Disentangling the effects of voice: The incremental roles of opportunity, behavior, and instrumentality in predicting procedural fairness.

Many voice studies have failed to distinguish among voice opportunity, perceived voice opportunity, voice behavior, and voice instrumentality. Thus, the authors sought to clarify the roles of each in determining procedural fairness perceptions. Controlling for the effect of voice opportunity, each of the 3 remaining constructs was hypothesized to predict fairness. Furthermore, voice instrumentality was hypothesized to moderate the effect of voice behavior on fairness. Undergraduates (N=102; 81 for some analyses) participated in an orientation-week design simulation in which voice opportunity was manipulated. The results indicated significant incremental effects of perceived voice opportunity and the predicted Voice Instrumentality × Voice Behavior interaction. Fairness was lowest for individuals who were denied voice opportunity, perceived less voice opportunity, and provided high levels of noninstrumental voice behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparing three processes underlying judgments of procedural justice: A field study of mediation and arbitration.

A natural setting in which 158 coal miners who had filed grievances were assigned to either mediation or arbitration was used to test a model of 3 mediating processes underlying judgments of procedural justice: instrumental, noninstrumental, and procedural enactment. The generality of these processes was tested across procedures varying objectively in the degree of disputants' outcome control, across contexts in which disputes rather than decisions were resolved, and across situations in which the grievance was won, lost, or compromised as a result of the dispute resolution procedure. All 3 processes consistently accounted for judgments of procedural justice in all but 1 of these circumstances (instrumental processes did not account for procedural justice when grievants won). Perceptions of the 3rd party's enactment of the procedure emerged in this study as a key influence (as a moderator and mediator) of procedural justice judgments. Implications for the theory of procedural justice and the design of dispute resolution procedures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Episodic encoding of voice attributes and recognition memory for spoken words.

Recognition memory for spoken words was investigated with a continuous recognition memory task. Independent variables were number of intervening words (lag) between initial and subsequent presentations of a word, total number of talkers in the stimulus set, and whether words were repeated in the same voice or a different voice. In Exp 1, recognition judgments were based on word identity alone. Same-voice repetitions were recognized more quickly and accurately than different-voice repetitions at all values of lag and at all levels of talker variability. In Exp 2, recognition judgments were based on both word identity and voice identity. Ss recognized repeated voices quite accurately. Gender of the talker affected voice recognition but not item recognition. These results suggest that detailed information about a talker's voice is retained in long-term memory representations of spoken words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluating outcomes by means of the fair process effect: Evidence for different processes in fairness and satisfaction judgments.

The authors refine and extend their explanation of the psychology of the fair process effect (the positive influence of procedural fairness on outcome evaluations). On the basis of fairness heuristic theory's substitutability proposition, the authors predicted and found that outcome evaluations show strong effects of procedural fairness when outcomes are better or worse than expected, whereas less strong fair process effects appear when outcomes are equal to or differ from the outcome of a comparison other. This finding suggests some important differences in how people use expectations versus social comparisons as reference points for evaluating outcomes. Findings also revealed that fairness judgments do not always show the same effects as do satisfaction judgments, indicating differences in the way people form judgments on these two dimensions of outcome evaluation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social explanation: The role of timing, set, and recall on subjective likelihood estimates.

471 undergraduates, selected for interest in and knowledge of college football, read information about an upcoming football game and explained a hypothetical victory by 1 team. Some Ss knew of the outcome to be explained prior to reading the information. Others learned of the explanation task only after reading the information. Of these latter Ss, some were given an initial recall set with which to approach the information; others were given an impression set. Results show that explaining a victory by a team biased judgments of what would happen, but only in the before- and the after-recall set conditions. In both cases, judgments were highly correlated with the kinds of facts recalled. In the after-impression set condition, judgments were not biased in the direction of the outcome explained, and the correlations between judgments and what was recalled were small. It is proposed that judgments may be based either on facts available in memory at the time of judgment (for before- and after-recall set conditions) or on the basis of previous summary impressions (after-impression set condition). Implications for issues of encoding vs retrieval effects and the evaluative judgment–recall relationship are discussed. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Procedural justice and status: Status salience as antecedent of procedural fairness effects.

