The role of affect and cognition in the perception of outcome acceptability under different justice conditions

Prior research has focused on negative affective responses to distributive justice.
This study extends this to consider both affective and cognitive responses to various combinations of procedural and distributive justice. The effects of these responses on perceptions of outcome acceptability are then determined.
Structural equation modeling is used to measure the interrelationships of the affective and cognitive effects. In the conceptualization of equity theory Adams (1965) and Walster, Walster and Berscheild (1978) postulated that perceptions of injustice would lead to negative emotional states that would then motivate a search to redress the inequity. Since that time a limited amount of research has confirmed the production of negative affective responses to injustice (Clayton, 1992, study 2; Hegtvedt, 1990;Mikula, 1986; Sprecher, 1992). The most comprehensive study to date by Mikula, Scherer and Athenstaedt (1998) involved 2,921 students who reported situations in which they had experienced positive and negative affective reactions. Situations perceived of as unjust elicited feelings that were longer in duration and more intense. The studies to date have focused on affective responses to distributive justice. To the best of our knowledge no studies have examined cognitive responses to justice. Therefore, this study proposes to extend this to the consideration of the effects of both procedural and distributive justice on cognitive and affect responses. Further, we propose to examine the effects of cognitive and affective responses to the formation of perceptions of the acceptability of an outcome. We begin with a description of procedural and distributive justice. This is followed by a discussion of affect, cognition and their interrelationships.