experience voice safety, and, as a result, exhibit voice resilience. Indeed, it would be interesting to examine when and why employees generalize from initially positive experiences in expressing voice, in which their recommendations are implemented by authorities. If employees’ suggestions for remedying an injustice are put into practice, does that make them more likely to express voice in nonjustice matters, such as how to improve the efficiency of an existing work process? And, might there be instances in which such generalizations are misguided, such that a positively received expression of voice in one context has no bearing on and may even be inversely related to whether it will be well-received in another? In summary, we have certainly learned a lot from the predominant research paradigm in organizational justice, which focused on how organizational/ managers’ fairness influenced subordinates (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2005). However, there are so many other ways to make important contributions to organizational justice, as the various topic areas we have considered suggest. Future Research An additional basis for future research is to examine how broad trends affecting the world of work may influence theory and research in organizational justice. For example, drawing on SJT we previously considered how the growing trend of status incongruence can affect employees’ perceptions of the fairness of their employers’ promotion system (Li et al., 2019). Yet another pervasive trend in the workplace is for people to work on a temporary basis such that once the task or project is completed there is no guarantee of continued work. This phenomenon has alternatively been called freelancing, the gig economy, and contingent work. It was estimated that nearly 57 million Americans recently did some of this type of work several years ago (Upwork, 2017). Temporary work arrangements curtail employees’ sense of the “shadow of the future.” Working with less of a shadow of the future may serve as a boundary condition for several well-established findings considered above. For example, system justification reflects employees’ tendencies to come to terms with flawed aspects of their work environments. However, the pressure to engage in system justification is much less likely to be felt when people see their relationship with their employers as time-limited. As Proudfoot and Kay (2014) suggested, one elicitor of the system justification motive is inescapability (Proudfoot & Kay, 2014). Accordingly, we predict that temporary workers would be less likely to engage in system justification relative to their more permanent counterparts.

Organizational Justice Is Alive and Well 235 Moreover, a ubiquitous finding in the fourth wave of organizational justice (Colquitt et al., 2005) is the interactive relationship between outcome fairness (or outcome favorability) and process fairness (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). One way to describe the “process/outcome” interaction effect is that high process fairness reduces the typically positive effect of outcome fairness/favorability on employees’ support for decisions, decision-makers, and organizations, relative to when process fairness is low. Embedded in this interactive pattern is that when people receive a negative (unfair or unfavorable) outcome, the presence of high process fairness has a particularly palliative effect. Whereas there are a variety of ways to account for the process/ outcome interaction (Brockner, 2010), one posits that it represents people’s willingness to minimize the importance and hence impact of their immediate short-term outcomes provided that they can be reasonably optimistic about their longer-term outcomes. High process fairness reassures people that over the longer haul they are likely to receive their fair share of desired outcomes. However, when people do not perceive much sense of a longer haul, which is likely to be the case in temporary work arrangements, then we predict that the typical process/outcome interaction effect will be less pronounced. In different ways, then, a reduction in the shadow of the future which accompanies temporary work assignments may ironically lead to employee reactions that may be threatening to organizations. For example, when people do not engage in system justification they are likely to see the flaws of the organization in a more clear-eyed way. Moreover, the typically palliative effect of high process fairness that accompanies the receipt of unfair or unfavorable outcomes may be muted to a considerable degree. Instead, employees with a reduced sense of the shadow of the future may be quite distressed as they contemplate: (1) the flaws of the system in which they are embedded (Proudfoot & Kay, 2014), and (2) the unfavorableness of their immediate outcomes (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). If this reasoning is correct, then temporary work arrangements may call for employers and employees to find ways to counteract the negativity that may be elicited in employees operating with a reduced sense of the shadow of the future. Another workplace trend likely to become even more pervasive is the use of algorithms to manage workers, supplementing and sometimes replacing professionals in those roles. Algorithms are used to select job applicants, to set goals and incentives for employees (with Uber’s system being perhaps the most well-known example), and to determine raises and promotions. These algorithms are “black boxes” that offer recommendations without disclosing how they were reached. Recent research suggests that people trust algorithms more than humans (Logg, Minson, & Moore, 2019). However, in

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2017, Houston’s teachers’ union won a lawsuit against the school district claiming that the proprietary algorithms the school district used to determine teacher pay, promotion and termination decisions were unfair and illegal. Algorithmic fairness is a topic of growing interest to scholars and practitioners, with implications for distributive justice (e.g., algorithms trained on biased historical data may perpetuate bias and inequity), procedural justice (e.g., algorithms are capable of taking much more information into account, and thus could enhance the procedural justice dimensions of accuracy and consistency), and interactional justice (e.g., “black box” systems fail to offer explanations or accounts, which deprive decision recipients of the opportunity to understand and learn from feedback, but it is not clear whether people feel more or less respected when machines rather than people make and deliver decisions impacting them). Clearly, justice scholars have much to teach those interested in algorithmic fairness, but they also may have much to learn from them. For example, whereas the incivility literature and the voice and silence literature expanded the stakeholders who could be sources of justice behaviors, growing reliance on algorithms may expand that list even further to include non-human actors. Algorithms used in driverless vehicles are programmed to make decisions with moral and justice implications, such as whether to direct the vehicle toward a single bystander or toward a group of people in an oncoming vehicle. How people perceive and react to these decisions may determine whether new technologies have tenable commercial prospects, thus expanding the potential consequences of fairness perceptions far beyond those that have been examined to date.

Conclusion Given the centrality of justice in human affairs in (and out of) the workplace, it is unlikely to stray very far from the minds and hearts of organizational scholars any time soon. The decades of work summarized by Colquitt et al. (2005) demonstrated the utility of differentiating between various forms of fairness as well as showing their joint and interactive effects on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Having shown the pervasive consequences of various forms of fairness, justice scholars have begun to examine their antecedents (Brockner et al., 2015). As the field of organizational justice reaches its current state of maturity, we can continue to make progress in two ways: (1) by reaching out and forging connections with other literatures, and (2) by asking new questions that lead to areas of inquiry that are important in their own right and that also have potential to deepen our understanding of organizational justice.

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Acknowledgments We thank Ramona Bobocel, Allan Lind, and Elad Sherf for their helpful comments on a previous draft of the manuscript.

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11 Organizational Justice and Workplace Emotion Russell S. Cropanzano, Maureen L. Ambrose and Phoenix Van Wagoner

There is a certain peculiarity to the study of organizational justice, which suggests that something vital is missing. It is acknowledged that justice is an affect-laden process (Harlos & Pindar, 2007; Sprecher, 1986), with workplace emotions playing an important role as both a consequence of and an antecedent to organizational justice (Scher & Heise, 1993). And, no one doubts the importance of workplace emotion (Grandey, 2008). Considerable evidence suggests that emotions can produce both effective and ineffective work behaviors (Fineman, 2007). However, although a number of scholars have explored the important theoretical overlap between organizational justice and workplace emotion (Barclay & Whiteside, 2011; Barsky, Kaplan, & Beal, 2011; Cohen-Charash & Byrne, 2008; Cropanzano, Stein, & Nadisic, 2011), there remain gaps in our theorizing and understanding. While we have learned much from this earlier work, these earlier reviews have tended to discuss emotion through the conceptual lens of organizational justice. This narrative approach has proven valuable for bringing emotion research to the attention of fairness researchers. Yet, understanding emotion within the theoretical context of justice incurs something of a cost. In particular, this narrative style tends to circumscribe the types of questions that justice researchers ask. An opposite approach, starting with emotion and seeing what justice might tell us, could provide additional insights into the relationship between these two key psychological ideas (for an example, see Fortin, Blader, Wiesenfeld, & WheelerSmith, 2015). In this review, we therefore invert the usual style of integration. We will discuss organizational justice through the lens of emotion research and not the other way around. We begin with a general overview of the workplace fairness literature, followed by a brief review of research on justice and affect during the last decade. We then expand this review by exploring four questions raised by the literature on emotions.

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Overview of Organizational Justice A comprehensive review of the organizational justice literature is not the intent of this chapter. However, a general review of the structure of justice and its evolution is useful. More comprehensive can be found elsewhere (e.g., Colquitt & Zipay, 2015). The first 30 years of justice research were characterized by the refinement of the organizational justice construct and the demonstration of its impact on organizational phenomena. Initial investigations primarily explored distributive justice – the perceived fairness of the distribution of outcomes. Utilizing an equity theory framework (Adams, 1965), organizational scholars primarily focused on distributive justice concerns as a mechanism for explaining motivation or satisfaction (Evans & Molinari, 1970; Greenberg, 1988; Greenberg & Ornstein, 1983; Hauenstein & Lord, 1989). In 1985, drawing on work in psychology (e.g., Leventhal, 1980; Leventhal, Karuza, & Fry, 1980; Thibaut & Walker, 1975), Folger and Greenberg (1985) introduced procedural justice to the organizational literature. Organizational researchers demonstrated the procedural justice effect across a broad range of organizational decisions including selection (Truxillo, Bauer, & McCarthy, 2015), performance appraisal (Greenberg, 1986), drug testing (Konovsky & Cropanzano, 1991), pay raises (Folger & Konovsky, 1989), layoffs (Brockner et al., 1994) and even parking (Conlon, 1993). Thus began the field of organizational justice. Although early work in organizational justice focused primarily on demonstrating the impact of procedural fairness, a closer consideration of the organizational fairness construct also began to emerge. This resulted in the parsing of procedural justice into elements of the procedure itself and to the treatment individuals received during the enactment of the procedure – interactional justice (Bies, 2015). Subsequently, Greenberg (1993) proposed a four-factor model that crossed structural and social foci with procedural and distributive justice. This suggests four types of organizational justice: systemic (formal and procedural), configural (formal and distributive), informational (social and distributive), and interpersonal (social and procedural). Although Greenberg’s (1993) taxonomy labels never gained widespread use, his distinction between social and structural sides of interactional justice did. In 2001, Colquitt developed a four-facet measure of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interpersonal, informational). This measure is the most commonly used scale for assessing organizational fairness and, as a result, a four-factor model is common in organizational justice work. However, there is not universal agreement about the usefulness of the interpersonal/informational distinction (and the factors are often highly correlated). Thus, the three-factor model (distributive, procedural, interactional) remains widespread.1

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Most organizational justice research examines the separate influence of each type of justice on organizational outcomes. However, research demonstrates different types of justice may interact. Of the interactive effects among justice types, the fair process effect has received the most attention. Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996) describe two attributes of the interaction: (a) level of procedural justice is more positively related to individuals’ reactions when outcome fairness or valence is relatively low and (b) level of outcome fairness or valence is more positively related to individuals’ reactions when procedural justice is relatively low. (p. 189) A wide range of studies has established this relationship (Brockner et al., 2007). Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996) sum up the interaction as demonstrating, “The effects of what you do depend on how you do it” (p. 206). While the two-way interaction has received the most attention, some research has found a significant three-way interaction among distributive, procedural, and interactional fairness (Cropanzano, Slaughter, & Bachiochi, 2005; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997) as well as three-way interactions among procedural fairness, interactional fairness, and outcome favorability (Barclay, Skarlicki, & Pugh, 2005) It is important to note that early work on this interaction often examined outcome favorability rather than distributive fairness and did not distinguish between the two (e.g., Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). As we describe in more detail later in this chapter, the distinction between outcome favorability and outcome fairness is important, particularly as we consider justice and emotion. The constructs are conceptually distinct and have different nomological networks (Skitka, Winquist, & Hutchinson, 2003; van den Bos et al., 1998). Notably, subsequent research was clearer about distinguishing between the two constructs. Further, research that does not confuse outcome favorability and outcome fairness also finds a similar pattern of effects. For decades, the trend was to refine the construct of fairness into more finely defined types of fairness, in the last decade researchers have suggested there are benefits to considering a more global justice construct (see Ambrose, Wo, & Griffith, 2015, for a review). These scholars argue that, although individuals can make distinctions between different justice facets, these facets are the basis for a general, overall justice judgment and it is this overall justice judgment that is critical to individuals attitudes and behavior. Additionally, research suggests that, whereas justice facets play an important role in overall justice judgments, other factors may influence these overall judgments. Notably, Ambrose and Schminke (2009) speculate general affect may be an important antecedent.

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Finally, several more recent trends deserve mention. First, scholars have begun to distinguish between fairness (the adherence to rules that reflect appropriateness in decision contexts) and justice (an evaluation of the appropriateness; Colquitt & Rodell, 2015). That is, justice is a subjective experience that is downstream from the perception of rule adherence or rule violation. Although most researchers still use justice and fairness interchangeably, this distinction between the assessment of rules and rule adherence and the evaluation and experience of fairness is useful. The field would benefit from keeping this distinction in mind (even if not adopting the fairness/justice nomenclature). Second, Colquitt and Rodell argue for the assessment of both justice (rule adherence) and injustice (rule violation). Specifically, they demonstrate measuring both together explained more variance in outcomes than existing “truncated” justice measures. However, with the exception of the work on this subject by Colquitt and his colleagues (Colquitt, Long, Rodell, & Halvorsen-Ganepola, 2015), researchers have not yet embraced the examination of both justice and injustice. Thus, in this chapter, when we refer to work examining injustice, it is best conceptualized as low levels of fairness.

