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的反应的决定因素。虽然正确理解人们在与警察、法官、雇主或他们选出的政治领导人会面时的满意度对心理学的进步很重要，但对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。虽然很少有人会对人们对决定的满意度或他们对决定的遵守程度受到他们是否得到有利或不利结果的影响(例如，警察是否开了罚单？法官判我胜诉了吗？)，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）的关注通常可以与对获得有利结果的关注同等重要，甚至更重要。也许更不明显的发现是，在许多情况下，对许多人来说，公平对待（程序公平）可能与获得公平的结果一样重要，甚至更重要。虽然程序公平的重要性已经在许多研究中被观察到，但这些研究几乎只关注下属在下属-权威遭遇中的反应。因此，人们对当局满意度的决定因素知之甚少。然而，我们最近的研究一致表明，与下属的情况相比，当局满意度受程序公平的影响较小，而更多地受到结果关注的影响。这种权力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。在这项拨款下进行的六项研究（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。在这些研究中要考察的因素包括，权威和下属潜在的不同动机（例如，也许权威更关心群体的福利，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导致权威-下属差异的候选人名单。最后的研究将在实际的组织背景下调查下属和员工，以便在现实世界的冲突设置中测试前五项研究的结果。这些研究有望为公平的心理学理论提供重要的检验，同时为提高权威干预在各种实际社会冲突中的有效性提供方法。

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.