jost_j_t_kay_a_c_thorisdottir_n_social_and_psychological_bas

PROCEDURAL JUSTICE AS A SOURCE

OF LEGITIMIZING INFORMATION

Evaluations of the legitimacy of social systems could potentially be based on many sources of information. One approach is for people to focus on the material resources they receive from the system, such as salary or wealth. Models of social exchange, which root people’s connection to other people and groups in the resources they derive from such associations, would suggest that people would primarily focus on outcomes in forming their legitimacy judgments. Furthermore, research indicates that people tend to believe they are motivated by material gains and losses, which would imply a concern with outcomes received from the system. However, social psychologists have argued that this self-perception is a “myth of self-interest,” and that people’s reported focus on gains and losses exaggerates the degree to which behavior is actually driven by material issues (Miller & Ratner, 1996, 1998).

Another way that people may evaluate legitimacy is by focusing on the fairness of outcomes received—that is, on distributive justice. Distributive justice researchers argue that people are motivated by the desire for material gains, but recognize that in social settings they cannot always have what they want. So, instead of focusing on personal gains and losses, they direct their attention to the rules according to which outcomes are distributed. Distributive rules provide people with an assurance of the fairness of outcome allocations over time, and of a just distribution of outcomes across interactions (Deutsch, 1985). The application of fair distribution rules, it is argued, can assure people that their material interests are protected (Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978). Hence, fairness of outcomes can be used as one potential source of information about the legitimacy of a system.

Alternatively, people can focus on the fairness of procedures utilized by authorities and systems, rather than the fairness of outcomes, to determine their legitimacy (Thibaut & Walker, 1975; Tyler, 1997). Evaluations of procedural justice are based on the quality and fairness of treatment received from authorities, including neutrality, lack of bias, respect, and ability to have voice and express oneself to the authority. Research indicates that procedural experiences provide people with information relevant to the trustworthiness and reasonableness of the system, which reduces uncertainty and insecurity about social environments (Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). Thus, procedures provide a sense of protection and certainty about a variety of important processes, including whether one is receiving appropriate levels of resources as well as one’s identity and status, leading to security about belonging to a system or group.

Research strongly corroborates the argument that procedural elements are focal in people’s evaluations of experiences with authorities. Despite the

wide variety of information that can be used in evaluating authorities and institutions, the key antecedent of legitimacy turns out to be the fairness of procedures through which institutions exercise their authority. Influences of procedural justice are widespread, and include shaping people’s willingness to defer to decisions, satisfaction with outcomes and decisions, affective responses, and views and opinions about authorities and systems (Tyler & Blader, 2000).

The procedural justice effect has been widely documented in studies of authority conducted in legal, political, and managerial settings (Tyler & Blader, 2000). For example, Tyler and Blader (2000) explored antecedents of legitimacy among a sample of employees, and found that legitimacy was shaped primarily by issues of procedural justice. Similarly, Sunshine and Tyler (2003) found that procedural justice was a key factor in shaping the institutional legitimacy of the police and subsequent willingness to cooperate with the police. On a national level, Tyler and Mitchell (1994) showed, in a study of public evaluations of the United States Supreme Court, that people viewed the Court as a legitimate institution because of its use of fair decision-making procedures. As a result, people deferred to the Court’s decisions on abortion rights, even if these contradicted their own position.

MOTIVATIONAL INFLUENCES ON

LEGITIMACY JUDGMENTS

The powerful effect of procedural justice on the legitimacy of authorities and institutions raises questions about how people make use of procedural justice information to form legitimacy judgments. Is the processing and interpretation of fairness information purely cognitive, or is it subject to motivational influences? Are people driven to reach the most accurate conclusions possible about the systems they inhabit, or do alternative motivations exist that can lead to inaccurate or biased processing and conclusions?

