Chapter 3: Do the Emotions of Others Shape Justice Effects?: An Interpersonal Approach

Issues of justice have a profound influence on our social lives (Adams, 1965; De Cremer & Tyler, 2005a; Greenberg & Colquitt, 2005; Leventhal, 1980; Thibaut & Walker, 1975; Tyler & Lind, 1992). People care about the fairness of the outcomes they receive (e.g., salary, promotion, health benefits; distributive justice; Adams, 1965; Greenberg, 1996), and about how they are treated by the allocators of these outcomes (e.g., consistent use of procedures in a respectful manner; formal and informal aspects of procedural justice; Tyler & Blader, 2003).

How people react toward information about fairness versus unfairness is determined by a variety of personality and social factors. For example, research has shown that, among other things, people’s predispositions (e.g., need to belong, equity sensitivity, social value orientation; De Cremer & Blader, 2006; Van Prooijen, De Cremer, van Beest, Stahl, van Dijke, & van Lange, 2006), the leadership style of the enacting authority (e.g., De Cremer, van Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, Mullenders, & Stinglhamber, 2005), the level of group identification (e.g., Tyler, Degoey, & Smith, 1996), and cognitive states (e.g., mortality salience, uncertainty, closeness of reference points, Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000; Van den Bos & Van Prooijen, 2001) affect the impact of justice (and especially procedural justice) on people’s responses within social interactions.