Justice and Emotion Interest in the interplay of justice and emotion has increased in the last decade (Barclay & Whiteside, 2011; Barsky et al., 2011; CohenCharash & Byrne, 2008). Empirically, the bulk of this work conceptualizes organizational justice as an antecedent of workplace affect. The resulting feeling states then cause some downstream response. This is a common meta-theoretical framework within the social sciences and it goes by different names. Within functionalist psychology, such approaches were referred to stimulus-organism-response models (S-O-R, Woodworth, 1922). Within the public administration literature, they are referred to as antecedent-process-outcome (APO) models (Thompson & Perry, 2006; Wood & Gray, 1991). We will borrow the more recent terminology. In these APO models, affect mediates between justice and the criterion variable. For example, Hoobler and Hu (2013) found that negative affect mediated the relationship between interactional injustice and abusive supervision. That is, poor interpersonal treatment caused subordinates to feel negatively. These feelings, in turn, led them to see their supervisor as abusive. Le Roy, Bastounis, and Poussard (2012) tested a parallel. They observed that low levels of pay raise fairness boosted negative affect, which in turn boosted counterproductive work behavior. This APO model holds for positive feelings. Jacobs, Belschak, and Den Hartog (2014) found that justice increased positive affect. This affect, in turn, boosted perceptions of supervisory and organizational

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support. The APO model also generalizes across targets. De Cremer and Van Hiel (2010) found the emotional responses of anger and frustration resulted from individuals’ own fairness experiences, as has been found by others. However, these negative emotions also occurred in response to the fairness experiences of a partner. These effects were especially strong when goal interdependence was high. Nor is this sequence of effects limited to employer–employee relationships. Similar findings hold among buyers and sellers. In the marketing literature, research demonstrates that positive and negative emotion mediates the relationship between customers’ perceptions of fairness and repurchase intentions (Namkung & Jang, 2010; Ortiz, Chiu, WenHai, & Hsu, 2017). Additionally, Siadou-Martin, Vidal, Poujol, and Tanner (2017) found emotions mediated the relationship between perceived seller fairness and buyer satisfaction, with buyers reporting less satisfaction when they were treated unfairly. Something like this APO model has also been found at the group level of analysis, though some studies have tested only part of the framework. At the climate-level, interactional justice climate is positively associated with positive affect (Bernerth, Whitman, Walker, Mitchell, & Taylor, 2016; Lin, 2015). Similarly, Seo and Lee (2017) found interpersonal justice climate related to group affective tone. It bears mention that the APO model does not hold in every circumstance. In this regard, scholars have identified sundry moderators of the relationship between organizational justice and workplace emotion. For example, Cropanzano, Paddock, Rupp, Bagger, and Baldwin (2008) examined the relationship between procedural justice, outcome favorability and regulatory focus. They found these factors interacted to influence individuals’ happiness and embarrassment, though not their anger. Maas and van den Bos (2009) found the relationship between fairness and the intensity of affect was influenced by experiential and rationalistic mindsets, with the former mindset producing stronger experiences. Similarly, van den Bos, Miedema, Vermunt, and Zwenk (2011) found activating the self amplifies individuals’ affective responses to fairness. In a number of cases, researchers have modified the APO model, treating emotion not as a mediator of justice but, rather, as a moderator. For example, Geenen, Proost, Van Dijke, De Witte, and Von Grumbkow (2012), found positive affect increased the relationship between distributive justice and applicants’ intentions to recommend the organization to others. In contrast, negative affect increased the relationship between distributive justice and intentions to litigate. Thus, positive affect boosted the effect of justice on supportive behaviors, whereas negative affective boosted the effect of justice on adversarial behaviors. Van Dijke, Wildschut, Leunissen, and Sedikides (2015) found nostalgia moderated the relationship between procedural justice

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and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). In particular, low procedural justice was less deleterious to OCB when individuals were in a nostalgic state. As still another example, Barclay and Kiefer (2014) demonstrate positive emotions mediate the relationship between justice perceptions and approach behavior (helping and performance) whereas negative emotions mediate the relationship between justice perceptions and avoidance behavior (withdrawal). Although interest in justice and emotion has increased, when organizational justice researchers incorporate emotions into their thinking, they tend to borrow in an ad hoc and limited fashion, usually selecting the parts of those theories that best accommodate their existing theories of justice. As we have seen, this typically involves examining an established relationship between justice and some outcome (e.g., theft, support) and assessing whether some emotion mediates, or more rarely moderates, this relationship. This APO model paints emotion in very broad strokes, sometimes only distinguishing between positive and negative affect, rather than examining specific emotions. While this is neither an inappropriate nor an unworthy activity, it comes with an unfortunate externality. Justice researches seldom give themselves an opportunity to appreciate the full scope of emotional thinking and, especially, its transformative power. In the remainder of this chapter, we seek to address this matter by inverting this usual style of integration. We discuss organizational justice through the lens of emotion research and not the other way around. Specifically, we will ask a series of questions, each taken from emotion research, and consider organizational justice though the lens that these enquiries provide.

Question #1: What Are Emotions? It is helpful to distinguish the word “emotion” from two related terms – “affect” and “mood.” Affect refers to subjective feeling states in general, usually organized into a circumplex. Two dimensions describe the circumplex, but the dimensions vary depending upon the theorist (Cropanzano, Weiss, Hale, & Reb, 2003). Russell (2003) and Russell and Barrett (1999) use an unrotated factor solution. Their “core affect” is captured by two factors: (a) hedonic tone or pleasantness (pleasure/ displeasure) and (b) intensity or activation (calm/aroused). The former dimension is stronger and the latter somewhat weaker (Feldman, 1995). A more familiar solution, at least to organizational justice researchers, is the 45-degree rotation, which defines the circumplex in terms of (a) positive affectivity (PA) and (b) negative affectivity (NA) (Watson, 2000; Watson & Tellegen, 1985, 1999). This approach renders PA and NA independent, such that an individual can be high on either, both, or neither (Watson & Clark, 1984, 1992, 1997; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). “Mood” is free-floating affect. The terms “affect”

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and “mood” are sometimes used as rough synonyms. As noted above, most justice studies emphasize general affect, often measuring PA and NA, rather than emotion (for examples, see Skarlicki, Folger, & Tesluk, 1999; van den Bos & Miedema, 2000; Vermunt, Wit, van den Bos, & Lind, 1996). Emotions are more complicated. By their very nature, emotions are about something (Weiss, 2002; Weiss & Brief, 2001). An employee does not simply feel good, if they are experiencing an emotion. Rather, she has positive feelings toward some object, person, or event. Emotions are also more intense than moods. They tend to overwhelm individuals with their accoutrements of motivation, feeling, bodily states, and the like (“control precedent,” see Lyons & Scott, 2012; Scott, Garza, Conlon, & Kim, 2014). Given these considerations, emotions are better thought of as sets of integrated psychological processes, though the precise number varies from theory to theory. According to Scherer (2005) and Moors (2012), emotions consist of as many as five components: •

•

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Cognitive appraisals. These are assessments or evaluations of stimuli in the individual’s environment, such as their hedonic value and the potential to cope with threat. Where justice and affect are concerned, this relationship between cognition and feelings can move in both directions. To illustrate, Hillebrandt and Barclay (2017) found individuals made judgments about procedural justice after observing another person’s expression of guilt and anger. These judgments, in turn, affected their own justice experience, which subsequently influenced their feelings (outcome satisfaction) and behavioral intentions (helping and retaliation). Motivation to act. This pertains to the predisposition to respond with a set of behaviors (e.g., to hide the face when embarrassed). As we have seen, a number of justice studies have investigated the potential of emotion to act as a mediator between justice and action. For example, Vermunt and his colleagues (1996) had undergraduate subjects work on a task. Those who were evaluated by a very inaccurate procedure experienced negative affect. This affect, in turn, motivated them to protest the injustice. Body symptoms. These include various somatic responses in the central and peripheral nervous systems. To illustrate, Howard and Cordes (2010) found that negative emotions mediated the relationship between perceived injustice and feelings of emotional exhaustion. Likewise, Skarlicki, Hoegg, Aquino, and Nadisic (2013) found interpersonal unfairness was associated with feelings of both moral and physical disgust. These states occurred among both targets and observers.

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Russell S. Cropanzano et al. Expressions. These involve specific motor responses, especially facial expressions but also vocalizations (e.g., a groan). Notably, we know of no work on organizational justice that has considered facial expressions. Feelings. These are subjective affective states, such as general tendency to feel good (hedonically positive) or bad (hedonically negative or dishedonia). To illustrate, Frenkel, Li, and Restubog (2012) found the perceived distributive (un)fairness of human resource systems was associated with negative emotions and burnout.

This list provides a reasonably thorough description of emotion components, though most theories use only a portion of the full set. For example, within the organizational justice literature, Cropanzano et al. (2011) limit themselves to the three suggested by Mascolo and his colleagues (Mascolo & Griffin, 1998; Mascolo & Harkins, 1998): affective feelings, cognitive appraisals, and behavioral motivation. This is a promising beginning but there is more work to be done, especially on bodily symptoms and specific motor responses. For example, chronic injustice seems to produce ill-health (Cropanzano & Wright, 2011). This may be due to the aversive emotional states that manifest themselves physically. Likewise, facial expressions and vocal cues can be used to judge the honesty of other people (Zuckerman, DeFrank, Hall, Larrance, & Rosenthal, 1979). Perhaps justice judgments are made in a similar fashion. Other aspects of emotion have not received sufficient attention. Sharing a bias that exists within the affect literature (Fredrickson, 2001), more attention has been paid to the negative feeling states that result from injustice as compared to the positive feeling states that result from justice. This is a serious omission, in light of the fact that both are important. Colquitt et al. (2015) found positive affect and negative affect mediate the relationship between justice perceptions and performance. Likewise, Geenen et al. (2012) found that positive affect moderated the relationship between distributive justice and applicant’s intentions to recommend the organization to others. Findings such as these suggest that positive emotions are in need of additional study.

Question #2: How Are Emotions Created? Speaking very broadly, emotion research can be organized into two families of theories (Zachar & Ellis, 2012). Categorical theories argue that there is a set of discrete emotions. These emotions, though not fully independent from one another, are at least distinguishable in terms of their cognitive appraisals, affective feelings, and associated action tendencies (Moors, 2012, but see also Grandey, 2008). A discrete emotion would be something like envy, which occurs when another person

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possesses something that you would like for yourself (Lehta, Dimotakis, & Shatten, 2017). Injustice is one cause of envy (Smith, 1991) and envious feeling can produce counterproductive work behavior (Khan, Quratulain, & Bell, 2014) and theft (Wilkin & Connelly, 2015). Other negative emotions, such as disappointment, do not seem to have these same effects. Appraisal theories, as well as evolutionary theories, fall into the categorical family (Barrett, 2017a, especially Chapter 8). That is, these theories maintain that there are discrete emotions and sometimes associate them with particular biological markers (Cropanzano, Massaro, & Becker, 2017). In this chapter, we emphasize the appraisal theories, as organizational justice research tends to borrow heavily from them (Lazarus & Cohen-Charash, 2001). In contrast to the categorical theories, psychological construction theories argue that the brain creates emotional experiences by using one’s preexisting expectations to integrate external environmental cues with bodily (interoceptive) signals (Averill, 1980; Russell, 2003). As such, constructivist theories do not see emotions as having specific markers in the body or in the central nervous system (Barrett, 2017a). The cognitive and physical components that make up emotions are, therefore, dissociable (Barrett, 2017b). The sundry constituents that comprise given emotions can be combined in various ways. An informative comparison is between contentment and joy. Both hedonically positive, but the former has low arousal and the latter has high arousal (Fredrickson, 2009). Herein could be another untraveled path for justice researchers. It is well-known that just treatment is associated with positive affect and this affect, in turn, influences behavior (Cropanzano et al., 2011). For example, Yi and Gong (2008) found positive affect mediated the relationship between perceived fairness and customer citizenship behavior. However, it is not clear whether these are low arousal or high arousal feeling states. Nor do we know how each affects workplace behavior. As can be seen, dimensions such as hedonic tone, arousal, and certainty, are interpreted and combined differentially, so as to produce diverse emotional experiences. These experiences are not fixed or consistent. They vary based upon the individual’s personal history, social group, culture, and so forth. Theories of construction lend themselves to, though they do not necessitate, a dimensional view of emotions (Feldman Barrett, 1998; Moors, 2017). Although not as common as the appraisal approach, this perspective has also been applied to organizational justice research (Fortin et al., 2015). Given these considerations, we will first review the appraisals theories, paying special attention to discrete emotions. Subsequently, we take up psychological construction theories, with a focus on the dimensional view of emotions.

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Appraisal Theories and Discrete Emotions Appraisal theories constitute a venerable family of conceptual models (e.g. Abelson, 1983; Frijda, 1986; Roseman, 1984; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985, 1987), which share a number of important features (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003; Moors, 2012). Appraisal theories view emotion as an adaptive response to relevant events and challenges that confront human living (Ellsworth, 2007). When individuals detect a salient event in their environment, usually involving some sort of change, they make a series of judgments about the stimulus. These judgments, the appraisals, produce a variety of discrete emotions (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988; Roseman, Spindel, & Jose, 1990). These emotions have multiple components, as described above (Frijda, 1987, 1993). Different appraisal theories call for different sets of judgments. However, a good list of typical appraisals would include “[n]ovelty, valence, certainty, goal conduciveness, agency, and control” (Ellsworth, 2013, p. 125). Some appraisal theories are quite detailed. For instance, Scherer’s (2013) component process model calls for 13 “stimulus evaluation checks” (i.e., appraisals, p. 151) and these are organized into four families – relevance to the individual, implications and consequences, coping potential, and compatibility with norms. Evidence suggests appraisals of outcomes (not necessarily concerning processes) can produce judgments of fairness and, by extension, emotional states (Montada, 1994; Montada & Schneider, 1989; Reichle & Montada, 1994). Despite the richness of this work, organizational justice theorists have typically limited themselves to only two appraisals, primary and secondary (e.g., Cropanzano et al., 2011; Greenberg, 2006; Tepper, 2001), which are based on the cognitive appraisal model of stress (Lazarus, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c). According to this model, the primary appraisal concerns the magnitude of benefit or harm that an event has for an individual. The secondary appraisal involves the potential for coping effectively with challenges. Alternatively, Cropanzano and his colleagues (2011) view the secondary appraisal as something akin to a set of decisions. These includes coping potential but may also involve other appraisals as well (e.g., controllability, agency). Primary Appraisals, Secondary Appraisals, and Organizational Justice As we have seen, outcomes interact with processes, such that people report the least fairness when an unfavorable outcome co-occurs with an unfair procedure (Brockner, 2002; Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). Very quickly, justice researchers identified conceptual parallels between outcomes/procedures, on the one hand, and primary/secondary appraisals, on the other. Roughly, they equated the primary appraisal with the outcome evaluation

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and the secondary appraisal with the process evaluation (e.g., Greenberg, 2006; Tepper, 2001). In essence, people were said to evaluate processes in order to make sense out of their outcomes. Weiss and his colleagues (1999) formulated an early appraisal model of emotion and justice. According to their view, the primary appraisal involves the favorability of the outcome distribution, while the secondary appraisal involves the favorability of the procedure. Crossing these two dimensions yields four combinations: • •

• •

An unfavorable outcome distribution that occurred when a procedure was biased against an individual should cause anger. This is the classic conditions of injustice. An unfavorable outcome distribution that occurred when a procedure was biased in favor of an individual should cause sadness. Failure to win, even when conditions are in your favor, is especially discouraging. A favorable outcome distribution that occurred when a procedure was biased against an individual should cause pride. This is good feeling that comes when overcoming an obstacle. A favorable outcome distribution that occurred when a procedure was biased in favor of an individual should cause guilt. This is bad feeling that comes when a person behaves inappropriately.