One line of research suggests that procedural justice is processed in a relatively neutral manner, and is used by all people in the same way to derive information about authorities and systems. Tyler (1994, 2000) suggests that people of varying ethnicity, age, gender, income, and education levels, as well as people of varying ideological convictions, place a similar weight on procedural justice when reacting to decisions and policies. Further evidence indicates that people generally share a common view of key procedural elements, such as neutrality, lack of bias, and treatment with respect (Tyler, 2000). Similarities in perception and interpretation of procedural justice stand in contrast to diversity in beliefs about what constitutes distributive justice and deservingness held by people of varying demographic and ideological

backgrounds (Tyler, Boeckmann, Smith, & Huo, 1996). These findings suggest that focusing on procedural justice is a good way for authorities to manage diverse groups and bridge across demographic and ideological divides. By focusing on the use of fair procedures, rather than distributive principles, authorities can gain general agreement about policies even when they are dealing with a diverse group that might not have a common view about what people deserve.

However, research also indicates that justice information processing may be subject to motivational influences. One line of research, conduced by Van den Bos and colleagues, has proposed that being confronted with social and cognitive uncertainty motivates people to be particularly attentive to the fairness of the procedures they encounter in forming their evaluations and judgments (Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). Uncertainty can be related to a multiplicity of social or personal factors, such as trustworthiness of authorities or institutions, identity issues of inclusion or status, or personal well-being, and can pose a serious threat to conceptions about one’s environment and the self. This threat motivates people to engage in “uncertainty management” through forming solid procedural fairness judgments, which allow people to cope with and remove the discomfort associated with uncertainty (Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). The uncertainty management approach suggests that the motivation to reduce uncertainty is best served by developing an accurate understanding of the world, rather than by seeking reassurance of its legitimacy and security. Therefore, although this work suggests that the importance of and attention to procedural justice information can increase as a result of motivation, it does not explore whether motivational factors may influence and distort the interpretation of procedural information.

However, some evidence suggests that the interpretation of fairness is subject to motivational influences other than seeking an accurate understanding of the world. Equity researchers have argued that self-serving motivations influence people’s distributive fairness judgments (Walster, Walster, & Berscheid, 1978). For example, people who receive “too much” remuneration initially work harder to compensate, but over time change their views about the quality of their work, making their “overpayment” justified by viewing the task as harder and their work as better. Distortions in people’s valuations of the fairness of their own and others’ outcomes also occur when principles of fairness are vague or hard to define (Allison, McQueen, & Schaerfl, 1992; Herlocker, Allison, Foubert, & Beggan, 1997). In addition, people are generally found to view their own actions as more fair than those of others (Messick, Bloom, Boldizar, & Samuelson, 1985), a pattern of judgment that is consistent with self-enhancement. And, although motivational influences are more extensively documented with distributive justice, several lines of research have

provided evidence of similar processes in procedural judgments. For instance, Lind and Lissak (1985) showed that attributions about the causal role of procedural fairness in a judgment were influenced by whether the judgment was in the direction of a possible violation of procedural justice or in line with it. Similarly, Schroth and Shah (2000) suggested that outcomes can influence perceptions of procedural justice, and that procedural justice judgments can be influenced by ego needs, so that performance concerns can lead procedures to be interpreted in a self-interested way that acts as protection from threats to self-esteem. In sum, these findings suggest that complex motivations underlie people’s interpretation of justice information. These may be concerned not only with accurately understanding the world, but rather may be oriented toward interpreting justice experiences in ways that allow people to maintain positive feelings about themselves and reassurance about their situations.

MOTIVATIONS TO JUSTIFY THE SYSTEM

More recently, system justification theory (SJT) has extended research on the processes by which people engage in motivated distortion of social information in an effort to make sense of their world, often leading to biased perceptions. Motivations to accurately understand the social world compete with other types of motivations (e.g., Kruglanski, 1996; Kunda, 1990), particularly with epistemic and existential needs to perceive existing authorities and institutions as appropriate, legitimate, and just (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). People engage in system justification even in the face of unfairness and disadvantage because of its palliative capacity to reduce dissonance, anxiety, and epistemic uncertainty, and to provide a sense of order and justice in the world (Jost & Hunyady, 2002, 2005). System-justifying motivations may lead to subjective interpretations of society and social institutions that are biased and do not necessarily reflect actual conditions.