The current article explores status as an antecedent of procedural fairness effects (the findings that perceived procedural fairness affects people's reactions, e.g., their relational judgments). On the basis of the literature, the authors proposed that salience of the general concept of status leads people to be more attentive to procedural fairness information and that, as a consequence, stronger procedural fairness effects should be found. In correspondence with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 showed stronger procedural fairness effects on people's relational treatment evaluations in a status salient condition compared with a control condition. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and, in further correspondence with the hypothesis, showed that status salience led to increased cognitive accessibility of fairness concerns. Implications for the psychology of procedural justice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of assigned versus participatively set goals, knowledge of results, and individual differences on employee behavior when goal difficulty is held constant.

In Exp I, 60 female clerical workers were randomly assigned to participative, assigned, and "do best" goal conditions on a clerical test. Specific goals led to higher performance than did the "do best" goals. With goal difficulty held constant, there was no significant difference between the assigned and participative conditions on performance or goal acceptance. Goal attainment, however, was higher in the assigned condition than it was in the participative condition. No main or interaction effects were found for knowledge of results (KR) or for individual difference measures with performance or goal acceptance. However, high self-esteem Ss who received KR attained their goals more often than did Ss with low self-esteem when the goals were participatively set. Exp II was conducted with 28 employees from the same sample in a performance-appraisal setting over an 8-mo period. Assigned goals resulted in higher performance and greater goal acceptance than participatively set goals. There was a positive linear relationship between goal difficulty and performance in the participative condition only. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal study of coping styles in self-defining and socially defined women.

In a longitudinal study of 51 female college graduates (average age, 31 yrs), self-definition as measured by freshman-year TATs predicted several aspects of problem-solving and coping behavior 14 yrs later. Those Ss who viewed themselves, their world, and their own personal problems in ways that facilitated effective coping scored higher in self-definition. The Ss who took instrumental, as opposed to noninstrumental, actions to solve their problems or who remained passive also scored higher in self-definition. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of procedural fairness and leader support on interpersonal relationships among group members.

In this article, the authors examine the impact of fair treatment by a group leader on people's relationships with and feelings toward other individual group members. Previous studies neglected procedural fairness effects on interpersonal relationships between group members. The authors hypothesized that fairness affects interpersonal relationships and feelings toward another group member only when the leader is regarded as representative and supported by the other group members. In three studies, the authors manipulated procedural fairness (no voice vs. voice) and other group member's support for the leader (full vs. mixed support for the leader). Two vignette studies supported the hypothesis. In addition, an experimental laboratory study showed that this interaction effect between procedural fairness and leader support was most pronounced among those with high belongingness needs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of outcomes and procedures on satisfaction with formal leaders.

Tested the hypothesis that the procedures used by leaders to allocate outcomes have an impact on leadership evaluations that is independent of outcome level or outcome fairness. Two studies tested this hypothesis within the context of 132 college students' evaluations of teachers, and two tested it within the context of citizen evaluations of political leaders; Ss in the latter 2 studies were 50 residents of a university town and 156 undergraduates. The procedural justice hypothesis was strongly supported by all 4 studies. In each, strong procedural influences on evaluation were found, influences that were independent of outcome level or outcome fairness. In addition, in both surveys of naturally occurring evaluations, variations in procedural fairness had a much greater impact on leadership endorsement than did variations in outcome level, outcome satisfaction, or outcome fairness. Findings suggest that in experimental settings, Ss can be sensitive to both outcomes and procedures. In natural settings, however, individuals focus on procedures rather than outcomes in forming their evaluations of leaders. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Procedural justice and the hedonic principle: How approach versus avoidance motivation influences the psychology of voice.