Experimental studies have tended to support this model (Cropanzano, Weiss, Suckow, & Grandey, 2000), though individuals continued to report pride, even when they earned a bonus by obviously cheating (Krehbiel & Cropanzano, 2000). Two (Or More) Two-part Models Intuitively, these appraisal models seem reasonable, but this superficial similarity camouflages a bit of conceptual untidiness. As alluded to earlier, the two-way interaction model of justice contains a point of theoretical ambiguity – sometimes processes are said to interact with unfavorable outcomes, while at other times processes are said to interact with unjust outcomes (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). The two are not the same (e.g., van den Bos, Wilke, Lind, & Vermunt, 1998). An unfavorable outcome is simply bad, but an unjust presupposes a moral violation. An unfair outcome can be beneficial (e.g., winning by cheating), while a fair outcome can be disadvantageous (e.g., failing to get a job when other candidates were more qualified). In understanding how the appraisal model is related to justice, some researcher have considered unfavorable outcomes (Krehbiel & Cropanzano, 2000; Weiss et al., 1999), some have considered unfair outcomes (e.g., Greenberg, 2006; Tepper, 2001), and some have considered both (Cropanzano et al., 2000). For some purposes, the unfair

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and unfavorable outcomes might interact similarly with processes (Brockner, 2010). However, if one is trying to explain the psychological mechanisms by which justice generates emotion, then this distinction takes center stage (Cropanzano et al., 2011). If one believes that an unfair outcome (primary appraisal) is given emotional meaning via procedural injustice (secondary appraisal), then one needs to explain how an individual decides outcome fairness prior to the presence of procedural information. The procedural (or secondary) appraisal may help shape the emotional response, but this version of the theory implicitly assumes that one forms a judgment of outcome (un)fairness independently of the judgment regarding procedural (un) fairness. Presumably, this would require some heretofore undisclosed secondary appraisal(s), which would be used to determine outcome injustice prior to evaluating the procedure. This is plausible, but these considerations would need to be added to the theory. If one believes that an unfavorable outcome (primary appraisal) is given emotional meaning via procedural injustice (secondary appraisal), then one needs to explain how an outcome can evoke emotion without explicit procedural information. If this is the case, then once again the two-part model of emotion does not line up with the two-part model of justice. Outcomes would need to have both primary appraisals (to determine if they were bad) and secondary appraisal (to determine if they were just). Procedures would at least need secondary appraisals (to determine if they were just) but might also have primary appraisals of their own (to determine if they were favorable to the person in question). In either case, the outcome by process interaction does not fit nicely with primary and secondary appraisals. Fortunately, as we have already observed appraisal theories typically include more than two judgment points (e.g., Ellsworth, 2013; Scherer, 2013). Consequently, a closer reading of this literature might provide a means of resolving this difficulty. The Global Primary Appraisal Justice researcher have usually viewed the primary appraisal as a general evaluation of hedonic value. It assess whether or not an event poses a benefit or a loss for the perceiver. For example, Greenberg (2006, p. 60) refers to it as “information that helps them assess the magnitude of potentially harmful stimuli.” Tepper (2001, p. 198) observes: “The first or primary appraisal involves an assessment of whether events have implications for their wellbeing (i.e., perceptions that the event constitutes a harm/loss or a potential harm/loss).” Thus, a harmful (or potentially harmful) event triggers a negative affect. This negative affect, in turn, causes people to consider whether justice norms were violated (Mullen, 2007). For example, downsizing, which confronts individuals with the loss of their jobs, would likely be

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negative. The specific emotional states result from the secondary analysis of the situation. The layoff could provoke anxiety if it were imminent (Paterson & Cary, 2002), or sadness if it has already occurred (Moore, Grunberg, & Greenberg, 2004), or anger if the process is unjust (Brennan & Skarlicki, 2004). Notice that the process of making a justice judgment is initiated by events that are negative (not positive). People think about justice in response to their general dishedonic affect (Fortin et al., 2015; Mullen, 2007). We recognize the appeal of this straightforward model. However, it has two limitations. First, seen in this way, justice is only a concern when something goes wrong. The role of positive events, such as an unusual or unexpected act of fairness, has not been given sufficient consideration. For example, we might experience a sense of elevation when witnessing the moral behavior of workplace leaders (Haidt, 2006; Vianello, Galiana, & Haidt, 2010). These good feelings encourage us to imitate their ethical actions. Similarly, experiencing fairness might promote a sense of gratitude, stimulating not only a stronger sense of well-being for individuals, but also greater motivation to engage in prosocial behavior (Algoe, Haidt, & Gable, 2008; Gordon, Impett, Kogan, Oveis, & Keltner, 2012; McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001). Second, it is not clear that the primary appraisal should be viewed as global, as there are multiple concerns that animate the desire for fair treatment (Colquitt, Scott, Judge, & Shaw, 2006; Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001; Reb, Goldman, Kray, & Cropanzano, 2006). Following a review of the literature, Fortin and her colleagues (2015) identified the following four reasons: instrumental, reduction of uncertainty, morality (deonance), and standing in important social relationships (relational considerations). Respectively, justice can be beneficial because it provides control over important outcomes, it allays the discomfort felt when one is uncertain, it maintains ethical appropriateness, and it signals that one is important member of a community. Injustice can be harmful if it threatens any of these things. Given this, the simple model of appraisal theory, which treats the appraisal as a global evaluation undertaken to explain an unfavorable outcome, is in need of a face-lift. Justice judgments can be multifaceted, depending upon which type of goal is affected (economic, relational, moral, and the like). Moreover, we suspect that judgments often follow from positive events, as is true for other moral assessments (Haidt, 2003). As we have seen throughout this chapter, justice research can benefit from a more recent review of the emotion literature. In this regard, Scherer (2013) argues that a given event can be evaluated along a number of dimensions. These include intrinsic pleasantness and goal relevance. Scherer also includes control and compatibility with ethical norms, both of which are directly relevant to organizational justice (Fortin et al., 2015).

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Self-referential Primary Appraisals Within the organizational justice literature, primary appraisals also tend to be self-referential. That is, justice researchers generally view the triggering event to be “good” or “bad” with respect to the perceiver’s personal goals (e.g., Greenberg, 2006). For instance, if an individual wishes for a pay increase, then a “good” outcome would be more money. Conceptually speaking, this thinking works well if justice were driven by a single, self-referential motive, such as self-interest. As Fortin and her colleagues (2015, p. 424) observe, this approach “suggests that justice reasoning follows primarily when self-interest is threatened, not when it is served.” Simplifying justice theories in this way allows researchers to maintain a straightforward primary appraisal as a driver of emotion or stress (e.g., Greenberg, 2006). The problem, of course, is that implies that only one consideration – instrumental self-interest – matters for workplace justice. We have already seen that justice concerns do not appear to be reducible to any single motive, including those that are self-referential. As we discussed above, evidence suggests that multiple concerns animate organizational justice (Colquitt et al., 2006; Reb et al., 2006). Most problematic is the observation that events may be unjust for their own sake, even when the perceiver is a third-party observer who is not directly impacted (Skarlicki & Kulik, 2005; Skarlicki, O’Reilly, & Kulik, 2015). People respond negatively to unfairness even when the victim is a complete stranger whom they will not see again (Turillo, Folger, Lavelle, Umphress, & Gee, 2002), and this is built into the structure of the human brain (Cropanzano, Massaro, & Becker, 2017). Beyond these observer effects, unfair events can create negative emotion even when they benefit the observer. For instance, according to Adams’ (1965) equity theory, an individual who earns more than a referent peer is likely to experience guilt and, therefore, boost his or her output. Likewise, layoff survivors also feel guilty, even though the outcome (retaining their job) was to their advantage (Brockner, Davy, & Carter, 1985; Brockner et al., 1986). People may also feel guilt when they receive an award through an unjust procedure (Krehbiel & Cropanzano, 2000; Weiss et al., 1999) or when they feel prejudice (Amodio, Devine, & Harmon-Jones, 2007). Our discussion of self-referential appraisals suggest another challenge. Justice judgments (and moral judgments more generally) tend to involve other people. Findings suggest that organizational justice can increase negative emotions in response to the ill-treatment received by another person. Research on third-party reactions to fairness demonstrates third-party observation of unfairness is related to observer affect (Mattila, Hanks, & Wang, 2014; Reich & Hershcovis, 2015; Spencer & Rupp, 2009). Consequently, there are

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probably times when they the primary appraisal is not always selfreferential, at least if this term is understood narrowly. It would need to allow for consideration of other people. Alternatively, the process could begin with a self-referential primary appraisal, but then quickly shift following a secondary appraisal or some new type. This is possible, though it implies that we begin thinking of justice for one reason (e.g., self-interest) and then we continue thinking about it for an entirely different reason (e.g., concern with morality). It would be more parsimonious to allow the process to be nonself-referential from the beginning, though this is an empirical question. Regardless, appraisals theories we again need to be updated if they hope to account for future range of justice phenomena. Constructed Emotions and the Dimensional Model Appraisal theory has been the most common theoretical model for interpreting justice phenomena. However, it is not the only approach available. Perhaps with an eye to some of its limitations, a few justice scholars have taken a different approach. In this section, we turn to an alternative, the dimensional approach, setting it within the larger context of constructed emotions. The Theory of Constructed Emotions In the aforementioned discussion, discrete emotions are generated through a series of appraisals. In the theory of constructed emotion, feelings are generated less as a formal cognitive appraisal and more as the activation of an associative network in the brain (Russell, 2003). When a salient event occurs, the brain tries to categorize it with similar, past events. To do so, it utilizes information from three sources – sensory input from the external environment, physical cues that are internal to our bodies, and preexisting expectations. External sensory input refers to the events happening in the “real world.” Somatic events are the internal bodily cues. These occur all our lives, often without conscious awareness. However, when forming an emotion concept, we are likely to become aware of at least some of them. Preexisting expectations – from our cultures, previous experience, and so on – help us to organize, integrate, and interpret our bodily states with respect to our sensory input. Varying the external or internal cues, as well as our preexisting beliefs about them, can cause the brain to change its emotional construction (Barrett, 2017a). Suppose an employee receives a negative performance review (an external sensory experience), while her mind focuses tightly on the experience and her body tenses for retaliation. In western culture, these conditions are associated with a folk concept

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called “anger,” especially in settings where one is harmed through the unjust actions of another person. In response, the employee labels this cluster of experiences “anger.” Anger-relevant behaviors, again as individually and socially understood, follow from this label (Russell & Barrett, 1999). More specifically, the individual’s brain constructs a number of alternative scenarios (“anger?,” “sadness?,” “fear?”), subsequently running a parallel set of simulations (Barrett, 2017b). The resulting “concept cascade” (Barrett, 2017a, p. 311) activates closely linked nodes in memory. Emotion concepts are built from this spreading activation. The scenario that most closely matches the two sources of sensory input, as well as the preexisting expectations, becomes operational. This operational simulation allows the brain to make predictions that involve the potential needs of the body for coping with the event (referred to as “allostasis,” Barrett, 2017b, p. 3). For instance, the brain could activate the sympathetic nervous system of an angry employee. These interoceptive predictions also produce the two dimensions of core affect described above – hedonic tone and activation. Anger and fear contain affect that is unpleasant and more intense. Sadness contains affect that is unpleasant but less intense. Some findings are consistent with this model. Incidental mood states, those unrelated to how an individual has been treated, influence justice perceptions (Barsky et al., 2011; Scher & Heise, 1993). For example, if a person may already be in a bad mood and, hence, is quicker to label an ambiguous event as unfair (Sinclair & Mark, 1991; van den Bos, 2003). Similar, though opposite, relationships exist for positive affect (Barsky & Kaplan, 2007; Sinclair & Mark, 1992). Consistent with construction theory, this phenomena appears to occur, at least in part, because affect acts as a source of information, helping us understand (or bias our perception of) real-world events (Cropanzano et al., 2011, Chapter 5; Mullen, 2007). Dimensional Approaches to Emotion According to the theory of constructed emotions, discrete emotions do not have common markers across individuals. The same brain circuits, for example, can be used to generate different emotions (“degeneracy,” see Barrett, 2017b, p. 3). Attributes of one emotion do not reliably distinguish it from another (Moors, 2012), as discrete emotions are not “natural kinds” (Scarantino, 2012, p. 358). This thinking de-prioritizes the discrete emotions, which are central to affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), as well as to many investigations of justice and emotions. As an alternative to discrete emotions, psychological construction theory is generally consistent with dimensional approaches (Moors, 2017). Rather than viewing emotions as discrete

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occurrences, they could instead be considered as falling along a number of different (but continuous) axes (for details, see Barrett, 2006; Mauss & Robinson, 2009; Watson, 2000). In other words, events are interpreted by the brain. This, in turn, activates feeling states along particular axes. These feeling states are then summarized into subjectively understood emotions. In an intriguing article, Fortin and her colleagues (2015) have applied dimensional models to the study of organizational justice. While acknowledging the existence of an arousal dimension (this is consistent with Russell & Barrett, 1999, among others), these authors pay special attention to the dimensions of valance, uncertainty, morality, and a small family that is collectively called social. We will consider these dimensions in more detail in the next section, as they allow for additional insights into the motives for justice. Dimensional Approaches and Justice Motives: Different Feelings for Different Concerns Recall a theoretical challenge discussed earlier. Appraisal theories tend to begin when a salient event is evaluated. Within organizational justice, however, an event can be important for different reasons. Fortin and her colleagues (2015) consider four: instrumental (self-interest), uncertainty management, deontic (moral), and relational. Fortin et al. maintain that each of these justice concerns is associated with a different axis, not necessarily discrete type, of emotional responding. Specifically, instrumental concerns pertain to the valance dimension, uncertainty to the certainty dimension, deontic to the morality dimension, and relational to the social dimensions. (There are multiple dimensions of social emotions.) In this way, the dimensional approach seeks to bridge the gap between our understanding of organizational justice and workplace emotion. Given its importance, we review Fortin et al.’s (2015) theory in more detail below. VALANCE

Valance, a term modified from physics, refers to the attractive or repulsive forces of a given object or event (Scherer, 2013). A positive valance denotes a thing that hedonically desirable, something an individual would like to have, while a negative valance denotes something that is hedonically undesirable, something an individual would like to avoid. Often, investigations of organizational justice take a “valancesymmetric” (Lehta et al., 2017, p. 452) approach when discussing the relationship between fairness and emotion. That is, good things go with good feelings and bad things go with bad feelings. In this regard, we learn that just treatment tends to put people into good moods, while

