RUI: An Investigation of a Decision Maker-decision Recipient Disparity in the Meaning and Importance of Procedural Justice

五年多来，社会心理学家一直在研究人们对社会冲突和干预这些冲突的当局反应的决定因素。虽然正确理解人们对遭遇的满意度，如与警察，或法官，或他们的雇主，或他们选出的政治领导人的遭遇，对心理学的发展很重要，但对于任何关心社会团体和机构（如政府，学校，法院和组织）顺利运作的人来说，这也很重要。这项研究取得的最重要的进展之一是认识到公平对人们满意度的重要影响。虽然很少有人会对这样的观察感到惊讶，即人们对决策的满意度或他们对决策的遵守程度受到他们是否收到有利或不利结果的影响（例如，警察开罚单了吗？法官的判决对我有利吗我的老板给我加薪了吗？）许多人可能没有意识到，在这样的遭遇中，对结果公平性（分配公平性）的关注通常与对获得有利结果的关注同等重要，甚至更重要。也许更不明显的是，在许多情况下，对许多人来说，得到公平对待（程序公平）可能与获得公平结果一样重要，甚至更重要。尽管程序公平的重要性在许多研究中得到了观察，但这些研究几乎只关注下级在遭遇下级权威时的反应。因此，人们对当局满意度的决定因素知之甚少。然而，我们最近的研究一直表明，当局的满意度的影响较少的程序公平和更多的结果的关注比下属的情况。这种权威与下属的不匹配可能会在他们彼此相遇时产生不受欢迎甚至不必要的紧张关系。根据这项拨款进行的六项研究（五项实验室研究和一项实地调查）旨在增加我们对下属和当局之间公平和满意度的不同预测因素的心理原因的理解。在这些研究中要审查的因素包括当局和下属的潜在不同动机（例如，也许当局更关心群体的福利，而下属更关心自己在群体中的地位）以及他们对下属有权得到何种待遇的不同看法。前五项研究旨在缩小可能解释权威-下属差异的候选人名单。最后一项研究将在实际的组织环境中对下属和员工进行调查，以检验前五项研究在现实冲突环境中的发现，这些研究将为公平心理学理论提供重要的检验，同时为在各种实际的社会冲突中提高权威干预的有效性提供建议。

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.