Social Justice Research

, Volume 19, Issue 2, pp 228–253 | Cite as

The Influence of Self-Threats on Fairness Judgments and Affective Measures

Article
First Online:

Abstract

This paper focuses on the question of why fairness matters to people. Extending on terror and uncertainty management theories and the literature on the self, it is proposed here that fairness can be a means of self-defense. Thinking of a situation that is threatening to the self therefore should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of two experiments support this line of reasoning: Asking participants to think about things that are threatening to themselves led to stronger reactions to manipulations of both procedural and distributive fairness. In the discussion it is argued that these findings suggest that fairness especially matters to people when they are trying to deal with threats to their selves.

Keywords

self fairness fairness judgments affective reactions 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), project number 400-10-030.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Authors and Affiliations

  • Joost Miedemam
    • 1
  • Kees van den Bos
    • 2
  • Riël Vermunt
    • 3
  1. 1.Department of Social and Organizational PsychologyLeiden UniversityLeidenThe Netherlands
  2. 2.Department of Social and Organizational PsychologyUtrecht UniversityUtrechtThe Netherlands
  3. 3.Department of PsychologySkövde UniversitySkövdeSweden

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