Hyomin Park The University of South Carolina
This research investigates the stability of rewards on group cooperation. Justice theory has shown that justice evaluations play a key role in producing emotional and behavioral reactions among group members. However, little attention has been paid to role of the stability of rewards over time in producing its perceptual, emotional, and behavioral consequences. In the real world, however, most people belong to a group and conduct exchange relations repeatedly. To understand justice evaluations, it is important to investigate the effects of the stability of rewards over an extended period of time. Negativity bias explains that a negative event has a stronger effect on people's evaluations than a positive effect of the same size. Combining justice theory with the principle of negativity bias over time, this research tests the effect of reward stability on justice evaluations and subsequent behavioral consequences. Specifically, the theory suggests that an under-reward at one time cannot be compensated for by the same size over-reward at another time. Rather, the fluctuation of rewards over time will reduce justice evaluations of group members. This is predicted to effect cooperation and other group-related behaviors.
The first study tests the effect of unstable rewards on justice evaluations. This is liely the first empirical study which tests the relationship between reward consistency and justice evaluations. The second study will test how the justice evaluations generated by unstable rewards can produce emotional distress and consequently reduce group cooperation. In this way, the investigators expect to comprehend how the stability of a reward system facilitates group cooperation. These findings will broaden our knowledge of group processes and lay a theoretical and empirical foundation for future research regarding justice theory and group cooperation.
Broader Impacts
The research has sociological implications for social justice theory as well as cognitive psychology, and organizational behavior. Combining literatures across those diverse fields, the findings are expected to facilitate interdisciplinary research on justice processes. At the societal-level, the research results are relevant to organizational decision making processes and government policy. This study predicts that an unstable reward system will promote extra costs for the organization to maintain people's commitment to the group. The research also suggests implications for government policy that inconsistency of a policy over time will make people regard the government not only as unreliable, but also as unfair. Third, the research provides undergraduate students with first hand research training.
