How and When Does Procedural Fairness Affect Self-evaluation? Self-serving Bias or Uncertainty Management Theory

• Main Authors: Chong-Yu Hua, 花崇育
• Other Authors: 吳宗祐
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/3337x5

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 106 === Previous research has shown that procedural fairness and outcome favorability often interact to influence employees’ self-evaluation, but has not clarified “how” and “when” this interaction affects self-evaluation. To address the “how” issue, the author proposes that, based on attribution theory, procedural fairness and outcome favorability interact to influence self-evaluation via attributions of self-responsibility. To address the “when” issue, the present research divides outcome favorability into “actual” outcome favorability and “expected” outcome favorability, providing two competing theories: self-serving bias and uncertainty management theory. According to self-serving bias, when people receive a negative actual outcome, they may be more eager to seek information about procedural fairness. In contrast, according to uncertainty management theory, when the actual outcome is inconsistent with the expected outcome, people are more eager to seek information about procedural fairness. The results of 2 experiments show that people use procedural fairness information to make attributions of self-responsibility according to different outcome favorability （actual/expected, positive/negative）. In addition, the results support uncertainty management theory, demonstrating that people tend to search procedural fairness information when actual outcomes are inconsistent with expected outcomes. The research findings, implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.