Title

Prior Experiences As Temporal Frames Of Reference In Social Justice: The Influence Of Previous Fairness Experiences On Reactions To New And Old Supervisors

Keywords

Assimilation; Contrast; Fairness; Frames of reference; Human judgment; Justice; Social change

Abstract

This paper focuses on the psychology of social change and social justice. Specifically, we focus on subordinates' reactions to new and old supervisors, and we argue that in evaluating these different types of supervisors, subordinates may rely on prior fair or unfair experiences as temporal frames of reference. We further propose that a result of these frames of reference may be that previous fairness experiences have a bigger impact on subordinates' reactions to subsequent neutral communications when an old rather than when a new supervisor is the source of that communication. Findings of two empirical studies indeed show that subordinates who had had fair experiences with a particular supervisor reacted more positively toward subsequent neutral messages when the communication was coming from the old supervisor rather than from the new supervisor. Subordinates who had had unfair experiences, however, reacted more negatively toward the communication when the source was the old rather than the new supervisor. Some evidence was also found for contrast effects such that people who react to a new supervisor may react more positively with the neutral demand from this authority figure when they have earlier experienced unfair as opposed to fair treatment by a different supervisory agent. These findings were obtained on subordinates' satisfaction with the supervisors' communication and their acceptance of the supervisor. Finally, we discuss the implications for the psychology of social change and social justice. © 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.

Publication Date

6-1-2005

Publication Title

Social Justice Research

Volume

18

Issue

2

Number of Pages

99-120

Document Type

Review

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-005-7365-4

Socpus ID

23944517467 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/23944517467

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