Collective restraint in social dilemmas: Procedural justice and social identification effects on support for authorities.

Abstract

This study examined people's willingness to restrain themselves during a naturally occurring social dilemma situation-the 1991 California water shortage. The findings suggest that people are more willing to support authorities who make water conservation decisions when these authorities use fair decision-making procedures. Procedural justice effects were not found to be influenced by the perceived severity of the resource scarcity or the favorability of the authorities' decisions. Rather, they were primarily based on concerns for having positive, relational bonds to the authorities. These relational effects were found to be stronger for those respondents who identify more with their community. The study suggests that the effectiveness of authorities is primarily linked to the nature of their social bonds with community members.

Cooperating when “you” and “I” are treated fairly: The moderating role of leader prototypicality.

“…Identification has been shown to make procedural fairness effects more pronounced among people who strongly identify with the group that the authority represents (i.e., identification moderates procedural fairness effects; e.g., Tyler & Degoey, 1995). This clearly supports the idea that procedural fairness conveys identity information because people who do not identify with the group should care less about such information.…”

On the psychology of procedural justice: reactions to procedures of ingroup vs. outgroup authorities

“…Furthermore, one would also expect procedural fairness to have a greater impact on people who identify strongly with the group than on people who identify less with the group. Both these hypotheses have received some support from correlational as well as experimental research (Huo, Smith, Tyler, & Lind, 1996;, 1997Smith, Tyler, Huo, Ortiz, & Lind, 1998;Tyler & Degoey, 1995, and have been referred to as the group membership effect (Smith et al, 1998) and the identification effect (Tyler, Boeckmann, Smith, & Huo, 1997) respectively.…”

Prior Experiences as Temporal Frames of Reference in Social Justice: The Influence of Previous Fairness Experiences on Reactions to New and Old Supervisors

“…Furthermore, because acceptance of supervisors is of crucial importance for the smooth running and pleasant functioning of organizations (e.g., Folger and Cropanzano, 1998), and because we wanted to gain an indication of the robustness of the effects reported in Study 1, we also measured participants' acceptance of the supervisor's decisions (cf. Tyler, 1990;Tyler and DeGoey, 1995).…”

“…For example, managers or supervisors may be moved to different departments or areas of responsibility to better utilize their skill sets or to help the organization adapt to new challenges. Because it is known that supervisors, and people's reactions to these authorities, play an important role in organizations and other situations (e.g., Tyler, 1990;Tyler and DeGoey, 1995;Tyler and Lind, 1992), here we argue that how subordinates react to new versus old 7 supervisors is a crucial matter for comprehending modern social and organizational psychology, and these reactions should be taken into careful consideration if we want to understand the fundamentals of contemporary social and organizational behavior.…”