The notion of legitimation of unjust systems and social arrangements goes back to Marxist theories of “false consciousness,” which share similarities with the interpretations of social systems discussed by SJT (see also Jost, 1995; Tyler & McGraw, 1986). The idea of false consciousness suggests that subjective beliefs can differ from objective reality in systematic ways. In particular, it implies that people can be led to view social arrangements as more legitimate than they actually are through distorted messages perpetuated by society and social institutions. System justification theory similarly posits that people may form inaccurate subjective beliefs about the legitimacy of a system, but argues that people are intrinsically motivated to distort their processing of social information in order to create a view of the world as reasonable, ordered, predictable, and just (Jost et al., 2004).

The system justification argument has important implications for the dynamics of authority in groups, organizations, and societies. It has already been noted that people do not simply comply with authorities because they fear punishment for noncompliance, or to obtain the material rewards that authorities can provide. Rather, people are motivated by a need to experience the world as fair and just and to perceive extant power arrangements and institutional structures as legitimate (Tyler & Jost, 2007). Motivations to justify the status quo shape beliefs about legitimacy by encouraging perceptions that existing power and status differences have reasonable justifications and ought to be accepted (e.g., Haines & Jost, 2000). The belief that existing authorities and institutions “ought to be as they are,” in turn, leads people to seek out information to confirm this legitimizing belief.

Such beliefs in institutional and systemic legitimacy provide an important source of support for authorities and allow them to maintain social order, especially when they lack resources to provide incentives or threaten punishments (Tyler, 2006a). Hence, people’s motivations to view authorities as legitimate, irrespective of what an “objective” look at the social environment might support, contribute to the stability of systems of authority and encourage acceptance of the status quo.

INDIVIDUAL AND SITUATIONAL VARIABILITY

IN SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION

Research suggests that the strength of the motivation to justify the system can vary at the individual level, as well as in response to contextual factors. Research on justification of the general social system, as well as the economic system, indicates that people differ in the extent to which they engage in system justification, as assessed by self-report measures (Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Jost & Thompson, 2000). Such individual differences relate to an array of psychological factors, including need for cognitive closure and resistance to change.

At the same time, the need to justify the system can be elicited and intensified due to contextual factors. Research on situational influences on motivations to justify the system shows that threats to the legitimacy of the social system or the status quo enact a motivation to defend and bolster the system through justification. For example, Kay, Jost, and Young (2005) showed that threatening the system led to an increase in two forms of system justification: engaging in victim derogation on status-relevant traits, and engaging in compensatory victim enhancement on status-irrelevant traits. Both of these processes have been shown to restore a sense of justice and legitimacy of the system (Kay et al., 2007). Furthermore, Lau, Kay, and Spencer (2008)

showed that, among male participants, threatening the system increased the motivation to bolster the legitimacy of the system, which led to a preference for romantic partners who conformed to system-justifying stereotypes. Such stereotypes consist of benevolent sexist ideals of women as weak, lovable, and pure, and they are associated with endorsement of gender inequality and hostile attitudes toward women. By endorsing benevolent sexist partner preferences, threatened participants reestablished a sense of balance and fairness in relation to the social system (Lau et al., 2008).

PROCEDURAL JUSTICE AND THE MOTIVATION

TO JUSTIFY THE STATUS QUO

The system justification argument suggests that the processing of procedural justice information, like the processing of information about the social environment more generally, may be influenced by motivations to perceive the system as legitimate and just. This argument is consistent with the already mentioned suggestion that interpretation of procedural information can be influenced by outcomes and self-interested concerns (Schroth & Shah, 2000), as well as the pervasive evidence of motivational effects on perception and interpretation in many domains of social cognition (Kruglanski, 1996).

