A Series Of Studies On Fairness Heuristic Theory

Fairness heuristic is a new theory of social justice area which was put forward by Lind et al in 1992. The theory mainly involved in the formation and use of fair judge. In fairness heuristic theory, some of the core principles have been experimental verification, however, there are still a large number of issues need to be studied. We still do not know how to play fairness? Can fairness heuristics be changed after people form heuristics? Whether the way of fair treatment has an effect on people's social status or not? Is the fairness heuristic theory effective in the context of our country? These issues will be explored on the basis of fairness heuristic theory in this article.This article is divided into four parts:The first part provides a literature review. The history and current situation of researches on organizational justice are reviewed systematically, Main theories and representative thoughts in this field are given a brief discussion. Then, the research hypotheses are promoted correspondingly.The second part is empirical study, which explores five issues exist in fairness heuristic theory. Study 1 use survey methods to explore the relationship between employee's specific fair experience and organizational outcome variables. The results showed that overall fairness judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice types and outcome variables. Study 2 use students as sample to explore the effects of fairness information order on fairness judgments. The experimental design is a 2 (order:procedure before outcome vs. outcome before procedure) X 2 (procedure: accurate vs. inaccurate) X 2 (outcome:favorable vs. unfavorable) factorial design. The results showed that procedural fairness may be more important when people are informed about the procedure first than when they are informed about the procedure second, and distributive fairness may be more important when people know about the outcome earlier than when they know about the outcome later. Study 3 use students as sample to explore the relationship between fairness, trust and cooperation. The experimental design is 2 (procedure:voice vs. no voice) X 3 (trust:positive vs. negative vs. unknown) factorial design. The results showed that there are significant interactions between procedure and trust, procedure affected outcome judgments more strongly in the trust-unknown condition than in the trust-positive and the trust-negative conditions. However, when people have been informed about authority's trustworthiness, they are less in need of procedural fairness information, the effect of procedural fairness is lower. Study 4 use students as sample to explore the impact of justice judgments on individual social status. The experimental design is a 2 (treatment:fair vs unfair) x 2 (words property:individual identity vs group identity). The results showed that fair experiences lead to faster RT when identifying group identity words as compared to individual identity words. Likewise, unfair experiences lead to faster RT when identifying individual identity words as compared to group identity words. Study 5 use students as sample to explore the stability of fairness heuristic theory. The experimental design is a 4 (fairness pattern:fair control, initial fair, unfair control, initial unfair) x 2 (trial:trial 1 vs. trial 2). The results showed that the inertia of fairness heuristic based on unfair is greater than that of fairness heuristic based on fair:the change from fair procedure to unfair procedure lead to significant decrease of trust in the experimenter and OCB in the initial fair condition, but the change from unfair procedure to fair procedure is not lead to significant increase of trust in the experimenter and OCB in the initial unfair condition. So we can conclude that fairness heuristic can be changed in some condition.The third part provides a general discussion. We discussed some issues based on the results of this paper profoundly and extensively. The discussions included such topics as the mediation role of overall fairness; the impact of early fair information on people; the relationship between fairness, trust and cooperation; how to inspire individual social status, as well as the stability of heuristic stability, and so on. In addition, the paper provides some suggestions about how to enhance perception of organizational justice and management effectiveness.In the fourth part, the innovation and deficiency of this paper are discussed. We have explored the phase-shifting events put forward by fairness heuristic theory for the first time, used the IAT to explore the impact of fairness Judgments on individual social status, and used experimental methods to explore the relationship between fairness, trust and cooperation, which further support the hypothesis of substitution effect put forward by fairness heuristic theory. In the end, a direction for future researches is proposed on the basis of this research.