When Excuses Don't Work: The Persistent Injustice Effect Among Black Managers

Abstract

We thank Joel Brockner, Don Conlon, Len Greenhalgh, Bruce Barry, William Smith, Mary Dieterich, and Yu Shyr for their careful comments and criticism of earlier drafts of this paper, and participants at seminars at Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, MIT, Washington University, and Cornell University for their feedback and insights. We also thank Keith Murnighan, and three anonymous ASQ reviewers for their helpful advice. In this paper, we examine the underlying dynamics of the differences between blacks' and whites' responses to social accounts-explanations or excuses for negative actions and events. Across four studies we found that when black respondents observed unjust behaviors toward a hypothetical black victim, social accounts had a weak impact on perceptions of injustice, confirming the presence of what we call the injustice effect. We also found that social accounts have a weaker impact on perceptions of injustice than on disapproval of the harm-doer and posit that the persistent injustice effect results from a combination of in-group identification with the victim and the respondent's personal experiences with injustice. These two factors, we theorize, combine to create greater empathy for the victim.'