Based on the variability of system justification motivations discussed earlier, we would expect that motivational effects on interpretation of procedural justice would be particularly strong for people who have a greater tendency to engage in system justification, and especially under conditions of threat. In particular, under some circumstances the motivation to distort procedural information may be activated to a greater degree. When people receive fair treatment, which provides support for a positive view of the system, there should be no need to engage in motivated or biased processing of procedural information. However, a situation of unfair treatment comes into conflict with people’s needs to perceive the system in a positive way and threatens the legitimacy of the system (Hafer, 2000; Lerner, 1980). Insofar as people are motivated to see authorities and systems as fair and legitimate, they are likely to find accurate processing of instances of injustice emotionally upsetting and problematic.

Applying findings from SJT suggests that when procedural injustice poses a threat to the legitimacy of the status quo, the needs to defend the system and reestablish a sense of legitimacy and justice may become activated, and system justification motivations may be engaged. The need to justify the system may lead to a reappraisal of one’s experience in a more positive light, which can be expected to ameliorate the negative impact of injustice on evaluations of legitimacy (see also Haines & Jost, 2000). The stronger a

person’s need to justify the system, the more she can be expected to engage in motivated processing of injustice information.

CURRENT STUDY AND PREDICTIONS

Prior research has not directly addressed the potential influences of motivated reasoning on interpretation of procedural justice information and its use in legitimizing institutions and systems. In this chapter, we build on the extensive research demonstrating people’s motivation to justify social, organizational, or political arrangements by viewing those arrangements as legitimate (Tyler & Jost, 2007). Specifically, we focus on the relationship between motivations to justify the system and people’s use of fairness information to evaluate authorities and institutions. In particular, we examine the impact of motivated processing of procedural fairness information on people’s evaluations of and satisfaction with authorities who represent the social system.

The current study examines the impact of motivated reasoning on procedural information processing using a secondary analysis of an extensive investigation of people’s interactions with and evaluations of police and legal authorities. Overall, people are expected to evaluate their experiences by relying heavily on the perceived fairness of procedures the authorities use to make decisions, and the fairness of treatment received, in line with widespread findings from research on procedural justice. Prior analysis of the data examined in this chapter reveals the presence of strong procedural justice effects (Tyler & Huo, 2002). However, as procedures become increasingly unjust and unfavorable, we expect that the need to justify the system will lead some people to engage in motivated reinterpretation of procedural justice information in line with their legitimizing beliefs. Moreover, we expect that evidence of motivated reasoning will be revealed by distinguishing between groups that are expected on theoretical grounds to have stronger compared to weaker needs to justify the system.

We want to begin by acknowledging that the current data set does not contain a direct measure of system justification tendencies. As a consequence, we rely on a measure that has been shown to be consistently associated with the strength of such tendencies—namely, liberal-conservative ideological orientation. System justification motivation has been shown to vary in strength across the ideological spectrum. Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway’s (2003) meta-analysis of the literature on political orientation has shown that conservatives report greater needs for order, resistance to change, opposition to equality, and a stronger tendency to engage in system justification (see also Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008). On the basis of these findings, we predict that,

whereas both liberals and conservatives will make use of procedural justice information and may experience psychological conflict when this information threatens the legitimacy of the system, this conflict will be stronger for conservatives than for liberals. We expect that people who identify themselves as more conservative will find evidence of systemic injustice especially difficult to accept and will be more likely to engage in motivated information processing to reduce perceptions of injustice. As a result, we expect conservatives to experience less impact of negative procedures, and to show a smaller decrease in evaluations of the authority compared to liberals.

