Perceiving Procedural Injustice: The Effects of Group Membership and Status

Abstract

According to the group-value model of procedural justice, individuals determine their status in the group by examining the procedures to which they are subjected. Therefore people attend to procedural justice because procedures provide information about one's social standing, which in turn affects self-esteem. In this paper I expand the group-value model to explain why some individuals detect procedural injustice when others do not. Specifically, I predict that when the group has impermeable boundaries and is located in an illegitimate and unstable hierarchy, individuals are more likely to notice bias that discriminates against group members with whom they share relevant identities. I find empirical support for these predictions, using survey data from judges and attorneys reporting their perceptions of bias against female attorneys. This research suggests that procedural injustice will not be perceived by all who observe it and that group membership and status affect the perceptual process in predictable ways.