Humans Making Sense of Alarming Conditions: Psychological Insight into the Fair Process Effect

The master narrative about social aggression is that it is devastating for girls. Absent from the narrative, however, are girls' voices and a consideration of the positive benefits that targets might incur. Girls' stories of social aggression can be hard to communicate, as adolescents experience challenges making sense of emotionally difficult events. Using Burke's dramaturgical perspective and visual narrative metaphor method, the present study provided girls with a means of purification or a way of identifying both the devastating and redeeming nature of social aggression, including a sequential move from pollution to redemption. Forty-two middle school girls drew and orally described metaphors representing their negative feelings and positive outcomes associated with an experience of social aggression. The analysis revealed four categories of pollution metaphors and four categories of redemption metaphors, as well as five discourse structures that provided insight into how participants constructed their pollution and redemption narratives.

Download Full-text

How do I judge my outcome when I do not know the outcome of others? The psychology of the fair process effect.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ◽

10.1037/0022-3514.72.5.1034 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 72 (5) ◽

pp. 1034-1046 ◽

Cited By ~ 258

Author(s):

Kees van den Bos ◽

E. Allan Lind ◽

Riël Vermunt ◽

Henk A. M. Wilke

Keyword(s):

Fair Process ◽

Fair Process Effect

Download Full-text

Interactional justice and the fair process effect: The role of outcome uncertainty

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology ◽

10.1016/j.jesp.2006.02.014 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 210-220 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Michael K. Hui ◽

Kevin Au ◽

Xiande Zhao

Keyword(s):

Interactional Justice ◽

Fair Process ◽

Fair Process Effect

Download Full-text

The Fair Process Effect in the Classroom: Reducing the Influence of Grades on Student Evaluations of Teachers

Journal of Marketing Education ◽

10.1177/0273475318772618 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 173-184

Author(s):

Thomas M. Tripp ◽

Lixin Jiang ◽

Kristine Olson ◽

Maja Graso

Keyword(s):

Distributive Justice ◽

Student Evaluation ◽

Teaching Evaluations ◽

Fair Process ◽

Student Evaluations Of Teachers ◽

Justice Perceptions ◽

Research Findings ◽

Evaluation Of Teaching ◽

Fair Process Effect ◽

The Relationship

Research findings tend to confirm anecdotal observations that instructors’ teaching evaluations are influenced by students’ grades, making some instructors feel pressured to reduce the academic rigor of their course in an attempt to get higher evaluations. To reduce this pressure, the current study tested whether distributive justice may explain the relationship between grades and student evaluation of teaching (SET) and how the fair process effect may moderate the relationship between distributive justice perceptions regarding grades and SET. Relying on the extant literature of procedural justice, we hypothesized that when students perceive no fair process that determines their grades, then: (a) the relationship between distributive justice perceptions and SET will be stronger and (b) the indirect effect of grades on SET via distributive justice perceptions will be stronger. Conversely, under conditions of strong fair process perceptions, these relationships will be attenuated. Using a survey of undergraduates’ perceptions of course fairness, we found support for our proposed hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our findings for higher education faculty.

Download Full-text