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

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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.

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Acknowledgments

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

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  1. Joost Miedemam

    Present address: Faculty of Management and Organization, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, the Netherlands

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Joost Miedemam

  2. Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Kees van den Bos

  3. Department of Psychology, Skövde University, Skövde, Sweden

    Riël Vermunt

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  1. Joost Miedemam
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Correspondence to Joost Miedemam.

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Miedemam, J., van den Bos, K. & Vermunt, R. The Influence of Self-Threats on Fairness Judgments and Affective Measures. Soc Just Res 19, 228–253 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-006-0007-7

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