The authors investigate the relation between the hedonic principle (people's motivations to approach pleasure and to avoid pain) and procedural justice. They explore whether approach or avoidance motivation increases the effect that people feel they were treated more fairly following procedures that do versus do not allow them an opportunity to voice their opinion. Experiments 1 and 2 reveal that these procedures influence procedural justice judgments more strongly when people conduct approach motor action (arm flexion) than when they conduct avoidance motor action (arm extension). Experiment 3 indicates that individual-difference measures of participants' approach motivations predicted procedural justice judgments following voice versus no-voice procedures. The authors conclude that people's motivational orientations stimulate their fairness-based reactions to voice procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Typicality, familiarity and the recognition of male and female faces.

22 male and 43 female undergraduates provided judgments of typicality, familiarity, and recognition for each of 209 photographs of male and female faces. Results support the notion that the same-sex bias in recognition often found with female Ss is a function of perceived typicality: Female Ss rated female faces to be more typical than male faces, whereas male Ss showed no such bias. The same pattern of results was found for false–positive responses on a test of item recognition. The rated familiarity of the faces was not related to the Ss' recognition judgments, suggesting that the perceived context-free familiarity of faces is not the source of the effects of typicality or sex of face on the recognition of faces. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Procedural justice and participation in task selection: The role of control in mediating justice judgments.

Two experiments on task-assignment procedures, one conducted in a laboratory and one conducted in a field setting, examined the effects of voice and choice on perceived control, perceived procedural justice, task commitment, and task performance. Three models of procedural justice—two positing control mediation of justice judgments and one positing covarying, but not mediating, effects of control—suggested that the procedural justice effect of voice beyond choice would be especially potent when the participation involved decisions about task selection procedures as opposed to decisions about specific task assignments. The models differed with respect to the causal relations they predicted. Both studies examined the effects of three modes of participation (choice?+?voice, choice only, or no participation) in either the selection of a specific task or the selection of a procedure to be used to assign a task. In the laboratory experiment, 72 students worked on a business simulation task; in the field experiment, 72 employees of a mail-order firm worked at taking telephone orders. In both experiments the hypothesized effects were found, and in both experiments LISREL VI analyses showed that the justice judgment effects were not mediated by perceived control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of ability, assigned goals, and normative information on personal goals and performance: A challenge to the goal attainability assumption.

58 undergraduates were assigned randomly to 1 of 6 experimental conditions representing 2 levels of goal difficulty (easy vs very hard) and 3 levels of normative information, indicating that the goal had been achieved by 95, 50, or 5% of students previously tested. Ss then set their own performance goals for a creativity task, which they performed over 10 repeated trials. Following Trial 10, Ss were allowed to choose to continue working on from 0 to 5 more trials. As hypothesized, personal performance goals were strongly influenced by assigned goals, but ability, as measured by pretest performance, had no relation to personal goals. Normative information did not influence personal goals directly but did, unexpectedly, interact with assigned goals. Both assigned goals and ability had significant and independent effects on performance, as hypothesized. The results of a path analysis revealed that assigned goals influenced performance both indirectly, through their influence on personal goals, and directly, due to the fact that most Ss assigned very difficult goals set personal performance goals at or above their ability ceiling. Ss assigned goals beyond their immediate reach did not evidence any decrement in intrinsic motivation when compared with those assigned easier goals. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of trust in authority and procedural fairness on cooperation.

The present research examined the effect of procedural fairness and trust in an authority on people's willingness to cooperate with the authority across a wide range of social situations. Prior research has shown that the presence of information about whether an authority can be trusted moderates the effect of procedural fairness. If no trust information is available, procedural fairness influences people's reactions. This is not the case when information about the trustworthiness of the authority is present. In the present article, it is argued that information about whether the authority can or cannot be trusted may also moderate the effect of procedural fairness in predicting levels of cooperation. Assuming that the use of fair procedures by authorities that cannot be trusted is less influential than is the enactment of procedures by trustworthy authorities, it is predicted that trust in authority moderates the influence of procedural fairness on cooperation in such a way that procedural fairness has a positive effect on cooperation primarily when trust in authority is high. Results from 4 studies (2 experimental studies and 2 field studies) provide supportive evidence for this interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Procedure and outcome effects on reactions to adjudicated resolution of conflicts of interest.

