Feeling of procedural injustice as a determinant of aggressive behaviour

Abstract

A field study investigated the relationship between State­Trait Anger, feelings of injustice and aggressive behaviours in a sample of 156 school students (M=12,52 years). Factorial analysis of results revealed two main factors: interactional injustice (23.80%) and procedural injustice (9.50%). All of studied factors were positively correlated, nevertheless, a multiple regression analysis yielded that procedural injustice (p<.001) and Trait­anger (p<.001) most predicted aggression. Forty­five undergraduate students (M=19,8 years) participated in a laboratory experiment. Participants were competing with a fictitious opponent on an alleged recruitment test. They were instructed that they had the capabilities to send a brief white noise to the opponent’s headphones (hostile aggression) or to temporarily block his progress on his task (instrumental aggression). In order to manipulate the feeling of injustice, a procedural change was induced during the task, so this new procedure missed consistency. Results revealed a significant effect of the feeling of injustice on aggressive behaviour (F(1,38) = 4.12 ; p<.05). However, no difference was observed between hostile and instrumental aggression. Yet, feeling of injustice had a significant effect on indirect aggression toward the opponent (F(1,38) = 9.10 ; p<.01).