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injustice puts them into bad moods (De Cremer, Wubben, & Brebels, 2008). Similarly, doing positive things for other people can mitigate negative affect (Grant & Sonnentag, 2010). However, organizational justice researchers have provided a few exceptions. As we have seen, people may feel guilty (a negative emotional reaction) when something that would otherwise be desirable is earned unfairly (Krehbiel & Cropanzano, 2000; Weiss et al., 1999). People may also provide forgiveness (a positive emotional reaction) to a wrongdoer who has harmed them (a negative event) (Tripp, Bies, & Aquino, 2007; McCullough & Worthington, 1995). Doing so tends to improve their longterm adjustment (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachel, 1997). Further identification of asymmetrical effects, such as justice causing negative emotion or injustice causing positive emotion, would be interesting. Regardless, valance is only a single dimension and therefore provides an incomplete picture of our emotion state. It is important to consider other axes on which our feeling states may differ (Mullen, 2007). As we will see in our next section, the impact of the arousal dimension on behavior can change due to the level of other dimensions, such as certainty. UNCERTAINTY

Within the realm of organizational justice, uncertainty management theory suggests that individuals seek justice, at least in part, because it reduces the unpleasant feelings that result from ambiguity and a lack of information (Lind & van den Bos, 2002; Proudfoot & Lind, 2015; van den Bos & Lind, 2002). It is noteworthy that emotions can be classified as to whether they denote high certainty (disgust) or low certainty (sadness), suggesting that the certainty dimension can be important for understanding workplace fairness. It is likely that ambiguity activates the uncertainty dimension, at least in many situations. This uncertainty, in turn, triggers emotional states and particular behaviors. To clarify how this might occur, consider that anger and fear are both prevalent in organizations (Harlos & Pindar, 2007). Both involve high arousal and both have a negative valance (Lerner & Keltner, 2000), but anger is associated with high certainty and fear with low certainty (Fortin et al., 2015). These dimensional considerations suggest still another avenue for fairness investigations. Anger but not fear has been widely examined by justice researchers. For example, and Khan, Quratulain, and Crawshaw (2013) found anger mediated the relationship between perceived fairness of salary raises and counterproductive work behavior. That is, low levels of fairness increased anger, while anger increased counterproductive behavior. While injustice can certainly make us angry, it can also be frightening. Different behaviors follow. For example, when people experience fear (low certainty) they

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tend to respond by seeking and using additional information (van den Bos et al., 1998). However, when they experience anger (high certainty) they tend to respond with assertive and high risk behaviors (Lerner & Keltner, 2000, 2001). DEONANCE

Morality is an additional dimension by which emotions can be understood, especially when deontic considerations are important (Fortin et al., 2015). Moral emotions tend to be elicited by disinterested, as opposed to self-interested, concerns. They are inclined toward what Haidt (2003, p. 854) refers to as “prosocial action tendencies.” As we have already seen, positive behaviors can follow from moral emotions and these have the potential to make work groups more effective (Haidt, 2006). When other people behave unethically, we tend to respond with disgust (Skarlicki et al., 2013) or contempt (Folger & Cropanzano, 2010). These ill-feelings encourage us to isolate these individuals so that they can do no further harm. In this way, these emotions often “repay” perceived injustice with social ostracism (Williams, 2007). Ostracism can impel some people to work harder (Williams & Sommer, 1997) but it also risks causing aggressive behavior (Warburton, Williams, & Cairns, 2006). SOCIAL

According to Fortin and her colleagues (2015), the social “dimension” is actually a set of closely-related ways that emotions can be organized. These dimensions are likely to be engaged when relational concerns are paramount (Blader & Tyler, 2015; Tyler & Blader, 2003). The three “minidimensions” discussed by Fortin and her colleagues are social orientation (self-construal), inward- versus outward-focus, and congruence. Social orientation refers to the extent to which the self is construed as being interdependent with the group or independent and autonomous (Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, 2006; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). These construals produce different emotional reactions. For example, Fortin et al. (2015) review evidence indicating that the process by outcome interaction is stronger among those with interdependent construals. They are more tolerant of unfavorable outcomes so long as the process is fair. This make sense, as fair procedures affirm their worth to the social group (Holmvall & Bobocel, 2008). Intriguingly, Fortin and her colleagues suggest that self-construal could lead to different emotions when appraising one’s own actions. Those with an independent construal, on the one hand, could be prone to pride at their fair conduct. Those with an interdependent construal, on the other hand, could be inclined toward respect for their teammates.

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Emotions are sometimes directed toward the self (inward-focus) or outward toward others (outward-focus). While not widely studied, focus can have important ramifications for justice. In an important field study, Barclay et al. (2005) surveyed a large number of downsizing victims. These individuals had a negative outcome (job loss) but some experienced a fair process and just interpersonal treatment, while others did not. In the face of a layoff, those who experienced procedural and interactional fairness directed their negative emotions inward, reporting guilt. Those who did not experience procedural and interactional fairness directed their negative emotions outward, reporting hostility and anger. In this way, the pattern of justice attributes can shape emotional experience. Congruence pertains to individuals’ evaluations of other people (Blader, Wiesenfeld, Rothman, & Wheeler-Smith, 2010). Certain emotions are “congruent,” in the sense that they align people together. Love is a congruent emotion, which brings us closer to other people. Other emotions are incongruent. When we feel schadenfreude or jealousy, we are pushed away from others, seeing them as more psychologically distant. Blader, Wiesenfeld, Fortin, and Wheeler-Smith (2013) found that congruence influences third-party responses to inequity. When another individual is over-advantaged, respondents were less troubled if they had been primed to feel congruent emotions. However, when primed to feel incongruent emotions, the over-advantage of another person was viewed as less fair. Appraisals and Social Constructions: Some Closing Thoughts While fundamental questions remain, our knowledge of emotions has exploded in the past few decades. This new information can be used by justice researchers to expand update their existing models of work behavior. Here we list three suggestions. First, if justice researchers continue to use appraisal theory, then they should be aware of its limitations. The traditional approach – using primary and secondary appraisals – needs to be expanded. To enhance our understanding of justice, more recent thinking should be included (Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda, 2013), especially with respect to non-self-interested appraisals (Scherer, 2013). As we have already seen, there are at least four motives for justice – instrumental, reduction of uncertainty, morality, and standing (Fortin et al., 2015). Each of these needs to be integrated into any complete theory of justice and emotion. Second, it is not a given that appraisal theories will be on the only approach to understanding justice or, for that matter, work behavior more generally. The theory of constructed emotions (Barrett, 2017b), and accompanying work on dimensional models (Fortin et al., 2015), has shown considerable promise. While it could be argued that theories of

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discrete emotions have been rendered obsolete (cf., Barrett, 2017a), our own view is closer to that of Fortin and her colleagues. We have much to learn from both perspectives. There is also the possibility that they could be integrated (Moors, 2017), though this awaits additional research. Third, there is something that researchers can do right away – study positive emotions. Much of the literature seems to characterize justice as a “no win” situation. The goal is not to feel good but to avoid feeling bad. Negative affect – and not salience or surprise – often prompts concerns with justice (e.g., Mullen, 2007). There seems to have been a general inattention to positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2009). We hope that, if nothing else, our present review has helped to remedy this state of affairs.

Question #3: How Does Affect Change Justice Behaviors? Some decades ago, Greenberg (1987) made an important distinction between two types of organizational justice theories – reactive and proactive. Reactive justice theories attempt to explain how individuals respond to the fairness (or unfairness) that they receive from others. Proactive justice theories attempt to explain when individuals treat others fairly or when they fail to do so. Thus far, our review has emphasized reactive justice. The APO model, which we discussed earlier, is an example of reactive justice. This work can be quite sophisticated theoretically. For example, Huang and Huang (2016) investigated why workers were silent in the face of interactional injustice. They found that high positive affect and high procedural justice both reduced the tendency to complain about injustice. Interestingly, procedural justice also caused positive affect. Further, positive affect mediated the effect of procedural justice while moderating the effect of interactional justice. There is less research on proactive justice and emotion. This is unfortunate, for if emotions influence our actions through a process of control precedent (Lyons & Scott, 2012), then it would be expected that emotions would influence behaviors related to justice as well (Scott et al., 2014). Evidence is consistent with this notion. Considerable research suggests that people are more helpful, such as displaying organizational citizenship behaviors, when experiencing positive affective states, while they are more hurtful, such as displaying counterproductive work behaviors, when experiencing negative affective states (e.g., Dalal, Lam, Weiss, Welch, & Hulin, 2009; Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001; Ilies, Scott, & Judge, 2006; Judge, Scott, & Ilies, 2006; Lyons & Scott, 2012). Affect as a Cause of Justice (and Unjust) Behavior: A Review It seems reasonable to suppose that positive affect should promote fair behavior, whereas negative affect should promote unfair behavior.

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Though limited, the available evidence is consistent with this proposition. In two studies, Reich and Hershcovis (2015) found that when a research participant observed uncivil behavior, he or she experienced negative emotions toward the instigator. These negative emotions, in turn, pushed the observer to punish the wrongdoer. In later study, Razzaq, Iqbal, Ikramullah, and van Prooijen (2016) manipulated undergraduates’ moods so that they experienced either pleasant feelings or sadness. Those in a pleasant mood rated other students more leniently on a negotiation task. Those in a sad mood rated other students more harshly on the same task. As would be expected, these ratings, in turn, impacted perceived fairness, with leniently rated individuals reporting more distributive and interpersonal justice than did those who received harsh ratings. Wu, Sun, Chang, and Hsu (2017) found that anger and frustration mediated the relationship between fairness and their (lack of) compliance with organizational rules. That is, unfairly treated individuals experienced these emotions and, to the extent that this occurred, responding by ignoring rules. Research on empathy is similarly supportive. Cornelis, Van Hiel, De Cremer, and Mayer (2013) found that empathy moderated the relationship between followers’ belongingness needs and leaders’ enactment of fair procedures, such that the relationship was stronger when empathy was higher. Blader and Rothman (2014) reported that empathy was associated with the enactment of preferential behavior but only among leaders who were low in accountability. These studies suggest that feeling states are important for understanding proactive justice effects. Hot Emotions and Cold Cognitions Another line of evidence is relevant to the enactment of justice. Scott and his colleagues (2014, p. 1571) refer to emotional agents as “hot” motives. This is in opposition to the “cold” motives of cognitive calculation. Both are important, though in different circumstances. In discussing four key types of justice – distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal, Scott et al. suggest the different types of justice afford decision-makers with more or less discretion. In general, distributive fairness is more constrained than procedural, which is more constrained than informational, and, finally, interpersonal allows for the most volition. Hot motives, affect and emotion, are most predictive for those types of justice that afford actors a degree of choice, such as informational and especially interpersonal justice. Cold motives are most predictive when the type of justice is constraining, as is the case for procedural and especially distributive justice. In these cases, actions are simply a matter of understanding and proper execution. Support for these ideas was observed in a three-week diary study conducted by Scott et al. (2014). Managers reported behaving more justly when they were

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experiencing positive affect and less justly when they were experiencing negative affect. Also as expected, these hot motives predicted better for interpersonal and informational justice, which allow for high personal discretion. While these findings are important, we should be mindful of the distinction between affect and emotion, which we outlined earlier in this chapter. The available work does not yet examine specific emotional states. For instance, a fearful employee might be cautious about ignoring justice rules (Pfaff, 2007). If this were so, then the negative emotion of fear might promote fairness. These sorts of distinctions should be the subject of future inquiry.

Question #4: What are the Implications of Emotional States for Entity Justice? When compared to mood states, emotions tend to be of relatively shorter duration, coming over us in a wave but then receding (Frijda, 1993; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). This is consistent with much thinking on organizational justice but not with all of it. Cropanzano et al. (2001) distinguished between two paradigms for studying organizational justice. The first of these, event justice, examines employee responses to specific occurrences, such as a performance appraisal meeting or a pay raise decision. Emotions, with their shorter durations, fit nicely with the event paradigm. For example, perceived unfairness may cause anger at a termination. This event-based anger, in turn, may cause employees to register a legal complaint (Goldman, 2003). This process is intuitive and generally accepted (e.g., Fox et al., 2001; Rupp & Spencer, 2006). Conceptually speaking, things are a bit thornier when one considers the second organizational justice paradigm, entity justice. An entity justice perception implies that a perceiver has formulated a stable, overall perception of a given person or organization (Ambrose, Wo, & Griffith, 2015). Rather than saying, say, that the “my employer terminated me an unfair manner,” the individual now believes that “my employer is unfair.” If emotions are important for organizational justice, then research will benefit from an emotion-based mechanism that explains how the justice of events is transformed into the justice of an entity. A strong candidate for this role is affective events theory (AET, Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Affective Events Theory and Organizational Justice At its most fundamental level, AET discusses the stochastic withinperson changes in emotional states over time (Weiss & Beal, 2005). Put simply, AET emphasizes that employees are not constantly

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experiencing the same emotions to the same degree. These states fluctuate, depending in part on events in their work lives and also upon their personalities (Weiss, 2002). However, these emotional states are stochastic, in the sense that they often wax and wane in regular cycles (Cropanzano & Dasborough, 2015). For example, emotions may be entrained to the weekly calendar (Larsen, 1987; Larsen & Kasimatis, 1990), the emotional displays of their leader (Johnson, 2008, 2009), or the feelings of their coworkers (Totterdell, 2000; Totterdell, Kellet, Teuchmann, & Briner, 1998). These event-cycles are oscillating but predictable sequences of mood states. The nature of these cycles can impact longer-term attitudes, such as job satisfaction (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) and leader–member relations (Cropanzano, Dasborough, & Weiss, 2017). In effect, these events aggregate into a pattern over time. These patterns are likely to influence overall ratings of entities. As we have pointed out elsewhere, justice events are often affective events (e.g., Cropanzano et al., 2000; Weiss et al., 1999). This is only to say that notable acts of justice and injustice are likely to activate feeling states (Cohen-Charash & Byrne, 2008; Matta et al., 2014). Consistent with this, Scott and his colleagues (2014) found a good deal of withinperson variability in self-reported justice behaviors over time. Moreover, the resulting conformance (and nonconformance) to rules of justice provoked emotion in subordinates. Consequently, justice events should produce a stochastic regularity over time, the nature of which should affect entity justice. Much of this should be noncontroversial. There is already evidence that justice events are somehow aggregated into overall justice perceptions – frequent negative events produce negative ratings and frequent positive events produce positive ratings (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009). This interesting implication of AET, however, is that the emotion of the event (and not simply the event itself) should influence the rating of entity justice. This should result in non-regular and biased aggregation. For example, intensively emotional events are likely to have stronger effects on moral judgments, including those pertaining to fairness (Haidt, 2006). This is likely to be the case, even if the emotion is incidental to the event itself (Skarlicki et al., 2013). Likewise, there are likely to be order effects, such as when the most recent event exerts a disproportionate influence on overall judgments (Austin, Ruble, & Trabasso, 1977; Feldman, Klosson, Parsons, Rhodes, & Ruble, 1976). Finally, there is also a well-known “negativity bias,” such as that negative information (injustice, in this case) receives greater weight than positive information (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001; Ito, Larsen, Smith, & Cacioppo, 1998). Given this, we anticipate that events of injustice have a greater impact on overall fairness than do events of justice.

