Procedural context and culture: Variation in the antecedents of procedural justice judgments

T. R. Tyler and E. A. Lind (1992) identified 3 relational variables that make authoritative procedures seem fair: indications of status recognition, trust in benevolence, and neutrality in decision making. In Study 1, students from the United States, Germany, and Hong Kong recalled a conflict and reported their reactions. In Study 2, U.S. and Japanese students rated 3rd-party and dyadic procedures as ways of resolving a hypothetical dispute. In both studies, trust in benevolence correlated more strongly with procedural justice judgments in 3rd-party procedures. Study 2 showed stronger links between status recognition and procedural justice in the U.S. sample. In both studies, the relational variables appeared to mediate the effects of voice on procedural justice judgments. The results suggest that the basic processes posited in the theory generalize to dyadic conflict situations and across cultural contexts.