Not All that Glitters Is Golden: the Impact of Procedural Fairness Perceptions on Consumer Satisfaction With Favorable Outcomes (original) (raw)
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Nonlinear and Nonmonotonic Effects of Outcome on Procedural and Distributive Fairness Judgments1
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1989
It has generally been assumed that increases in the concrete outcomes of a procedure will result in judgments of greater procedural and distributive fairness, but research on this topic has been inconsistent. Using a classic procedural justice paradigm (Walker, LaTour, Lind, &. Thibaut, 1974), the experiment tested the effects of four levels of outcome. Forty-eight male and female undergraduates were led to believe that their team had been wrongfully charged with cheating in a business simulation game. An adversary adjudication was held, purportedly to resolve the charge. The outcome of the adjudication was confiscation of all, two thirds, one third, or none of the subject's monetary winnings from the game. Both procedural and distributive fairness measures showed dear nonlinear outcome effects. The relationship between outcomes and both fairness measures showed some evidence of being nonmonotonic as well: A two-thirds loss resulted in less favorable reactions than did a total loss. Ratings on other scales suggest that the nonlinear effects are due to beliefs that the judge did not fully consider the evidence in the two-thirds loss and one-third loss conditions. The discussion focuses on the theoretical implications of the findings for procedural justice and social exchange processes and the practical implications for conflict resolution procedure.
Justice is no simple matter: Case for elaborating our model of procedural fairness
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1985
Past research has demonstrated that autocratic dispute intervention procedures (i.e., when a third party actively seeks out information about the dispute and then decides how it ought to be resolved) are perceived as less fair than arbitration procedures (i.e., when the third party makes a decision based only on arguments and evidence given to them by the disputants). From these findings, Thibaut and Walker (1975) concluded that the North American legal system, which is most similar to arbitration, should be perceived as more fair than the continental European legal system, which is purportedly most similar to autocratic procedures. Three studies reported here test the effects of two features of European legal systems that Damaska (1975) suggested mitigate some of the problems with autocratic procedures. The results suggest that (a) permitting disputants an opportunity to present their positions and (b) the presence of an option to appeal an unfair decision dramatically improve the perceived fairness of the autocratic procedure. Implications of these results for the study of procedural fairness and legal procedure are discussed.
Procedural fairness, outcome favorability, and judgments of an authority's responsibility
Journal of Applied …, 2007
postulates that, particularly in the face of unfavorable outcomes, employees judge an organizational authority to be more responsible for their outcomes when the authority exhibits lower procedural fairness. Three studies lent empirical support to this notion. Furthermore, 2 of the studies showed that attributions of responsibility to the authority mediated the relationship between the authority's procedural fairness and employees' reactions to unfavorable outcomes. The findings (a) provide support for a key assumption of fairness theory, (b) help to account for the pervasive interactive effect of procedural fairness and outcome favorability on employees' attitudes and behaviors, and (c) contribute to an emerging trend in justice research concerned with how people use procedural fairness information to make attributions of responsibility for their outcomes. Practical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research also are discussed.
Social Justice Research, 1996
In a study of relocation decisions at seven different sites, procedural fairness was shown to be more sensitive to outcome fairness when respondents had less time to gather information about decision procedures. We interpret this finding to show that inaccessibility of information about decision procedures moderates the influence of outcome fairness judgments on procedural fairness judgments, such that outcome recipients
Interactional justice and the fair process effect: The role of outcome uncertainty
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2007
This paper reconciles the inconsistent Wndings on the interactive eVect of interactional justice and social comparison information on outcome evaluation. We distinguish two diVerent eVects of interactional justice and examine outcome uncertainty as a qualifying factor. Three hundred and Wfty-seven undergraduates participated in a scenario experiment. It is found that, due to the functional quality eVect, interactional justice signiWcantly inXuences outcome evaluation, regardless of the social comparison information that is available, in situations of low outcome uncertainty. However, due to the fair process eVect, interactional justice, as with procedural justice, interacts with social comparison information to inXuence outcome evaluation in situations of high outcome uncertainty. Implications for comparison referents and social comparison motives in social justice research are discussed.
Apparent impropriety and procedural fairness judgments
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1985
Variation in decision making and allocation procedures has been shown to affect judgments of the fairness of the procedure and its outcome, but such effects have always been studied in the context of properly enacted procedures. It was hypothesized that the appearance of impropriety in the enactment of a fair procedure would increase the extent to which the procedure is judged in terms of its outcome. One hundred twenty undergraduate males and females were placed in the role of either defendant or observer with respect to an adversary procedure trial. Appearance of impropriety was manipulated during the trial by either including or not including evidence of a friendly personal relationship between the judge and the plaintiff's lawyer. The defendant was said to have either won or lost the case. A significant impropriety x outcome interaction on ratings of procedural fairness, unqualified by higher order effect, supported the hypothesis: a favorable outcome increased and an unfavorable outcome decreased the fairness of the procedure more when the impropriety was present. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for future investigation and theory on procedural justice and for practical issues. o 1985 Academic Press, Inc. The study of procedural justice addresses the psychological consequences of procedures governing social decision making. A major area of research in procedural justice has been the study of perceived fairness. Manipulation of decision-making procedures has been shown to affect perceptions of the fairness of the procedure, termed procedural fairness, and perceptions of the fairness of the outcome, termed distributive fairness (e.g., Folger,