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Observing Others’ Anger and Guilt Can Make You Feel Unfairly Treated: The Interpersonal Effects of Emotions on Justice-Related Reactions

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Abstract

Drawing upon emotions as social information theory, we propose that others’ emotions can influence individuals’ justice judgments, outcome satisfaction, and behaviors even when individuals are not unfairly treated themselves and in the absence of explicit information about the fairness of others’ treatment. Study 1 demonstrated that individuals make inferences about the outcome favorability and procedural justice encountered by others based on others’ expressions of guilt and anger, which also influence individuals’ judgments of others’ overall justice and outcome satisfaction. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that others’ emotions can influence individuals’ own judgments of procedural justice and overall justice. Specifically, individuals perceive lower levels of justice when another person expresses guilt or anger relative to no emotion. Moreover, others’ emotions influence individuals’ outcome satisfaction and behaviors (i.e., helping intentions and retaliation); these effects are mediated by individuals’ own justice judgments (i.e., procedural and overall justice). Theoretical implications related to the role of emotions as antecedents to justice judgments, the social function of emotions, and the impact of emotions on third-party observers are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Affective reactions may also occur in the form of complementary emotions (e.g., fear in response to anger; compassion in response to guilt). However, these reactions have only been found in exceptional cases (e.g., when anger was expressed by a high-power individual; Lelieveld, Van Dijk, Van Beest, & Van Kleef, 2012). We measured participants’ fear and compassion in Study 3. However, participants’ own fear in the anger condition and their own compassion in the guilt condition did not significantly differ from the control condition.

  2. Given that positive emotions have not been found to be associated with specific judgments of procedural justice (Krehbiel & Cropanzano, 2000; Weiss et al., 1999), we did not expect individuals to infer procedural justice information from another person’s positive emotions. Nonetheless, we included a pride condition in Studies 1 and 2 in an exploratory fashion. As expected, procedural and overall justice judgments in the pride condition did not significantly differ from the control condition in either study. We return to this point in the “General Discussion” section.

  3. A potential exception is when individuals may need social comparison information to determine the favorability of their outcomes as compared to others. This point is further addressed in the “General Discussion” section.

  4. Given that a female actor was used, potential gender effects were explored. Gender did not significantly moderate the relationships between condition and procedural or overall justice judgments. Female participants (M = 3.92, SD = .56) did judge their outcomes to be significantly more favorable than male participants (M = 3.54, SD = .77; F(1, 63) = 5.17, p < .05). However, controlling for gender did not substantively change the effect of outcome favorability on outcome satisfaction. No significant differences on performance were observed and controlling for gender did not substantively change the effects of overall justice and outcome favorability on performance.

  5. Given that we asked participants to be “fast and accurate” for the Round 2 anagrams, it is possible that slower and/or less accurate responses could reflect retaliation. Further, rather than slowing down, some participants may have wanted to retaliate by speeding up their responses (e.g., to decrease accuracy). Accordingly, we explored participants’ accuracy on the task. Results indicated that the effect of condition on accuracy was non-significant, F(2, 61) = 2.86, p > .05, η² = .09. This suggests that individuals were inclined to retaliate by slowing down rather than being inaccurate.

  6. We also conducted this analysis with all of the negative emotion items from our measure of participants’ own emotions (i.e., guilty, angry, afraid, anxious, embarrassed, envious, disgusted) collapsed into a general measure of the individual’s own negative emotions (α = .77). Condition did not significantly predict these negative emotions (F(2, 62) = 1.32, p > .05, η² = .04) and controlling for this general category did not substantively change the results.

  7. Although we focused on others’ emotions as antecedents to one’s justice judgments and the potential influence of emotional contagion, it is important to note that emotions can also be outcomes of justice judgments (e.g., perceiving unfairness can prompt feelings of anger). Moreover, one of the key distinguishing features of emotions is that they have a target (i.e., emotions are directed at someone or something; Frijda, 1993). Future research may wish to further disentangle the influence of emotions by examining how emotions targeted toward the other’s treatment influence emotions targeted at one’s own justice judgment. For example, perhaps witnessing another’s anger or feeling angry about another’s treatment not only impacts one’s justice judgment but also the emotions emanating from this judgment (e.g., by intensifying or even changing the emotions that are experienced). Thus, it is important to further investigate the impact of emotions as antecedents, accompaniments, and outcomes of justice judgments as well as the interplay between emotions with different targets.

  8. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research. Council of Canada awarded to Annika Hillebrandt (Nos. 767-2012-1730; 766-2011-2014) and Laurie J. Barclay (No. 410-2011-1367) as well as the Ontario Early Researcher Award awarded to Laurie J. Barclay (No. ER11-08-228). We thank Amy Christie and Yujie (Jessie) Zhan for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript.

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  1. Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3C5, Canada

    Annika Hillebrandt & Laurie J. Barclay

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  1. Annika Hillebrandt
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  2. Laurie J. Barclay
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Correspondence to Annika Hillebrandt.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in our studies.

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Hillebrandt, A., Barclay, L.J. Observing Others’ Anger and Guilt Can Make You Feel Unfairly Treated: The Interpersonal Effects of Emotions on Justice-Related Reactions. Soc Just Res 30, 238–269 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-017-0290-5

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