Procedural fairness enacted by societal actors increases social trust and social acceptance among ethnic minority members through the promotion of sense of societal belonging

Abstract

overviews). When an authority makes a decision that affects someone, people are inclined to assess its fairness or unfairness. These fairness perceptions may have pervasive effects on people's attitudes, values, and behavior (Tyler & Blader, 2003), ultimately having a profound impact on how they feel and react within the context of their social groups (De Cremer & Tyler, 2005; Tyler & Lind, 1992). Fairness has long been considered mainly in terms of distributive fairness, referring to the perception of fairness of received outcomes and resource allocations (Cropanzano & Ambrose, 2001). However, numerous studies have shown that not only tangible outcomes themselves are important, but also the degree to which fair procedures are applied to arrive at those outcomes (Folger & Konovsky,

Societal Actors Shape Collective Identities of Minorities: Procedural Fairness Climate Effects on Identification, Subjective Well-Being and Psychological Health

“…Previous theorizing on procedural fairness processes emphasized processes within groups and more particularly focused on the social relationship between the individual group member who receives procedural fairness and the authority figure enacting it (see Valcke et al, 2020). This was also the case in the scant procedural fairness studies that involved minorities, which pertained to situations in which the individual minority member was being (not) granted fairness (see Huo, Smith, Tyler & Lind, 1996;Huo & Tyler, 2000.…”

“…Societal institutions (e.g., courts, school boards, community councils, the police, the political system, and so on) can thus be regarded as superordinate enacting authorities. Moreover, given that these authorities make decisions about minority members on a daily basis in a broad number of domains, they can be considered as potentially important enactors of procedural fairness as well (see Valcke et al, 2020). Valcke et al (2020) have already shown that the perceived fairness of decisionmaking processes of societal actors increased the sense of (societal) belongingness of ethnic minorities.…”

“…Moreover, given that these authorities make decisions about minority members on a daily basis in a broad number of domains, they can be considered as potentially important enactors of procedural fairness as well (see Valcke et al, 2020). Valcke et al (2020) have already shown that the perceived fairness of decisionmaking processes of societal actors increased the sense of (societal) belongingness of ethnic minorities. Here, we assume that procedural fairness has similar effects on identification.…”

“…African American respondents learned about a target person who lives in a society which he perceived to be characterized by either a fair or an unfair climate of multiethnic decision-making processes. We manipulated fairness based on items that measure procedural fairness climate (Liao & Rupp, 2005;Naumann & Bennett, 2000 see also Valcke et al, 2020). After having read the stimulus materials, participants had to rate how much they thought the target identified with society and with his own ethnic group.…”

“…Previous research has already highlighted the need for procedural fairness in the case of ethnic minorities in organizational settings, when it comes to general decision making like pay increase or promotion. However, these studies did not investigate decisions that involve conflicts having a direct relationship with the minority status of the persons affected, or put otherwise, involved multicultural decision making (for an exception, Valcke, Van Hiel, Dierckx, & Onraet, 2020). Conversely, prior work has focused on treatment of the participants themselves who were approached as individuals rather than as (minority) group members, on the basis of their own behavior and achievements.…”