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Experiencing Sampling Approaches In their review of affect and organizational fairness judgments Barsky et al. (2011) suggested that experience sampling methodology (ESM), in combination with the logic of AET, would be a particularly useful method of examining how the experience of justice and affect intertwine. ESM is the term used to define a range of intensive data collection techniques designed with three conceptual goals (Beal, 2015). First, ESM designs attempt to record experiences within their natural environments. Second, ESM prioritizes repeated, immediate, and concrete experiences in situ over abstract, recalled, or summary evaluations. Third, ESM designs aim to capture a range of experiences that are a representative sample of the dynamic nature of individuals’ lived experiences. Broadly, ESM falls under a conceptual approach within organizational scholarship which holds that psychological phenomena, events, perceptions, states and behavior of each individual are related to subsequent psychological phenomena, events, perceptions, states and behavior of the same individual within a proximal time frame (e.g. within an hour or day). Called a person-centric (Weiss & Rupp, 2011) or within-person (Beal & Weiss, 2003) approach, ESM is inherently multilevel, whereby the progression of events and reactions exist within an individuals’ “stream of experience” (Beal, 2015, p. 385). These can be affected by differences between individuals, such as their personalities, such that one’s experience relative to other individuals might affect intraindividual processes. The fluctuations within and between individuals in their lived experiences are considered a crucial element in developing and testing dynamic, within and between person theories (for a discussion of ESM and within person theory building/testing see Gabriel et al., 2018, Question 1 and 2). In combination, the three goals of ESM scholarship as well as its person-centric approach provide unique opportunities for the study of justice and emotion. These opportunities can be broken into two components. First, as was reviewed previously, work utilizing the APO framework has illustrated the relationships amongst fairness, justice, emotion and other organizational phenomena at the level of summative, retrospective judgments. This between person approach is a fruitful pursuit and has led to a number of significant findings mentioned earlier. However, by their very design, these studies are limited in the granularity they can provide when studying justice and emotion. Inherent to the ESM design is the ability for scholars to ask questions that underscore the dynamic stream of experience that contain fairness evaluations, justice perceptions, subsequent emotion and outcomes. In individuals’ lived experiences, these phenomena unfold over time. A representative sampling of these experiences

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proximate to (un)favorable (un)fair events would be a worthwhile endeavor for justice scholars. Not only could scholars construct more within person theories to understand variation of experience not captured through summative judgments, they could also explore questions of homology and isomorphism in the within and between person effects of justice and emotion constructs. In particular, questions exploring the differences between unfavorable and unfair events are of note. It is possible that the within person experience of emotion related to a negative event and subsequent behavior is very different than the between person average experience of emotion and subsequent behavior. Second, regardless of whether researchers employ the categorical or the dimensional approach to emotion, scholars of justice can explore whether or not valence-symmetric effects necessarily unfold within a stream of lived experience in a one-to-one fashion where a positive event is followed by a positive emotion summary judgment. It very well may be the case that a series of “events” or valanced experiences unfold over an episode that are not all symmetric. For example, Matta, Scott, Colquitt, Koopman, and Passantino (2017) discovered that higher levels of fairness is not always better. Through a lab experiment and an ESM field study they illustrated that consistent levels of being treated unfairly can be better for individuals than inconsistent levels of fair and unfair treatment for employee stress. Furthermore, utilizing ESM within work teams poses a significant opportunity to understand these effects at higher levels of analysis through entrainment. By collecting ESM data from individuals who share team or group membership at work, ESM may provide a powerful tool in the understanding how individuals within a group respond to events they experience together. The similarity (or difference) in the proximal downstream emotions and behaviors of members of a group could shed light on the process of entrainment, its antecedents, and outcomes. Theorizing regarding these possibilities as well as their boundary conditions would constitute a significant contribution to the justice literature. Finally, there is utility in describing where ESM approaches would not be useful for research on justice and emotion. In the case of entity justice and overall justice research, the intensive nature of ESM might not hold as much value. Given the stable, summary nature of these constructs, searching for dynamic variation within short time periods would hold little value. Likewise, research investigating the effects of mood are likewise less compatible with ESM. ESM in the Justice Literature While ESM has regularly been employed within the organizational literature on emotion (e.g. Beal, Trougakos, Weiss, & Dalal, 2013;

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Gabriel, Diefendorff, & Erickson, 2011; Hülsheger, Lang, Schewe, & Zijlstra, 2015), there are five notable examples of ESM within the justice literature in the past decade. In 2009, Yang and Diefendorff found that daily negative emotion mediated the relationship between daily supervisor and customer injustice and daily CWB. Around the same time, Loi, Yang, and Diefendorff (2009) examined the differential effects of the four types of justice on within and between person effects. Specifically, they found that within person, daily informational and interpersonal justice were positively related to daily job satisfaction. Additionally, they found that the summative judgments of distributive justice and procedural justice moderated the effect of interpersonal justice and informational justice, respectively. Johnson, Lanaj, and Barnes (2014) used ESM to illustrate that procedural justice behaviors drained managers’ regulatory resources while interpersonal justice behaviors replenished them. ESM was also utilized in an exploration of the motives managers hold in adhering to justice rules. As mentioned earlier, Scott et al. (2014) found that both “cold” and “hot” motives were associated with obeying justice rules. In addition to finding two types of motives for adherence to justice rules, the authors found that dimensions with higher levels of perceived discretion were more strongly influenced by affect laden “hot” motives than justice dimensions with lower levels of perceived discretion, which, in turn were influenced by cognitive judgment “cold” motives. The existing use of ESM in justice scholarship demonstrates the insights that can be derived from this approach. There still exists great opportunity for scholars to answer the call of Barsky et al. (2011) to use ESM as a tool to integrate research on emotions and justice. In the future, researchers should continue to develop and test within person and between person theories. Research on justice and emotions should obtain finer granularity in the processes by which fairness judgments, justice perceptions, and emotions unfold while fully utilizing theories of emotion, and not ad hoc pieces that fit their predictions. Finally, scholars should look for valence-nonsymmetric effects that may or may not be homologic across levels of analysis. Closing Thoughts Affective events theory provides a good example of how research on emotion can enrich ongoing investigations of organizational justice. AET posits that the pattern of individual (affective) events produces longer-term attitudes, such as a better or worse relationship with a leader (Cropanzano, Dasborough, & Weiss, 2017). Work on overall justice suggests that events can produce overall perceptions of entity fairness (Ambrose et al., 2015). One mechanism by which this can

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occur is through the repeated affect generated as justice events unfold over time. To the extent that this is so, then we would expect systematic biases in how overall perceptions of justice are formulated.

Conclusion The interest in justice and affect has increased in the last decade. This research has demonstrated the critical role that emotion plays in individuals’ justice experiences and their reactions to those experiences. Yet, despite this interest, empirical research often takes a superficial approach to this integration. It is not surprising that justice researchers sometimes fail to embrace the complexity inherent in the study of emotions. However, we believe approaching the integration from the perspective of emotion research provides new avenues of research that will inform our understanding of justice in organizations. Our discussion of emotions highlights some of the limitations of current research and opportunities for future research. We see promise in the exploration of a categorical approach to emotions by justice researchers. We believe considering dimensional approaches to emotions and the multiple motives for fairness is a fruitful avenue for better understanding emotion and justice. Additionally, we suggest a greater focus on justice and positive emotion could prove beneficial. Further, we believe an understanding emotion and entity justice judgments warrants greater attention. Admittedly, such an approach is more complex that a simple application of appraisal theory. Yet, given the importance of both emotion and justice in organizations, the undertaking will be worth the effort.

Note 1 Notably, not all justice scholars have embraced a three-factor or four-factor models. For example, in the group engagement model (Blader & Tyler, 2009; Tyler & Blader, 2003), procedural justice includes both the structural aspect of procedures and the interpersonal aspects of the enactment of those procedures.

References Abelson, R. P. (1983). Whatever became of consistency theory? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9, 37–54. Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 267–299. Algoe, S. B., Haidt, J., & Gable, S. L. (2008). Beyond reciprocity: Gratitude and relationships in everyday life. Emotion, 8, 425–429. Ambrose, M. L., & Schminke, M. (2009). The role of overall justice judgments in organizational justice research: A test of mediation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 491–500.

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12 The Psychology of Perceived Justice in Shared Health Care Decision Making Diana Pérez-Arechaederra

Introduction Traditionally, four ethical principles dictate biomedical ethics: respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice (Beauchamp & Childress, 2001). The movement for implementing shared decision making (SDM) in health care stems from the ethical imperative of doing it. As Stiggelbout et al. (2012) pointed out: Not only is it essential for respecting autonomy (enabling individuals to make reasoned informed choices),but it is also needed for beneficence (the balancing of benefits of treatment against the risks and costs) and non-maleficence (avoiding harm).To judge whether the benefits and risks of treatment are balanced from a patient’s perspective and to avoid procedures patients would rather not have if they were well informed (and which thus may harm them), clinicians must determine their patients’ preferences (p. 1). Even though much has been written and policies and procedures have been implemented to help reach the goal of sharing decision making with patients, to the best of my knowledge, there is no theoretical development around the reasons and the psychological processes involved in the effectiveness of sharing health care decision making. Organizational psychology in general and work on the psychology of justice in particular have developed a body of research that could shed light about the psychological processes that take place in medical contexts.

The Shared Decision-making Movement in Health Care Shared decision-making in health care involves taking into account patients’ opinions, doubts and preferences when making decisions about their health. It can relate to treatment decisions, procedures to

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be applied or next steps in their health care. In this process clinicians and patients work together to reach a treatment decision applying the best scientific evidence available (Elwyn et al., 2010). There are many clinicians, associations of patients and, indeed, a whole philosophic movement that promote shared decision making in health care. Researchers and practitioners jointly have developed tools to reach this goal. For example, they work with option grids: information matrices that show, in just one page, patients´ frequently asked questions and answers based in the best evidence available regarding a given condition (for more information see: https://health.ebsco.com/products/option-grid). These tools can help a shared decision-making process, but they are not sufficient. Other conditions need to be met as well. As we note below, research on the social psychology of justice can provide direction for the behavioral aspects of shared decision making. One of the conditions that is essential to facilitate shared decisionmaking is clinicians’ positive attitude towards listening to patients. They can use option grids as a base to have meaningful conversations with patients, so they can discuss the topics the patients wish for. Another key condition is gaining patients’ confidence and trust so that they will openly share their concerns with the clinician. Research has also found that shared decision-making makes changes in patients´ behavior and beliefs. Evidence from 86 randomized trials show that patients gain knowledge through shared decision making, have more confidence in decisions, are more actively involved, and that often informed patients choose more conservative treatment options (Stacey et al., 2011). In shared decision-making processes, patients reach a better understanding of negative and positive consequences and they can choose treatment options according to their preferences (Elwyn et al., 2012). Shared decision-making is an essential process in health care services. Especially when there is not just one clear option when delivering health care. Often in making treatment decisions there are several courses of action equally advisable options without a proven winner. Many times, each health care option has advantages and disadvantages. In those situations, shared decision-making is even more important. Health professionals need communication skills, tools and resources (e.g., time) that facilitate this shared decision-making process. On the other hand, patients need to be empowered to make informed decisions. All this constitutes an essential process that need to be considered and managed in order to have effective health care services.

