Social Justice and the Experience of Emotion

Russell Cropanzano, Jordan H. Stein, Thierry Nadisic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136891830
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book seeks to integrate the scholarship on justice and affect. The authors focus on empirical social scientific theories pertaining to fairness, mood and emotion. Most of the literature in this book is drawn from social and organizational psychology. Other areas included are management, personality and evolutionary psychology. The book includes coverage of relevant philosophical positions from Aristotle and Rawls.

The goal of this book is to familiarize the reader with the rich tradition of conceptual models explaining the association between justice and emotion. It will be of interest to graduate students, researchers and practitioners in industrial organizational psychology, social psychology, management and business ethics.

CHAPTER
1
Introduction

On June 30, 1892 the contract between the Carnegie Steel Company and the Homestead branch of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers was set to expire. The Amalgamated had reason for confidence. Having won an earlier strike, the steel workers union was at the pinnacle of its power. Since the late 1880s, membership had increased by 100%, while their general fund was at nearly $146,000 (Brody, 1998), a princely amount in the 19th century. Moreover, overall business was generally good, as Carnegie Steel had access to a number of lucrative government armor contracts (Krass, 2002). The workers deserved better, as well. Working and living conditions in Homestead, as was typical of the American steel industry at the time, were abhorrent (Standiford, 2005). Under the leadership of Hugh O’Donnell, the steel workers began negotiating for higher wages and better working conditions.

But from Carnegie Steel’s perspective the timing was inauspicious. The union contract of 1889 created tight work rules, making it hard to respond flexibly to competitive challenges. The old contract was costly, as the Homestead plant was forced to keep more unionized workers than were needed to do the work. These problems came at a bad time for the company. Since the contract of 1889 had been signed, the price of steel produced at the Homestead facility had dropped from $36 per ton to only $23 per ton, and this while the firm was planning a reorganization and anticipating business downturn in the face of tough competition from Illinois Steel (Krass, 2002).

Before Andrew Carnegie departed for Scotland, he and his partner, Henry Clay Frick, decided to hold firm. They would not yield additional ground. This having been decided, Carnegie left on this trip leaving Frick to contend with the Amalgamated. It was a poor decision. Frick resolved to break the Amalgamated once and for all. He demanded that the workers take a pay cut. When the union balked and no contract was reached, Frick turned the Homestead mill into a veritable fortress, enclosing it in a high wall ringed with barbed wire. On June 29 he locked out the workers, determined to hire nonunion replacements (Standiford, 2005). To enforce his decrees, Frick hired a squad of 300 armed members of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (cf. Mackay, 1996). They were transported up the Monongahela River by barge. When the workers saw the Pinkertons approaching, they had had enough. The union members opened fire on the barge, the Pinkertons responded, and a number of people were killed on both sides. The Pinkertons, outnumbered and outgunned, eventually surrendered. They were allowed to live, but were savagely beaten by a gauntlet of workers and their families.

Appalled by the violence, the state militia arrived on July 12, 1892 and seized control of the plant and, as well, the entire town of Homestead. The union was broken, and its leaders were blacklisted from the industry (Standiford, 2005). Frick was seriously injured in an attempt on his life (by an anarchist, not a union member). Carnegie, who had heretofore seen himself as a progressive businessman and friend of working people, blamed Frick for the trouble despite the fact that he had originally supported the contentious stance against the Amalgamated (Krass, 2002). Their friendship in tatters, Frick left the company and began a lifelong rivalry with Carnegie.

The tragedy of Homestead Steel is an object lesson. The company and the workers could have been less arrogant at the outset, less indignant during the strike, or even, in the case of Carnegie and Frick, less vindictive when the battle came to a close. Or could they? The sequence of moves and countermoves that made the particular pattern of this story is due to response tendencies that seemed natural, legitimate, and probably unavoidable to each protagonist (cf. Folger, Cropanzano, & Goldman, 2005). What we can say is that when the dust had cleared, even Carnegie expressed little joy in his pyrrhic victory (cf. Krass, 2002), but what we wish after our emotions have cooled may be little related to how we behave when overcome by rage. A good deal of human history, for better but sometimes for worse, has been shaped by justice, injustice, and the feelings that result from the two.

And this brings us, in a roundabout way, to the topic before us. When people experience an injustice, they often respond in emotionally laden terms (Bies & Tripp, 1996; 2001; 2002), viewing it as a “hot and burning experience” (Bies, 2001, p. 90). Despite the intensity of these feelings, scholars have been slow to subject the affect–justice relationships to empirical scrutiny (Barsky & Kaplan, 2007; Barclay, Skarlicki, & Pugh, 2005; Harlos & Pinder, 2000). When English-speaking researchers wish to name those internal processes that begin with the experience of injustice and end with a behavioral intent, they usually use the term justice judgment, which emphasizes the cognitive nature of this process. This is not the case everywhere. In contrast, some languages emphasize the affective nature of the process; the French use the term sentiments de justice (Kellerhals, Modak, & Perrenoud, 1997), which can be translated as “feelings of justice.”

