In the Eyes of the Beholder? The Role of Dispositional Trust in Judgments of Procedural Fairness

Abstract

Previous research on the antecedents of procedural fairness judgments has focused primarily on situational factors. We suggest that dispositional tendencies also affect perceptions of procedural fairness. Converging evidence from three studies showed that people’s general propensity to trust others was positively related to their fairness perceptions. Study 3 also found that the positive relationship between dispositional trust and perceived procedural fairness emerged even when participants received identical procedural fairness information, suggesting that the relationship between dispositional trust and fairness was not simply explained by the possibility that those who are more trusting were actually treated more fairly. Study 3 also showed that dispositional trust in particular was predictive of procedural fairness perceptions whereas other individual difference variables reflecting positivity were not.