Examined the effects of outcome on reactions to an adjudication procedure and the effects of procedures on reactions to an adjudication outcome. 111 male undergraduates were led to believe they had been charged with wrongdoing of which they knew they were innocent. The charge was tried, and the Ss outcomes were determined using procedures (adversary or nonadversary) high or low in perceived procedural justice. Ss were then told that they had been found innocent or guilty. Perceptions of the trial process were assessed either before or after the verdict was announced. After the verdict, additional questionnaires assessed perceptions of the verdict and overall perceptions of procedural and distributive fairness. Results show that disputants saw the adversary procedure as fairer than the nonadversary and that they saw the verdict as more fair and satisfying, and as more accurate and unbiased, when it followed an adversary trial. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How goal instrumentality shapes relationship evaluations.

Findings from 6 experiments support the hypothesis that relationship evaluations and behavioral tendencies are goal dependent, reflecting the instrumentality of significant others for the self's progress toward currently active goals. Experiments 1 and 3 found that active goals can automatically bring to mind significant others who are instrumental for the activated goal, heightening their accessibility relative to noninstrumental others. Experiments 2-5 found that active goals cause individuals to evaluate instrumental others more positively, draw closer to them, and approach them more readily, compared with noninstrumental others. Experiment 6 found that people who engage in goal-dependent interpersonal evaluations are more successful, receiving higher grades. Implications for understanding the social nature of self-regulation and the impact of personal goals on interpersonal relationships are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attribute information and the feeling-of-knowing.

Demonstrated with 24 undergraduates that feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments about unrecalled items predict subsequent recognition performance with accuracy. The purpose of the experiment was to examine the relation between access to partial attribute information and the tendency to make positive or negative FOK judgments about an unrecalled item from a recent study episode. 52 words with extreme connotations of good or bad were paired with semantically neutral words, and 28 buffer pairs also were included to minimize the target words. Results indicate that when Ss made positive FOK judgments, attribute identification was more accurate than when Ss made negative FOK judgments. However, positive guesses were also made even when Ss did not have access to accurate attribute information. The results suggest that FOK judgments depend on access to an attribute of an unrecalled item, but they do not exclude other variables and referents as sources for the same phenomenon. (French abstract) (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motion parallax and children's distance perception.

Studied the effectiveness of motion parallax for relative and absolute distance judgments using 48 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders and college adults. Two targets were viewed either monocularly with a fixed head, monocularly with head movements providing motion parallax, or binocularly with head movements providing motion parallax. Ss adjusted the distance of a comparison rod to match the perceived distance of the target, or simply indicated which was nearer. For absolute judgments, accuracy was not affected by age level of the Ss; however, a developmental decrease in the variability of judgment was observed. There were no grade effects for relative judgments. For both judgments, the addition of motion parallax information increased accuracy. Results indicate that children are capable of registering array velocity information for distance. The ability to register self-movement or to integrate self-movement and array motion in the perception of absolute distance may account for the observed developmental changes. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of inferential set, outcome severity, and basis for responsibility on children's evaluations of aggressive acts.

49 boys and 58 girls in Grades 2 and 8 made moral judgments about stories describing a same-sexed child expressing aggression. Each child, under either a situation-matching or a value-maintenance set, judged 8 behaviors that represented 4 of F. Heider's (1958) responsibility levels and had mild or serious consequences. Moral judgments of older Ss were sensitive to Heider's differing levels of responsibility, whereas younger Ss' judgments were more sensitive to outcome severity. The aggression was viewed as less reprehensible by older than by younger Ss; this difference was especially pronounced for girls. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)