How Does Perceived Justice Work in Health Care? The description above shows how an innovation like shared decision making can change the way health care is delivered. It would be helpful, though, if a theoretical and empirical research literature could be

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identified that would help us understand when and how innovations of this sort are more beneficial. We would like to suggest that the psychology of social justice provides just such a conceptual infrastructure for changes in the practice of medicine. The logic of this application of social justice research begins with recognition, perhaps obvious but often ignored by practitioners, that health care is a social endeavor, not just the application of biological science to the solution of medical problems. Doctors are authorities, health care teams are just that— teams—and the organizational context in medical practices, clinics, and hospitals operate with the same dynamics as other organizations. People notice when they are treated in a fair or unfair manner in organizations and other social contexts and act accordingly. This has been demonstrated in a variety of social, political, and organizational settings with an important explicative power with respect to behaviors and key attitudes and beliefs. We have long recognized that social justice perceptions affect reactions to authority (e.g., Tyler, 1990, 1997; Tyler & Caine, 1981; Tyler & Lind, 1992), and there is no reason, a priori, to suppose that medical authorities would provoke a different psychology of trust, acceptance, and obedience than political or organizational authorities. There is empirical, as well as theoretical, support for supposing that fairness judgments play a role in health care: Pérez-Arechaederra, Briones, Lind, and Garcia-Lopez (2014) report positive relationships between patients’ organizational justice perceptions and their satisfaction, trust in clinicians, and global justice judgments. In addition, unpublished data described by Lind (2013) showed that patients’ ratings of how fairly they had been treated by physicians correlated highly with their ratings and reports of satisfaction with their health care, their willingness to engage the doctor again, and their obedience and compliance with the doctor’s treatment regimen. There are several justice theories that address how perceived justice perceptions are formed and used. One of them, the Uncertainty Management Model (Lind & Van den Bos, 2002; Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002), seems especially pertinent in health care contexts. Personal uncertainty, a frequent experience in health care contexts, is advanced in the model as a key moderator influencing how fairness judgments are used. The model posits that information about justice (in any of its dimensions: distributive, procedural, interactional and informational) is crucial for people under personal uncertainty. Personal uncertainty is defined as the subjective sense of doubt or instability of self-perceptions, views of the world, or the relationship between these two sets of cognitions. Uncertainty Management research was originally stimulated by ideas and research findings in work on mortality salience and terror management (e.g., Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997), but the uncertainty management work differs substantially with respect to the role of

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personal uncertainty and the use of fairness perceptions to cope with uncertainty (Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000). Terror management studies manipulated death-related thoughts of participants, so they think about being mortal, and found that such thoughts altered subsequent attitudes and behavior. Uncertainty management research postulated, and demonstrated, that mortality salience prompts personal uncertainty and that uncertainty could moderate the impact of fairness judgments on a variety of behaviors and attitudes that show ‘fair process effects.’ Mortality thoughts are linked to doubt or instability about the self, so they can provoke personal uncertainty. Given that health services seem to be a natural context where both mortality salience and other sources of personal uncertainty can easily appear, personal uncertainty can be especially present. This would make perceived fairness a more powerful variable. Health care services are organizations that offer complex services— complex both with respect to the kind of the tasks involved and with respect to the situation of the users they deal with. When people go to health services, they are in a state of vulnerability. If they need health care, it is often the case that they are experiencing a certain extent of uncertainty about the reason of their visit and/or what is going to happen in the service as an organization. Due to this, we can distinguish two sources of uncertainty in these users: one caused by the service as an organization (Miles & Naumann, 2004) and the other one caused by the illness or health situation of the user (Mishel, 1997). The first source of uncertainty also appears in other kind of services, but the second one is a peculiar characteristic of health services. Also, frequently, health decisions entail uncertainties about their consequences and effects in our life as a whole and in our health. People under uncertainty behave in an idiosyncratic manner. Generally, uncertainty is an aversive state, so people try to reduce those feelings. Having information is a proven way of reducing uncertainty. Patients expect health services to provide information to them. So, handling information properly would be a powerful tool in health care. This is directly linked to the importance of a proper shared decision making in health care. Another indicator of the potential of information management in health care relates to health care information asymmetry. Traditionally, users of health care services suffer a substantial asymmetry of information compared with the service provider’s knowledge. Even though nowadays information is easily available for many patients (through the internet and information technologies), now the difficulty is to select reliable, accurate sources and access comprehensible information. So, there still is an information vulnerability on patients’ side. In spite of the importance of patients’ uncertainty in health care, uncertainty management concepts have rarely been applied to health

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care users. According to the Uncertainty Management Model, personal uncertainty in a given situation would moderate the relationship of justice perceptions and people’s attitudes and behaviors, as shown in the diagram below (Figure 12.1). The model predicts that when a person is experiencing personal uncertainty, his or her fairness judgments will have stronger effects on subsequent attitudes and behaviors. Thus, under conditions of uncertainty, experiencing procedural fairness from an authority will be more likely to enhance trust in, satisfaction with, adherence to, and loyalty to the authority in question. Justice dimensions are grouped according to Greenberg (1993). So, distributive and procedural justice refer to the structural characteristics of organizations, while interactional and informational justice are linked to social features of the other two dimensions. Most of the research supporting the Uncertainty Management Theory is based on the study of procedural justice. But the other justice dimensions can have a role in the moderation effect as well. Fairness Heuristic Theory, which is one source of the reasoning included in the Uncertainty Management Model, posits that various forms of fairness judgments are more or less interchangeable in phenomena such as those discussed in the model. According to the model, feeling fairly treated helps people cope with the negative aspects of personal uncertainty in two ways. First, fairness suggests that at least some outcomes are predictable,

Moderation effect of Personal Uncertainty (PU) in the relationships of the Perceived Justice PU

Distributive Justice Procedural Justice

Interactional Justice Informational Justice

Trust Structural

Attitudes

Dimensions

Satisfaction

Social

Dimensions

Independent Variables

Adherence

Loyalty

Behaviors

Dependent Variables

Figure 12.1 Graphic representation of the theoretical moderation effect of the level of Personal Uncertainty in the relationship between Perceived Justice and patients’ attitudes and behaviors

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controllable, and benign. Second, fairness implies a social connection that makes the person feel more included in social groups and networks. Both of these aspects of fair treatment work to ameliorate the anxiety prompted by uncertainty while at the same time enhancing ‘fair process’ effects that enhance cooperation and adherence to authorities. Research has provided considerable support for the key prediction of the Uncertainty Management Model—that perceived procedural justice has stronger effects on people’s behaviors under uncertainty conditions (see Van den Bos & Lind, 2002, for a review of much of this literature). Given the logic of the Uncertainty Management Model, any dimension of fairness could serve the function of helping people manage their uncertainty. Then, it may well be the case that in health decision-making not only procedural but interpersonal or informational justice could be especially powerful in fostering desired health behaviors in patients. Considering the key role of information management in this context, we could expect that informational justice will be playing a central role. So, research following this reasoning should be developed. Informational justice provides a conceptual framework to develop shared decision-making research. It posits that information should be perceived by the receiver (i.e., patient) as suitable, correct, enough, sincere to judge it as fair. So, it seems advisable that some of these dimensions should be measured when approaching shared decisionmaking procedures.

Procedural Organizational Justice in Health Care Services As noted above, only a few works consider users’ justice perceptions in health care. In this literature, it is usual to consider justice from the distribution point of view (distributive justice); that is, studying what rules give a fair allocation of resources in health care, often in terms of objective, not subjective justice (Mansdotter, Lindholm, & Lundberg, 2006). In the current analysis the term ‘justice’ refers more to subjective fairness perceptions than to objective allocation rules. A great deal of fairness research has focused on workers’ justice perceptions, less attention has been paid to the fairness judgments of users. That said, some scholars point out the importance of considering justice perceptions of clients for services in general (Seiders & Berry, 1998), and for health care services in particular (Clemmer & Schneider, 1996). Research on health-care clients (patients) seems especially important due to the specific characteristics of this group regarding the deep information asymmetry between the client and the service provider, and, therefore, client/patient vulnerability (Berry & Bendapudi, 2007). And also, the vulnerability derived of their level of uncertainty as we explained before.

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Perceived fairness of procedures impacts important behaviors and attitudes in health care services. For example, perceiving procedural fairness is part and parcel of patients’ involvement in their health care (Hughes & Larson, 1991). This work shows that taking part in health care decision processes has a positive effect on patients’ perceptions of procedural fairness. Hughes and Larson point out the importance of the perception of fairness in health care services. Another piece of work on the role of procedural justice is that of Naumann and Miles (2001), who demonstrated the importance of procedural justice judgments prompted by the perceived control of waiting times that health care users had. This paper also showed the importance of procedural and distributive justice on patients’ satisfaction. Both works emphasize patients’ perceived control over the procedures applied to them and the consequences of it. Given the scarce application of justice perception knowledge to health care services, Kulik and Holbrook (2002) proposed an interesting theoretical model. Their model posits that users’ perceived justice is related to experiences in four areas, some of them directly linked to procedures: opportunity to express their ideas, interpersonal treatment, freedom to choose clinician, and evaluations of the clinician’s competence. Justice perceptions in turn are posited to be related to treatment adherence. To date, to the best of our knowledge, this model has not been tested empirically. At the time Kulik and Holbrook proposed their model, no refined measures were available to measure such variables. Fortunately, as time has passed, validated measures of procedural justice perceptions and the other justice dimensions in health care have been developed (PérezArechaederra, Briones, Lind and García, 2014). The PJust-CS scale created by Pérez-Arechaederra et al. measures distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational perceptions of fairness of health care users. This makes it easier to extract conclusions about the role of this perceptions in the health care context. Other research had explored what kind of information health care users’ take into account when they make fairness judgements (PérezArechaederra, Herrero, Lind, and Masip, 2010). A content analysis showed what health care users understand by a fair or unfair experience in health care. Even though this work was based on the descriptions made by young health care users, and therefore their experiences with health care could be limited compared with average users, the results were clear about the importance of respect, information sharing, and getting a satisfactory result (Pérez-Arechaederra et al., 2010). Waiting times, information exchange, the quality of interpersonal treatment, and admitting errors or asking for forgiveness were identified as important features of the health care experience as well.

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Among the characteristics of a fair organizational—or health care— procedure we can find the lack of bias. Avoiding bias against any group (e.g., racial bias) in health care can be approached by several recommendations, one of them is building partnership with patients (Burgess, Van Ryn, Dovidio, & Saha, 2007). That means reframing clinicianpatient interactions as relationship between equals, not having one a lower-status than the other. Sharing the decision-making processes could be closely related to this new reframing. Another characteristic of a fair procedure is the opportunity of participation in the process applied or the ‘voice effect,’ a topic explored in the next section of this chapter.

The Psychology of Voice in Health Care (How Much Does a Procedure Allow Patients to Express Their Ideas?) Justice research has a body of theory related to reactions to procedures for making decisions and, generally, for how people are treated. Within this what is often termed Psychology of Voice has a long tradition and stable findings about its effects. As we will see, the Psychology of Voice has direct connections with the shared decision-making processes in health care, which was described above. Research on the psychology of voice shows, across a great many studies, that when people perceive themselves to have an input in a process, they are more likely to accept that process and its results. A key feature of this effect is the requirement of patients perceiving that they are listened to. We could expect that sharing decision making in health care could give such a ‘voice’ to patients and then, being related to those results on patients. There is research that suggests that people prefer having a voice even when having voice is said to increase costs or diminish health outcomes or life time expectancy compared to no-voice approaches to health care (Mentovich, Rhee, & Tyler, 2014). The authors propose that the preference was so strong due to participants’ expectation of enjoying better health outcomes and greater autonomy when they afford having a voice. This study shows the power of such voice contribution. Mentovich et al. carried out their study in laboratory settings, so the situation and the operation of voice effects might be a bit different in real life situations. Nevertheless, the research shows a quite strong preference for having a voice in health care procedures. On the professionals’ side, the perception of voice among health care providers has been studied in health care workers teams (De Andrade, Scarpa, El Halal, Goldim, & Antonacci, 2016). De Andrade et al. studied the voice perception of physicians, nurses and technicians in a pediatric intensive care unit regarding the decision-making process of life support limitation and end-of-life decisions. The three groups were

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compared and found that physicians were the group that expressed less perceived lack of opportunity to express their opinions.

Implications for Shared Decision-Making Research in Health Care Based on the research and theories reviewed above, several justicerelated mechanisms might be playing a role in the functioning of shared decision-making in health care. It is clear that perceiving justice increases perceived control in difficult situations. Therefore, increasing patients’ involvement and engagement on their health care would be expected to enhance perceived control and perceived justice. One way in which shared decision making might be producing the good results described above is through the promotion of procedural justice perceptions that result from taking part in procedures and information exchange. This would suggest that shared decision making is not only about considering patients’ inputs but also about them perceiving fairness and the message it conveys, making them feel social connection, inclusion, involvement, control and greater autonomy. In addition, as mentioned above, users of health care services are expected to have personal uncertainty when seeking for health care. According to the Uncertainty Management Model, justice information is more important to people when they are uncertain. It seems that shared decision-making processes might be activating several justice triggers such as: a) increasing perceived control about procedures (i.e., procedural justice related); b) giving opportunity to express their opinions to those affected by the results of the decision-making process (i.e., voice effect related); c) sharing correct, enough, accurate, sincere and comprehensive information (i.e., informational justice related). Finally, if Uncertainty Management Model implications are valid, then we could expect that the use of decision-making tools can have even a deeper impact in people with high levels of uncertainty compared with those with low levels of personal uncertainty. In such a case, an implication for the shared decision-making research area would be to give priority to developing aid tools and shared decision-making in pathologies or situations that can potentially cause high levels of personal uncertainty.

References: Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2001). Principles of biomedical ethics (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Berry, L. L., & Bendapudi, N. (2007). Health care: A fertile field for service research. Journal of Service Research, 10(2), 111–122.

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Index

abusive supervision 222–224, 227, 231 accountability 116–117, 119 Ackermann, K. A. 100 Adams, J. S. 2, 3, 5–6, 12, 215, 256 adaptation levels 110, 111 Adler, J. W. 10 advantageous inequity 23, 31–32, 34, 36 affect 248–249, 265; see also emotions; negative affect; positive affect affective events theory (AET) 265–266, 269 affirmative action 218 African Americans 64, 137, 198 aggression 223, 261 Akinola, M. 216–217 algorithms 235–236 Alic, Adam 4, 46–74 altruism 99, 104 “ambivalent sociality” 78 Ambrose, Maureen L. 4, 143, 243–283 Andersson, L. M. 222, 223 anger 86, 257–258, 260–261, 262; appraisals 253, 255; compliance with organizational rules 264; eventbased 265; morality 164; radicalization 165–166 animal species 11, 21, 22, 23–34, 35–38, 84 antecedent-process-outcome (APO) models 246–247, 248, 263, 267 appraisals 75, 249, 250, 251–257, 262 Aquino, K. 249 arbitration awards 9–10 Ashour, O. 168 attribution theory 111

authority: authority ranking 94, 95, 96–97, 101, 103–104, 105; Fairness Heuristic Theory 79; policing 134, 135–136, 139, 181–182, 185–186; procedural justice 288; Relational Model of Authority 77–78; social justice perceptions 286 autonomy 183–184, 194, 284, 291, 292 Bagger, J. 247 Baldwin, A. 247 Balliet, D. 100 Barclay, L. J. 119, 185, 187–188, 192–193, 248, 249, 262 Barnes, C. M. 269 Baron, R. M. 196 Barrett, L. F. 248 Barsky, A. 267, 269 Bastounis, M. 246 Beehr, T. A. 225 behavioral disinhibition 82, 83, 87 Belief in a Just World theory see just world beliefs beliefs 2, 110, 165 Belschak, F. D. 246 Benard, S. 215, 217, 231 beneficence 284 Berkowitz, L. 6 Bernerth, J. B. 120 Berscheid, E. 6 Bies, R. J. 222, 223–224 biology 11, 14, 21–45, 75, 86 biomedical ethics 284 birds 11, 22, 23, 33 Bittner, E. 185 Blader, S. L. 193, 262, 264

