For more than a half-decade, social psychologists have been studying the determinants of peoples reactions to social conflict and to the authorities who intervene in those conflicts. While a proper understanding of peoples satisfaction with encounters such as ones with the police, or judges, or their employers, or their elected political leaders is important for the advancement of psychology, it is also important for anyone concerned with the smooth functioning of social groups and institutions such as governments, schools, courts, and organizations.
One of the most important advances to result from this research is an appreciation for the important influence of fairness for peoples satisfaction. While few people would be surprised with the observation that peoples satisfaction with decisions or their compliance with decisions is influenced by whether they received favorable or unfavorable outcomes (e.g., did the police officer issue a ticket? Did the judge decide in my favor? Did my boss give me a raise?), many might not realize that in such encounters, concerns with outcome fairness (distributive fairness) can often be equally, or even more important than concerns with obtaining favorable outcomes. Perhaps even less obvious is the finding that for many people in many situations, being treated fairly (procedural fairness) can be as important, or even more important, than obtaining fair outcomes.
While the importance of procedural fairness has been observed in numerous studies, these studies have focused almost exclusively on the reactions of the subordinates in subordinate-authority encounters. Consequently, little is known about the determinants of satisfaction among authorities. However, our recent research has consistently shown that authorities satisfaction is influenced less by procedural fairness and more by outcome concerns than is the case among subordinates. Such an authority-subordinate mismatch might produce undesirable and even unnecessary tension in their encounters with one another.
The six studies to be conducted under this grant (five laboratory studies and one field survey) are designed to increase our understanding of the psychological reasons for the disparate predictors of fairness and satisfaction among subordinates and authorities. Among the factors to be examined in these studies are the potentially divergent motives of authorities and subordinates (e.g., perhaps authorities are more concerned with the groups welfare, whereas subordinates are more concerned with their own standing within the group) and their divergent ideas about what kind of treatment subordinates are entitled to receive. The first five studies are designed to narrow the list of candidates that might account for the authority-subordinate disparity. The final study will survey subordinates and employees in an actual organizational context in order to test the findings of the first five studies in a real-world conflict setting.
These studies are expected to provide important tests of psychological theories of fairness at the same time as they suggest ways to enhance the effectiveness of authority intervention in a wide variety of actual social conflicts.
