Introduction: Distributive and procedural justice

Abstract

The formation of justice judgments appears to be affected by both outcomes and procedures. Originally, empirical research of justice focused on the effects of outcomes on justice judgments. Starting with the work of Adams (1965) and others (see Messick and Sentis, 1983) research was directed at exploring the effects of inequitable allocations on recipients' cognitive and behavioral reactions (Adams, 1965: Walster et aL, 1978; see also T6rnblom, 1992). The effects of procedures on fairness judgments, emphasized by Rawls (1971) was fwst investigated by Thibaut and Walker (1975). In those early years, researchers were primarily interested in the effects of procedural information on justice judgments. Thibaut and Walker found that verdicts were judged as fair in a situation when the litigants perceived they had some influence on the final court decision. The interest in procedural justice was also reflected in justice theories like Folger's Referent Cognitions Theory (Folger, 1987). Although the theory focused on how outcome fairness judgments were formed by subjects c o m p ~ g the actual outcome with a cognitively developed standard, an important mediating factor in predicting outcome fairness judgments was the evaluation of the procedure that was enacted by the allocation decision maker to arrive at the actual outcome. Findings of survey research on the relationship between procedural and distributive justice suggested that procedural justice might be more important than distributive justice. Studies in court settings (Lind et al., 1993; Tyler, 1984), of police--citizen encounters (Tyler and Folger, 1980), and in organizations (Folger and Konovsky, 1989) showed that procedural justice