296

Index

Blau, P. 5 Bobocel, D. R. 4 body symptoms 249 bonobos 30, 38 Bowes-Sperry, L. 121–122 Bowling, N. A. 225 Bradford, B. 146, 151, 152, 189 brain processes 11, 14, 84–85; constructed emotions 257, 258; control-of-fairness mechanisms 87; dimensional approaches to emotion 259 Brewer, M. B. 78 Briones, E. 286 Brockner, Joel 3, 11, 213–242, 245 Brosnan, Sarah F. 11, 21–45, 84, 85–86 Brown, Michael 137 Buchanan, F. R. 119–120 bullying 223, 225 Bush, George 48 buyer/seller interactions 247 Canada, K. E. 144 canids 33, 37 capital punishment 47 capuchin monkeys 24, 25, 26, 28–29, 30 Castilla, E. J. 215, 217, 231 causality: causal mediation analysis 196–197, 202–203, 204; justice beliefs 46; motivating versus motivated justice processes 2, 3; police legitimacy 183, 184, 194–203, 204–205 certainty 260–261 Chang, C. K. M. 264 cheating 10, 117, 253 children 21–22, 32, 34–35, 37 chimpanzees 24–26, 29–30, 32, 36 CL see comparison level Clark, M. S. 101 class privilege 218 Cocchiara, F. K. 119–120 cognitive appraisals 75, 249, 250, 251–257, 262 cognitive load 59 cognitive processes 14 cognitive resources 58–59, 60 Cohen-Charash, Y. 142 “cold” motives 264–265, 269 Colquitt, J. A. 4, 118, 143, 246, 268; intrinsic motivation 120;

organizational justice 213, 222, 227, 231, 236; positive and negative affect 250 communal sharing 94, 95, 96, 101, 103, 104, 105 community development 134–135, 139–140 comparison level (CL) 110–111 competition: Fairness Heuristic Theory 79; Social Value Orientations 99, 100, 105 congruence 262 Conlon, D. E. 143, 222 conservatism 63 constitutional democracy 168 constructed emotions 257–258, 262 control 50, 52, 255; health care 292; process control 7–8, 219 convergence 22–23, 32–33 cooperation 3; animal responses to inequity 27, 28–31, 33; evolution of fairness 36–37, 85–86; fair process effects 289; Fairness Heuristic Theory 79, 80, 190; Fairness Theory 118; “fundamental social dilemma” 78–79, 221; Group Value Theory 77; maximizing outcomes from 36; policing 134–135, 139, 145, 147, 151, 187; Social Value Orientations 99, 105 Cordes, C. L. 249 Cornelis, I. 264 Cortina, L. M. 223 corvids 33 counterfactuals 111, 115–122, 123–124, 129–130 courts 144, 150 Crawshaw, J. R. 260 crime control 135, 136, 149, 154 crime reduction 134–135, 153 criminal justice system 144 Cropanzano, Russell S. 114, 115–116, 122–124, 243–283 Crosby, F. 111 culture 21–22 customers 247 De Andrade, E. 291–292 De Cremer, D. 247, 264 de Vera Park, M. 143 de Waal, F. B. M. 11, 16, 21, 24, 27–30, 32, 35–36, 39–40, 43–45, 84, 89

Index 297 De Witte, K. 247 decision making: algorithmic fairness 236; policing 182, 187, 193, 194; shared decision making in health care 284–294; voice 219–220, 221 delay of gratification 36, 50–51 delegitimization 166–168 democracy 168, 169 Den Hartog, D. N. 246 deonance 122–126, 128–129, 130, 228, 259, 261 DePater, I. E. 222 dependence 53–54, 59–60 Deutsch, Morton 6, 94, 101, 106n1 Devine, D. 143 Diefendorff, J. M. 269 dignity 77, 138, 189, 222, 232 disadvantaged groups 61–63 disadvantageous inequity 23, 34 discrete emotions 250–251, 252, 257, 258, 262–263 discretion 119, 264–265 discrimination 167, 217, 219 disinhibition 82, 83, 87 distributive justice 1, 4–5, 6–7, 81–82; algorithmic fairness 236; animal responses 24–25, 27, 28, 38, 84; children’s responses 34–35; discretion 264; emotions 250; Fairness Heuristic Theory 190–191; Fairness Theory 121; health care 289, 290; Justice Standards paradigm 93–95, 102; organizational justice 213, 214, 215–219, 244–245, 247, 269; personal uncertainty 288; Social Value Orientations 105; see also outcome fairness diversity 121, 216–217, 229 dogs 33, 37 Donner, C. 145 Dubouloz, C.-J. 172 Dunford, B. 143 Earley, P. C. 142 economic inequality 51–52, 63 Eisenberger, N. I. 11, 14, 84–85, 86, 87 Ellsworth, P. C. 252 emotions 66, 243–283; abusive supervision 223; affective events theory 265–266; appraisal theories 251–257; categorical theories

250–251; constructed 257–258, 262; definition of 248–250; dimensional approaches 258–262, 270; directional and non-directional goals 188; emotional regulation 84; experience sampling methodology 267–269; Fairness Theory 119; “hot” motives 264–265, 269; moral 164–165; psychological construction theories 251; radicalization 165–166 empathy 264 Engstrom, Holly R. 4, 15, 46–74 entity justice 265, 266, 268, 269, 270 envy 65–66, 250–251 Epp, C. R. 147 equality: equality matching 94, 95, 97, 100, 103; Justice Standards paradigm 94, 100, 102; procedural justice 184; see also inequality equity 215 equity theory 2, 4, 12, 93–95, 244, 256 Erez, A. 222, 224 ESM see experience sampling methodology ethics: biomedical 284; organizational justice 226–227, 231, 232–233; see also morality ethnic minorities: organizational justice 215, 216–217; status differences 64; trust in police 137; see also African Americans event justice 265–266, 268, 269–270 evolution 21, 22–23, 32–33, 35–37, 85–86 exclusion 75, 79, 85, 87, 189 expectations 257–258 experience sampling methodology (ESM) 267–269 expressions 250 extremism 13, 86, 88, 162, 166–169, 170–175 facial expressions 250 Fagan, J. 198 fair process effect 3, 8–10, 76; cooperation 289; organizational justice 245; social disinhibition 82, 83; see also process fairness fairness: algorithmic 236; animal responses 23–34, 35–38, 84; appraisals 252, 255; beliefs 2; biology of 21–45, 86; brain

298

Index

processes 84–85; cognitive processes 14; emotions 263–264, 270; evolution of 35–37; Fairness Theory 110, 114–129; health care 289–291, 292; inclusion and exclusion 75; Interdependence Theory 76–77; interpersonal 222, 223–224, 227, 232; justice distinction 246; Justice Standards paradigm 94–95, 102; organizational justice 13, 221, 225–230, 236, 244; policing 151, 182–183, 187–193, 199–202, 204; psychological research 5; relationship-focused paradigm 6–10; social justice perceptions 286; system justification 228–229; threats to 56–57; Uncertainty Management Model 286–287; use of the term 1; valance 259–260; see also justice; unfairness Fairness Heuristic Theory 75–76, 78–88, 183, 190–191, 221, 288–289 fear 260–261, 265 feelings 250 fish 33 Fiske, Alan Page 95–97, 101–104, 105 Fiske, S. T. 79 Folger, Robert 10, 110–133, 224, 244 Folkman, S. 229 forgiveness 260, 290 Fortin, M. 255, 256, 259, 261, 262, 263 freedom 125 French, J. R. P. 101 Frenkel, S. J. 250 Fridell, L. 145 Fry, W. R. 226 “fundamental-justice” paradigm 11 “fundamental social dilemma” 78–79, 82, 85, 86, 221–222 game theory 97–98 Ganegoda, D. B. 121 García-Lopez, L. 286 Geenen, B. 247, 250 gender: harassment 225; organizational justice 215–216; privilege 217; stereotyping 66; system justification 55, 57, 229 Gergen, K. J. 174 Gilbert, D. T. 47 Gilliland, S. W. 118

goal pursuit 50–51, 52–53; cognitive resources 58; consequences of justice motive 61–63; inevitability 55; threat 60 Gong, T. 251 goodness 57, 60 Gore, Al 48 Gosse, L. 4 Gottfredson, D. C. 144 Greenbaum, R. 120 Greenberg, J. 4, 143, 213, 244, 254, 263, 288 Griffith, M. D. 4 group deprivation 163–164, 170 Group Engagement Model 78, 83, 183, 270n1 Group Value Theory 76–77, 83 guilt 253, 256, 260 habituation 87–88 Hagan, J. 140 Haider-Markel, D. P. 147 Haidt, J. 261 Hans, V. P. 140 harassment 225 Haslam, N. 104 health care 284–294 Hedström, P. 195 Heider, F. 122, 128 Helson, Harry 110, 111 Henley, A. B. 119–120 Hershcovis, M. S. 264 Hiday, V. A. 144 Hillebrandt, A. 249 Hirschfeld, R. R. 120 Hirschman, A. O. 220 Hoegg, J. 249 Holbrook, R. L. 290 Homans, G. C. 5 homology 22, 29, 268 Hoobler, J. M. 246 “hot” motives 264–265, 269 Howard, L. W. 249 Hsu, K. K. L. 264 Hu, J. 246 Huang, L. 263 Huang, W. 263 Huerta, M. 223 Hughes, T. E. 290 Hulst, L. 83 human error 119, 290 Hymes, R. W. 102

Index 299 identity: Fairness Heuristic Theory 79; “fundamental social dilemma” 78; Group Engagement Model 78; policing 139, 152; racial 218; see also social identity ideological dissonance 51–52, 55, 56–57, 58, 60 Ikramullah, M. 264 immorality 163, 164–165, 170 incivility 222–225, 232 inclusion 75, 77, 189, 217, 225 inequality: economic 51–52, 63; gender 55, 57, 229; limiting of fairness effects 87; organizational justice 217, 219; political conservatism 63; stereotyping 65; system justification 66 inequity: animal responses to 23–34, 35–38; children’s responses to 34–35; congruence 262; evolution of responses to 35–37; “inequity distress” 3, 6, 12; limiting of fairness effects 87; organizational justice 217; see also injustice; unfairness inevitability 54–56, 60 information asymmetry 287 informational justice: discretion 264–265; health care 289, 290, 292; job satisfaction 269; organizational justice 11, 82, 244; personal uncertainty 288 injustice: appraisals 255; emotions 249; envy 250–251; events 266; harassment 225; ill health caused by 250; interactional and informational 11; organizational justice 215, 217, 246, 263; outcome favorability 253; prohibitive voice 220; radicalization 162–166, 169–170; tolerance of 220–221; see also inequity; unfairness instrumental model 228, 259, 262 interactional justice: algorithmic fairness 236; discretion 264–265; emotions 263; Fairness Heuristic Theory 190–191; Fairness Theory 119, 120; organizational justice 11, 82, 213, 214–215, 222–226, 231, 244–245; personal uncertainty 288; positive affect 247 Interdependence Theory 76–77, 97–98

interpersonal justice: consequences of justice motive 60–61; health care 289, 290; job satisfaction 269; organizational justice 222, 223–224, 232 interpersonal relations 1 intrinsic motivation 120 inward versus outward focus 262 Iqbal, M. Z. 264 Jackson, Jonathan 3, 13, 80, 147–148, 181–212 Jacobs, G. 246 Jennings, W. G. 145 jihadism 168 Johnson, R. E. 227, 269 Joireman, J. 100 Jost, J. T. 4, 12 Jun, S. 219 just world beliefs 2, 3–4, 12, 46, 48–49; goal pursuit 50–51, 61, 62, 63; harassment 225; organizational justice 228 justice: consequences of justice motive 60–67; emotion 246–248; emotions 263–265, 270; entity 265, 266, 268, 269, 270; event 265–266, 268, 269–270; experience sampling methodology 267–269; fairness distinction 246; Fairness Heuristic Theory 183; Fairness Theory 118, 122; health care 284, 285–289, 290, 292; inward or outward focus 262; motivating versus motivated justice processes 2–4; policing 134; use of the term 1; see also distributive justice; fairness; interactional justice; organizational justice; procedural justice Justice Standards (JS) paradigm 93–95, 100–102, 104 justification 52–60; Fairness Theory 118; moral licensing 231; system 51–52; see also system justification Kabat-Farr, D. 223 Kahneman, Daniel 111, 116 Kaiser, C. R. 216 Karuza, J. J. 226 Kay, A. C. 228, 229, 234 Kearley, B. W. 144 Kelley, H. H. 97, 110–111

300

Index

Kenny, D. A. 196 Khan, A. K. 260 Kiefer, T. 248 Kim, W. C. 143 King, D. D. 233 Knight, C. 194–195 Kochel, T. R. 147 Konishi, N. 127 Koopman, J. 227, 268 Kuhn, Thomas 4 Kulik, C. T. 143, 290 Kurtzberg, T. R. 119 Lanaj, K. 269 Langhout, R. D. 223 Larson, L. N. 290 Laurin, Kristin 4, 46–74, 229 Lavelle, J. J. 119–120 law 13, 168–169 lawsuits 9–10 Lazarus, R. S. 229 Le Roy, J. 246 Leary, T. 98 Lee, J. Y. 247 left-wing radicalization 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169–170 Legewie, J. 198 legitimacy 3, 13; causal mechanisms 195, 199–202; Group Value Theory 77; police 134–140, 145, 147–150, 152–155, 181–185, 187, 191–195, 197, 199–202, 205n1; selflegitimacy 152 Lehta, D. 259 Lerner, M. J. 3–4, 12 Leskinen, E. A. 223 Leunissen, J. M. 247–248 Leventhal, G. S. 135, 226 Levine, J. M. 213–214 Levitt, B. 172 Lewin, Kurt 128, 135 Li, J. 229–230 Li, M. 250 Lieberman, M. D. 11, 14, 84–85, 86, 87 Liebrand, W. B. G. 105 Lin, S. H. J. 227 Lind, A. 286 Lind, E. Allan 1–20; Fairness Heuristic Theory 75–92, 190–191; health care 286; motivated justice processes 228; procedural justice 142, 143 Livingston, B. 120