In any case, when reading the fairness literature, at least in English, one will likely notice the prevalence of cognitively based theories describing how justice perceptions are formed: referent standards (Cropanzano & Folger, 1989), counterfactuals (Folger & Cropanzano, 1998), expectations (Shapiro & Kirkman, 2001), attributions (Schroth & Shah, 2000), heuristics (Jones & Martens, 2009; Lind, 2001; van den Bos, Lind, & Wilke, 2001), and so on. To be sure, these are important theories with considerable explanatory power (Bagger, Cropanzano, & Ko, 2006; Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001; Cropanzano, Rupp, Mohler, & Schminke, 2001; Sheppard, Lewicki, & Minton, 1992). Nevertheless, any model of justice that excludes human emotions is incomplete (van Winden, 2007). That said, fairness research, though influenced by the cognitive revolution, was never completely “mentalized.” There has long been a subtext to justice scholarship that has maintained a strongly affective conceptual voice. In recent years this chorus has grown considerably louder (De Cremer, 2007a; De Cremer & van den Bos, 2007; Jasso, 2006; Skitka, Bauman, & Mullen, 2008).

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Given the natural affinity between (in)justice and affect, integrating the two literatures has been slower than one might expect. This is because affect is understood within several theoretical traditions, including cognitive appraisal models, moods, moral emotions, and so on. Incorporating these diverse frameworks has proven a challenge for affect researchers, and may occasionally bewilder counterparts that study social justice. When scholars have attempted to integrate the justice and emotion literatures, they have sometimes derived models that bear only a passing resemblance to one other. As we shall see, some emphasize the causal primacy of cognition, others affect. Some have even examined the justice implications of emotional regulation (see Chapter 6). Other researchers have investigated fairness and mood, while their counterparts study fairness and emotion, but only rarely do we make clear links between these three concepts (see Chapter 5). And so on.

Major Themes of This Book

Further progress requires a systematic catalog and critique of the available conceptual options. Toward the end, we will here provide a detailed review of the conceptual models seeking to integrate justice and affect. For each theory we shall also provide brief critiques, with a focus on the commonalities and distinctions among the sundry models. In short, we provide a summary of the literature linking justice and affect. There are a number of themes in our review to which the reader may wish to attend.

First, this book is focused on empirical social scientific theories pertaining to fairness, mood, and emotion. Most of the available frameworks linking affect and justice were built more or less from scratch by fairness researchers (e.g., equity theory, the relational models) or reflect attempts by justice scholars to adapt existing theories of emotion to suit their conceptual purposes (e.g., cognitive appraisal models, the affective model of justice reasoning). As our review seeks to reflect the available literature as closely as possible, extensive portions are written from the perspective of fairness scholars exploring the implications of affective research. It has been rarer for work to proceed in the other direction, for affect researchers to expand their models to include justice perceptions. Still, “rare” does not mean “absent.” When affect researchers have taken a look at justice, some promising conceptual opportunities have resulted. Three such models that seem especially useful are Haidt’s (2001; 2006; see also Haidt & Joseph, 2004) social intuitionist model, which examines discrete emotions, Sinclair and Mark’s (1991; 1992) information processing model, which examines mood, and the affect infusion model (Forgas, 1995; Forgas & George, 2001), which also mainly deals with mood. We will pay special attention to these conceptual frameworks at length, given their promise. Notice that we will not be interested in specifically describing attitudinal and behavioral consequences of justice and affective perceptions. The fact that (in)justice and affect produce strong reactions in day-today life and in organizations has been well documented by researchers (see, for example, De Cremer, 2007a). This link between affect, justice, and behaviors is precisely what makes our work valuable. However, we choose in this book to go a step backward and mainly study either affect or justice as dependent variables.

Second, our approach is strongly historical. Our goal is to place relevant research into its proper historical milieu, illustrating the different models by tracing how they developed. We take this approach for completeness. We do not want scholars to lose touch with their past because important ideas may be housed in musty papers. To take a diverse set of examples, it has long been argued that all human motivation cannot be logically reduced to self-interest (Butler, 1726/1983; Hume, 1748/1975), that daily mood measures allow for strong conceptual inferences (Hersey, 1932a; 1932b), that human beings (sometimes) seek to behave consistently with their self-images (Korman, 1966; 1967), that blocked goals create frustration, that fear and anger show different physiological manifestations (Ax, 1953; Wolff & Wolff, 1943), that individuals use referent others to ascertain distributive fairness (Homans, 1958; 1961), that moods can be organized into a circumplex (Wundt, 1897), that physical arousal can be mislabeled (Mandler & Kremen, 1958; Schachter, 1964; Schachter & Singer, 1962), and that emotional facial displays are a useful means of communication among members of the same species (Darwin, 1872/1965). We are not asking anyone to endorse all of these findings. We shall even qualify some of them ourselves. Rather, our point is that scholars should come to terms with this earlier work, building on it where possible and explicitly rejecting it when this is appropriate.