The current analysis focuses on two forms of evaluation of authorities and the systems they represent, which constitute different manifestations of legitimacy. The first is the satisfaction people reported with respect to the authority figure they interacted with, either a police officer or judge. This variable indicates how favorably people evaluate the authority and his actions above and beyond the favorability of one’s experience and outcomes. The second variable is the degree to which people are willing to accept the decisions reached by the authority figure. A key issue in the legal domain entails understanding the means to encourage people to accept and defer to decisions made by authorities representing legal institutions (Tyler, 2006a). Similarly, theories of system justification emphasize that a central goal of authorities is to gain acquiescence and the acceptance of existing institutions (Jost, 1995; Tyler & McGraw, 1986). Accordingly, (a) satisfaction with the authority and (b) decision acceptance capture two important facets that comprise the legitimacy of legal institutions.

In sum, we predict that people who have a greater need to justify the system (conservatives) will engage in more motivated processing of procedural information than will people who report less need to justify the system (liberals). Motivated processing, in turn, is expected to result in more favorable overall evaluations of and satisfaction with the authority figure, as well as decision acceptance. Motivated processing is also predicted to result in a smaller negative impact of procedural injustice on evaluations of one’s experience with authorities and the institutions they represent.

Method

The foregoing hypotheses were tested using a study of personal encounters with legal authorities conducted by Tyler and Huo (2002) in Oakland and Los Angeles, California. All respondents in this study had recent personal experiences with police officers or judges in the court system (N = 997). The sample consisted of 495 women (49.6%), 281 African-American respondents (28.2%), 241 Latino respondents (24.2%), and 475 European-American respondents (47.6%), of an average age of 40.1 years.

like to see the situation handled in the same way” (α = .94). Satisfaction with the decision maker was linked to certain perceptions of general legitimacy, namely trust and confidence in legal authorities (r = 0.51, p < .001) and obligation to defer to the law (r = 0.29, p < .001).

The second dependent variable measured respondents’ acceptance of the decision that was reached by the authority figure (either the police officer or the court representative). Respondents’ level of agreement with the statement: “I willingly accepted the decisions that the authority figure made” was assessed on a 4-point scale ranging from “agree strongly” to “disagree strongly.”

RESULTS

Two predictions were tested in the following analyses. The first prediction was that people with stronger (compared to weaker) system justification motivation would report greater overall satisfaction with the authority based on procedural justice, and less decrement in satisfaction due to procedural injustice. The second prediction was that people with a stronger system justification motivation would be more willing to accept the decisions reached by the authority figure and show less decrement in decision acceptance as procedures become unjust. To test these hypotheses, we conducted two sets of hierarchical linear regression analyses focused on the effects of ideological differences.

The first regression analysis was conducted to assess the extent to which procedural justice and ideological orientation predicted overall satisfaction with the authority figure, and the extent of interaction between ideology and procedural justice in predicting satisfaction (Table 14.1). Results indicate, as expected based on prior research, that each evaluation was primarily shaped by procedural justice (B = 0.960, SE = .021, β = 0.807, t(932) = 45.13, p < .001), rather than outcome favorability (B = 0.140, SE = .014, β = 0.158, t(932) = 10.06, p < .001). In line with predictions, there was a significant effect of ideology (higher numbers indicate more conservative ideology): B = 0.064, SE = 0.026, β = 0.122, t(932) = 2.44, p < .05. Conservative respondents reported a higher overall level of satisfaction with the authority figure than did liberal respondents, after adjusting for objective favorability.

Moreover, greater satisfaction with the authority figure was reported by respondents who received more favorable outcomes (B = 0.140, SE = .014, β = 0.158, t(932) = 10.06, p < .001), as well as respondents who perceived greater distributive justice (B = 0.061, SE = .015, β = 0.061, t(932) = 3.95, p < .001). There were no significant effects of race, gender, income, education level, or age on reported satisfaction with the authority figure.

In addition, there was a significant interaction between ideology and procedural justice: B = –.018, SE = .008, β = –.108, t(932) = –2.16, p < .05.