Sheldon Alexander

The Role of Procedural and Distributive Justice in Organizational Behavior

To investigate the relationship between fairness and organizational outcomes, the present study examined the survey responses of government employees at six Federal installations. Indices of procedural and distributive fairness were factor-analytically derived. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both the procedural measures and the distributive measures were significantly related to measures of job satisfaction, evaluation of supervisor, conflict/harmony, trust in management, and turnover intention. Procedural fairness accounted for significantly more variance than distributive fairness in each of these criterion measures, except for turnover intention. These findings are related to conceptual and methodological issues concerning procedural fairness and organizational behavior.

Just world beliefs, perceived stress, and health behavior: The impact of a procedurally just world.

Recent research suggests that a just world view may promote good health while low belief in a just world may deleteriously affect well-being. However, this research is limited in that specific components of justice beliefs that are important to health are not well articulated. Additionally, many potential pathways linking perceived fairness to physical health remain largely unexplored. In the present study, we examined how individual differences in both distributive (outcomes and allocations) and procedural (rules and processes) just world beliefs are associated with stress and health behavior. Participants were recruited from two universities (N = 426) to complete individual differences measures of procedural and distributive just world beliefs, and also measures of perceived stress, health behavior, and physical symptoms. Results suggested that procedural, but not distributive just world views were important to well-being. In particular, belief in a procedurally just world was associated directly with lower perceived stress, and also indirectly with adaptive health behaviors and fewer physical health complaints. In general, these results suggest that beliefs about a procedurally just world may be particularly important to well-being, while also suggesting specific directions and mechanisms for future attempts at developing justice-oriented health interventions. *Portions of this research were conducted while the first author was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine (Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System & University of Michigan), and also a visiting instructor at Albion College (Albion, MI).

Belief in a just world, social influence and illness attributions: evidence of a just world boomerang effect.

Characteristics of individuals and illnesses can both influence receptivity to preventative health messages. We examined whether receptivity to health messages depends on interactions between illness characteristics and dispositional concern for justice. Participants considered the preventability of six illnesses after exposure to a message that manipulated personal responsibility for illness. Paradoxically, participants with strong just world beliefs reported greater preventability for less preventable illnesses, such as brain cancer, when exposed to an unpreventable health message. In parallel, participants with low justice beliefs reported less preventability for lung cancer when exposed to a preventable message. This just world boomerang effect suggests that individual dispositions and illness characteristics can interact in ways that can produce either acquiescence or opposition to persuasive health messages.

Individuals and illnesses as sources of perceived preventability

Perceived preventability of illness is an important predictor of health behaviour and response to illness. Yet, health experts remain largely unaware of the extent to which preventability attributions reflect characteristics of persons, illnesses and their interaction. Quantifying the sources of variance that compose illness preventability attributions may be especially useful for designing effective preventative health interventions. In the present study, we used generalisability theory to examine the sources of variance in illness preventability attributions. Undergraduate college students (N = 44) rated the personal preventability of 12 well-known physical illnesses. Preventability attributions were shown to most substantially reflect characteristics of illnesses (57.5% target effect). However, preventability attributions also strongly reflected interactions of individuals and illnesses (26.0% relationship effect). Characteristics of individuals were also significant, although they explained a relatively smaller amount of variance (7.1% perceiver effect). In general, these results suggest new directions for conceptualising theory and research on perceived preventability of illness.