This brings us to our other reason for taking a historical approach. As McIntyre (2006) has sadly observed, it is sometimes said that the social sciences have not made cumulative progress. Consider this book an argument against that position. As we shall see, early theories connecting justice to emotion were far more simplistic and less complete than were later models. For example, equity theory (Adams, 1963; 1965) lacked a notion of process fairness, while referent cognitions theory (Folger, 1986a; 1986b) did not clearly distinguish between interactional and procedural justice. We do not deny that there is a good deal left to do, and that progress may have been slower than we would prefer, but we have learned a lot in those intervening decades since French (1964) invented the term organizational justice. We cannot be complacent, but we can be encouraged.

Third, our book places a heavy emphasis on integration. Most of the literature reviewed here is drawn from social and organizational psychology. These research disciplines have paid special attention to both affect and justice. However, a good deal of the work that appears in these pages comes from management, personality, and even evolutionary psychology. Also we present discussions of relevant philosophical positions, such as those of Aristotle (350 b.c./1962) and Rawls (1971). Though the philosophical tradition is distinct from social scientific paradigms, it has nevertheless had a pervasive influence on empirical justice research.

Plan of This Book

Our goal is to familiarize the reader with the rich tradition of conceptual models explaining the association between justice and emotion. A number of such frameworks are available to scholars. Though these models are distinct, they can be organized into a few basic conceptual families. We have organized this book into five chapters (Chapters 2 to 6), each of which is based on a family of related theoretical models. We also include an introductory (Chapter 1) and a concluding section (Chapter 7).

Chapter 1, the chapter you are reading now, provides the introduction. In this chapter we define the basic themes of this book. Specifically, our review focuses on the myriad theories linking justice to affect. Additionally, this first chapter also provides general overviews of the justice and affect literatures. This allows us to define key terms and make some important distinctions that are used throughout this book.

Chapter 2 discusses various cognitive appraisal models linking justice to affect. This second chapter is closely linked to the first, as it provides a historical overview showing how justice scholars gradually came to appreciate the role of moods and emotions. There is an emphasis on earlier fairness research, including such frameworks as equity theory and referent cognitions theory (RCT). Conceptual models such as these provided the foundation for much contemporary justice research. Finally, we discuss these older justice theories in the context of what was known about affect when the original fairness research was conducted. For example, the original equity theory (cf. Adams, 1965) employed a cognitive appraisal model of emotion that was later supplemented by research on basic emotions.

Chapter 3 takes up the important issue of moral emotions. We argue that human beings have an evolutionary-based aversion to unfair treatment (Buunk & Schaufeli, 1999). This aversion, which also exists in other primates (Brosnan, 2006; de Waal, 1996), does not rely heavily on effortful cognitive processing. Rather, it is based on moral intuitions (Haidt, 2006) and emotion (van Winden, 2007). Research on moral emotions moves affect to center stage, making it fundamental to understanding social justice.

Chapter 4 provides a review of self-theories of justice and how they pertain to affect. For years these theories have been vital to justice research, though they have typically not been discussed as a group. We address that need here. Based on the multiple needs model of justice (Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001) we organize Chapter 4 around four goals—maintaining control over outcomes, maintaining a positive self-image, maintaining one’s social identity as a member of a valued group, and behaving in accordance with one’s self-image as a moral agent.

Chapter 5 turns around the traditional causal order pertaining to social justice. In most research, perceptions of justice (or injustice) trigger an affective response. However, we shall review a class of theories suggesting that both moods and emotions can influence perceptions of fairness. In other words, Chapter 5 treats justice as a dependent variable rather than as a causal agent. Affect is the antecedent that can cause fairness perceptions.

Chapter 6 is devoted to emotional regulation. This chapter takes up two innovative conceptual models, emotional labor and terror management theory (TMT). Emotional labor research shows that maintaining facial expressions that are inconsistent with one’s actual feelings requires effort. This effort, in turn, can have unpleasant consequences for individuals. Display rules can, therefore, be seen as unfair. Also, hiding moral outrage that results from injustice can be difficult. Terror management theory, on the other hand, takes us in a different direction. It describes justice as a means of managing affective responses. TMT argues that contemplating our own deaths (mortality salience) can produce fright. By clinging to culturally accepted norms of conduct, including enforcing standards of justice, we cope with this terror. In Chapter 6 we review different theories for expla...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 2: JUSTICE-RELEVANT COGNITIONS AS A CAUSE OF AFFECT
• CHAPTER 3: JUSTICE AND THE MORAL EMOTIONS
• CHAPTER 4: JUSTICE, THE SELF, AND AFFECT
• CHAPTER 5: MOOD AND EMOTION AS CAUSES OF JUSTICE
• CHAPTER 6: EMOTIONAL REGULATION DISPLAY RULES AND TERROR MANAGEMENT
• CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES