Fairness Heuristics and Substitutability Effects: Inferring the Fairness of Outcomes, Procedures, and Interpersonal Treatment When Employees Lack Clear Information

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Qin, Xin; Ren, Run; Zhang, Zhi-Xue; Johnson, Russell E.
• 署名单位: Sun Yat Sen University; Peking University; Michigan State University; Michigan State University's Broad College of Business
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/a0038084
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 749-766
• 关键词: ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE; justice clarity; judgment formation; fairness heuristic theory; need for cognitive closure

摘要

Employees routinely make judgments of 3 kinds of justice (i.e., distributive, procedural, and interactional), yet they may lack clear information to do so. This research examines how justice judgments are formed when clear information about certain types of justice is unavailable or ambiguous. Drawing from fairness heuristic theory, as well as more general theories of cognitive heuristics, we predict that when information for 1 type of justice is unclear (i.e., low in justice clarity), people infer its fairness based on other types of justice with clear information (i.e., high in justice clarity). Results across 3 studies employing different designs (correlational vs. experimental), samples (employees vs. students), and measures (proxy vs. direct) provided support for the proposed substitutability effects, especially when inferences were based on clear interactional justice information. Moreover, we found that substitutability effects were more likely to occur when employees had high (vs. low) need for cognitive closure. We conclude by discussing the theoretical contributions and practical implications of our findings.