Loi, R. 269 Lombardi, Vincent 224 Long, D. M. 143 Lowery, B. S. 218 Lowrey, B. 146 Ma, J. 227 Maas, M. 247 macaques 30 MacCoun, Robert J. 6, 7, 93–109, 141–142, 144 MacQueen, S. 146 Magley, V. J. 223 management 142–144, 232; see also organizational justice marijuana legalization 124–125 market pricing 94, 95, 97, 101, 103, 104 marmosets 26, 30–31 Martin, C. 113, 115, 116 Martin, J. 172 Mascolo, M. F. 250 Maskaly, J. 145 Matta, F. K. 227, 268 Mauborgne, R. A. 143 Mayer, D. M. 264 Maynard-Moody, S. 147 Mays, R. D. 198 Mazei, J. 121–122 Mazerolle, L. 145–146, 147 McClintock, C. G. 105, 107n4 McCluskey, J. D. 152 McColl-Kennedy, J. R. 118 McLean, S. J. 146, 148 McNall, L. A. 120 Mentovich, A. 184, 193–194 Mentovich, A. 291 meritocracy 51, 57, 63; organizational justice 215–216, 230, 231; white privilege 218 Messé, L. A. 102 Messick, D. M. 10 Miedema, J. 247 Mikula, G. 1, 10 Miles, J. A. 290 Miller, D. 141 mood 248–249, 258, 259–260, 264, 268 Moors, A. 249 morality 122, 124; appraisals 255; emotions 261, 262; moral licensing 227, 231, 232–233; moral motives 189; moral outrage 66, 189;

Index 301 radicalization 163, 164–165, 170; see also ethics Moreland, R. L. 213–214 Morner, M. 121–122 mortality salience 286–287 motivated cognition 46, 47–49, 51, 52–60; police fairness 183, 187–189, 192–193 motivated justice processes 2–4, 12, 14–15, 46; consequences of justice motive 60–67; just world beliefs 48–49; organizational justice 228; phase-shifting 80 motivating justice processes 2–3, 4, 11, 14–15, 80 motivation: contributive and connotative 128–129; deonance 122–123, 124, 125–126; emotions 249, 250, 262; “hot” motives 264–265, 269; organizational justice 120, 228, 244; trust in police 138 Murphy, K. 152 Murphy, R. O. 100 Muslim radicalization 163, 165, 166, 168, 169–170 Nadisic, T. 249 Nagin, D. S. 148–149, 182, 184, 186, 202 Najaka, S. S. 144 Naquin, C. E. 119 National Academy of Sciences 149 Naumann, S. 290 need 94, 101–102, 104, 105 negative affect 246, 248–249, 250, 263–265 negativity bias 266 neuroscience 11, 14, 84, 86, 87; see also brain processes neuroticism 64 neutrality 138, 150, 187 Newburn, T. 186 Ng, K. Y. 143, 222 Nicklin, J. M. 120, 121 non-maleficence 284 norms 6, 124, 189; counterfactual thinking 121–122; ethical 255; norm theory 111; organizational justice 219; punishment for violation of 127–128 obedience to authority 77–78, 79 observer effect 256

Oe, T. 127 Ohtsubo, Y. 127 Opotow, S. 102 orangutans 29, 30 organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) 13, 77, 142–143, 229, 247–248, 263 organizational justice 3, 4, 11, 13, 213–242; appraisals 252–257; distributive justice 215–219; emotions 243–283; ethics 226–227; Fairness Theory 119–121; future research 234–236; health care 286; interactional justice 222–226; overview of 244–246; procedural justice 142–144, 219–222; system justification 228–231, 233 ostracism 261 outcome fairness 9–10, 80–81; appraisals 252–254; organizational justice 213, 235, 245; self-construal 261; see also distributive justice outcome favorability 245, 247, 253 outcome-focused paradigm 4–6 outward versus inward focus 262 overcompensation 23 oxytocin 26, 37 Paddock, L. 247 pain 85, 87, 88 Park, H. M. 222 Parks, C. 100 Passantino, L. G. 227, 268 paternalism 65 Pearson, C. M. 222, 223 perception 110 Pérez-Arechaederra, Diana 13, 284–294 permission 125 “person-perception paradigm” 12 personality factors 98 Petri, B. 10 Pettigrew, Tom 111 phase-shifting 80, 192–193 Phillips, L. T. 218, 219 PJust-CS scale 290 Polcz, Sarah 6, 7, 93–109 policing 13, 134–161, 181–212; coding of police behavior 148; crime control 135, 136, 149, 154; everyday 185–186; fairness perception 187–193; four elements of procedural justice 149–150;

302

Index

internal department dynamics 151; officer safety 152; popular legitimacy 135–136, 139–140, 153–155; public trust 136–138, 149, 154; self-legitimacy 152 political conservatism 63 popular legitimacy see legitimacy Porath, C. L. 224 Porter, C. O. L. H. 143, 222 Pósch, Krisztián 3, 13, 80, 181–212 positive affect 246–247, 248–249, 250, 251, 258, 263–265 Poujol, J. F. 247 Poussard, J. M. 246 power 101, 153; personal sense of 183–184, 194; policing 181, 185; procedural justice and legitimacy 193–194 Price, K. H. 119–120 pride 253 primacy effect 80, 81, 82 primates 22, 23–32, 36, 38 privilege 217–219 proactive justice theories 263, 264 procedural justice 1–2, 6–9, 12, 81–82; algorithmic fairness 236; animal responses 25, 38, 84; appraisals 254; behavioral reactions 144–145; causal mechanisms 195, 198; counterfactuals 123; criminal justice system 144; discretion 264–265; emotions 249, 263; ethics 226; Fairness Heuristic Theory 190–191; Fairness Theory 117, 119, 120; Group Engagement Model 78, 270n1; Group Value Theory 76–77; health care 289–291, 292; organizational justice 13, 142–144, 213, 214–215, 219–222, 244–245, 247–248, 269; personal uncertainty 288; policing 134–135, 137–139, 145–152, 153, 181–212; referent cognitions theory 113, 114; social psychology of 141–142; Uncertainty Management Model 288, 289; see also fair process effect; process fairness procedural justice theory (PJT) 186–187 process control 7–8, 219 process fairness 9–10, 80–81; appraisals 252–254; organizational justice 235;

self-construal 261; see also fair process effect; procedural justice productivity 5, 94 prohibitive voice 220–221, 222 promotions 229–230, 234, 236 promotive voice 220–221 Proost, K. 247 proportionality 94, 101–104, 105, 106n1 prospect theory 121 Proudfoot, D. 228, 229, 234 psychological construction theories 251, 258–259 “psychological immune system” 47 psychological well-being see well-being Psychology of Voice see voice Pugh, S. D. 119 punishment 125, 126–128, 264 Queensland Community Engagement Trial (QCET) 146 Quinton, P. 152 Quratulain, S. 260 race 217–218; see also ethnic minorities racism 217, 219 radicalization 13, 86, 88, 162–180; context of 174; as continual process 173–174; definition of 162; injustice judgments 162–166, 169–170; move to extremism 166–169; studying 170–173 Rand, D. G. 105 rational choice tradition 93, 99–100 rationalization 47–48, 50; cognitive resources 59; dependence 54; political conservatism 63; system justification 52; threats to self 58 rats 33 Raven, B. 101 Ray, B. 144 Razzaq, S. 264 reactive justice theories 263 Red Army Faction 167 referent cognitions theory (RCT) 111–116, 117, 129 Reich, T. C. 264 Reisig, M. D. 198 rejection 86 relational models: organizational justice 228, 259; Relational Model

Index 303 of Authority 77–78; Thin Relational Models paradigm 93, 94, 95–97, 100–104 relationships: appraisals 255; communal sharing 103; dependence 54; Fairness Heuristic Theory 190; primates 25–26; relationship-focused paradigm 6–10; Social Value Orientations 103–104 relative deprivation 4, 111, 163–164 research methods 172–173, 195–196 resentment 3, 112–114, 115, 116, 120 respect 138, 139; interpersonal fairness 222; organizational justice 232; policing 150, 182, 187, 188, 189 Restubog, S. L. D. 250 retaliation 3, 79, 118, 119 “reverse causality” 184, 203 right-wing radicalization 163, 165, 166–167, 169–170 rights 125 Rocha, C. M. 144 Rodell, J. B. 143, 246 Rosenbaum, W. B. 5 Rothman, R. 264 rudeness 123 rule of law 168 Rupp, D. E. 224, 247 Russell, J. A. 248 sacrifice 126–127, 130 Sampson, R. J. 194–195 Satpute, A. B. 84 scale types 95–96, 97 Scherer, K. R. 249, 252, 255 Schilpzand, P. 222, 223 Schminke, M. 245 Schneider, B. 136 Scott, B. A. 120, 143, 227, 264–265, 266, 268, 269 Scott, K. 143 Scully, M. 172 SDM see shared decision making Sedikides, C. 247–248 self-construal 261 self-esteem 64, 139 self-interest 76, 77, 93, 126; appraisals 256; organizational justice 259; Social Value Orientations 99–100 self-legitimacy 152 self-referential appraisals 256–257

self-sacrifice 126–127, 130 self, threats to 57–58 Seo, Y. 247 sexism 217 sexual harassment 225 Shao, R. 224 Shapiro, D. L. 224 shared decision making (SDM) 284–294 Shaw, J. C. 118 Shepherd, S. 229 Shimizu, H. 127 Shukla, Jigyashu 110–133 Siadou-Martin, B. 247 silence 220–221, 232, 233 Simon, L. 222 Skarlicki, D. P. 119, 224, 249 Smith, Adam 100 social change 61, 66–67 social cognition 1, 83–84, 88 social contract 50 social dimension of emotions 261–262 social disinhibition 82, 83, 87 social exchange theory 76, 105 social groupings 29 social harmony 94 social ideals 23 social identity 2, 3, 7, 78, 152; Group Value Theory 77; police legitimacy 182, 183, 193, 200–202, 204; see also identity social interaction 88 social justice 244, 286; see also justice social learning 35 social neuroscience 11, 14 social orientation 261 social relations 87, 122; see also relationships Social Value Orientations (SVO) paradigm 93, 94, 97–100, 102–106 sociopolitical systems 51–52 Soenen, G. 80 Sparks, B. A. 118 Spector, P. E. 142 Sprinzak, E. 166–167 squirrel monkeys 29, 30 statistical tools 194–203 status: disadvantaged groups 62–63; Group Value Theory 77; health care 291; status incongruence 229–230, 234; stereotyping 64–66; system justification 63–64

304

Index

Stein, C. 128 stereotyping 60–61, 64–66, 187 Stevens, S. S. 95–96, 97 Stevenson, Robert Louis 226 stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) models 246 Stouffer, S. A. 4, 12 stress 151, 225, 227 substitutability 80, 81, 82 Sun, I. Y. 264 system-change motivation 66–67 system justification 3, 12, 15, 51–52; concern about inequality 66; gender inequality 55, 57, 229; organizational justice 215, 228–231, 233, 234; social change 67; status 63–64; stereotyping 65; see also justification “system-perception paradigm” 12 Tabibnia, G. 84 Tanaka, K. 127 Tanner, J. F., Jr. 247 Tanzer, N. K. 10 Taylor, S. E. 79 technology 119 Telep, C. W. 148–149, 182, 184, 186, 198, 202 temporary work 234–235 Tepper, B. J. 222, 223, 254 terror management 286–287 terrorism 162, 163, 168, 169, 171–172, 173–174 Thibaut, John 7–8, 10, 12, 97, 110–111, 135, 141, 219 Thin Relational Models (RM) paradigm 93, 94, 95–97, 100–104 “third common causes” 184, 202–203 threat 56–58, 60, 229 Trinkner, R. 151, 182 trust 3; in authority 288; Fairness Heuristic Theory 79, 81, 190; “fundamental social dilemma” 78–79, 221–222; Group Value Theory 77; health care 285, 286; organizational justice 13; policing 136–138, 139–140, 149, 150, 154, 192; procedural justice 142 Turillo, C. J. 126–127, 129–130 Tversky, Amos 111, 116 Tyler, Tom R. 8–9, 13, 76–77, 78, 134–161, 193, 202

Ultimatum Game (UG) 31–32, 35, 36 uncertainty 49, 53–54, 60, 87; appraisals 255; cognitive resources 58; emotions 262; Fairness Heuristic Theory 288–289; health care 287–288, 292; organizational justice 259, 260–261; radicalization 165; threat 56–57; Uncertainty Management Model 82–83, 224, 260, 286–289, 292 unfairness 3; accountability for 117, 129–130; animal responses 84; appraisals 253–254, 256; cognitive processes 14; control-offairness mechanisms 87; deonance 122–123; disadvantageous inequity 62; emotions 249, 263–264; equity theory 2; “fundamental social dilemma” 85; organizational justice 120–121, 223, 230–231, 233, 265; policing 147, 152, 188, 189; privilege 219; radicalization 163, 164; social connections 88; see also inequity; injustice valance 259–260, 268 values 189, 226 Van Avermaet, E. 107n4 Van den Bos, K. 11, 15, 247; Fairness Heuristic Theory 80, 81; radicalization and extremism 13, 86, 88, 162–180; Uncertainty Management Model 83; voice 123 Van Dijke, M. 247–248 Van Hiel, A. 247, 264 van Lange, P. A. M. 100 Van Prooijen, J. W. 123, 264 Van Wagoner, Phoenix 243–283 VanderWeele, T. J. 200 “vendetta effect” 86 Vermunt, R. 247, 249 victim blaming 4, 48, 49, 189 Vidal, D. 247 violence: policing 186; radicalization and extremism 167, 168–169, 175 voice 7, 10, 76–77, 80, 119–120, 123–124; health care 291–292; organizational justice 214–215, 219–222, 232, 233–234; policing 138, 150, 182; procedural justice 142; voice resilience 233–234 Von Grumbkow, J. 247

Index 305 Waddington, P. A. 186 Wales, H. W. 144 Walker, H. J. 120 Walker, Laurens 7–8, 10, 12, 135, 141, 219 Walster, E. 6 Walster, G. W. 6 Walter, F. 120 Weinstein, Harvey 225 Weiss, H. M. 253 Welchans, T. D. 143 well-being 60, 63–64, 124 Wesson, M. J. 143, 222 Wheeler-Smith, S. L. 262 white privilege 218 Whiting, S. 128 Wiesenfeld, Batia M. 3, 11, 213–242, 245, 262 Wild, E. 118 Wildschut, T. 247–248 Williams, J. H. 223 Williams, K. 186 Williams, K. D. 85

Williams, K. J. 120 Wilner, A. 172 Windscheid, L. 121–122 Winship, C. 194–195 Wo, D. X. H. 4 wolves 33, 37 women: gender inequality 55, 57, 66; organizational justice 215–217; status differences 64; stereotyping 64, 65, 66 Worden, R. E. 146, 148 workplace incivility 222–225, 232 Wright, M. 186 Wu, Y. 264 Yang, J. 269 Yi, Y. 251 Ylikoski, P. 195 Zapata, C. P. 143 Zapata-Phelan, C. P. 4, 120, 213 Zwenk, F. 247