Building Community One Relationship at a Time: Consequences for the Seeking and Acceptance of Help

Three studies test the hypothesis that a perceived relationship is relevant to seeking and accepting help. The results first indicate a direct effect for a perceived relationship on the extent to which people are willing to seek and accept help. The findings further indicate that perceiving a relationship increases the importance of procedural justice judgments in shaping the decision to seek and accept help. This was true both in vertical relations (e.g., student–professor, resident–police officer) and in horizontal ones (e.g., student–student). The research extends prior findings showing that common group membership increases the influence of procedural justice judgments on whether people cooperate with fellow group members. The results show a parallel with the effects of a perceived relationship, suggesting a comparability between “relational” and “collective” levels of identity.     

Social media governance: can social media companies motivate voluntary rule following behavior among their users?

Journal of Experimental Criminology - The purpose of these studies is to examine whether the procedural justice of a social media platform enforcement system for content moderation shapes...     

Legitimacy and Deterrence Effects in Counterterrorism Policing: A Study of Muslim Americans

This study considers the circumstances under which members of the Muslim American community voluntarily cooperate with police efforts to combat terrorism. Cooperation is defined to include both a general receptivity toward helping the police in antiterror work and the specific willingness to alert police to terror‐related risks in a community. We compare two perspectives on why people cooperate with law enforcement, both developed with reference to general policing, in the context of antiterror policing and specifically among members of the Muslim American community. The first is instrumental. It suggests that people cooperate because they see tangible benefits that outweigh any costs. The second perspective is normative. It posits that people respond to their belief that police are a legitimate authority. On this view we link legitimacy to the fairness and procedural justice of police behavior. Data from a study involving interviews with Muslim Americans in New York City between March and June 2009 strongly support the normative model by finding that the procedural justice of police activities is the primary factor shaping legitimacy and cooperation with the police.     

Affirmative Action in an Institutional Context: The Antecedents of Policy Preferences and Political Support

This study broadens the framework within which the psychology of support for affirmative action policies is examined to include the institutional framework within which such policies are developed and implemented. This broader framework includes concern with electoral support for those who implement affirmative action policies, as well as considering the impact of implementing such policies on the overall legitimacy of government. It also includes evaluations of the fairness of the two key social institutions shaping such policies—government authorities and markets. The results of a survey of Americans suggest that this institutional framework had an important influence on reactions to affirmative action policies that was distinct from direct reactions to policies themselves. In particular, people were more supportive of policies intervening in markets when they believed that markets represented unfair social allocation procedures. Those politicians who supported such policies received greater electoral support when people viewed market procedures as being unfair and when they felt that government decision-making procedures were fair. Evidence suggests that outcomes did not directly shape electoral support or judgments about the legitimacy of government.     

... And justice for all

African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, and European American students rated their procedural preferences in response to a hypothetical conflict scenario and then recalled a real dispute in which they had been involved. Subjects of all four ethnicities and of both genders preferred persuasion and negotiation to other options. There were significant, ethnic and gender differences in preferences, as well as differences for the nature of the relationship and the nature of the issue, but these differences were small in comparison to the overall pattern of procedural preferences. Reports of actual procedure use also showed differences in procedure use across genders, ethnicities, and relationship type, but the differences were relatively small. Procedural fairness was the strongest predictor of both procedural preference and affect toward actual procedure use.     

What motivates adherence to medical recommendations? The procedural justice approach to gaining deference in the medical arena

Although it is within their long‐term interest, patients often fail to follow health care recommendations made by medical experts. This failure results in the widespread occurrence of preventable health problems and a significant increase in health care costs. Taking a new approach to confronting this issue, this paper examines whether the procedural justice model, which has been useful in explaining cooperation with legal and managerial authorities, can provide a basis for increasing patients' willingness to voluntarily adhere to health care recommendations. Three studies tested and supported this proposition. Study 1 experimentally manipulated physicians' procedural fairness or unfairness to explore its influence on patients' acceptance of doctors' recommendations. Study 2 used patients' reports about the fairness of their personal physicians and linked those evaluations to their willingness to follow their doctor's recommendations. Finally, study 3 explored the role of general procedural justice judgments in promoting willingness to accept health policies when they are advocated by private doctors and government health care authorities. The results of all three studies support the argument that when health care authorities use fair procedures, patients are more likely to accept their recommendations. Importantly, this procedural justice effect is distinct from, and in some cases stronger than, the influence of competence.     

Alleviating rural poverty through agricultural growth

The article examines the role of agricultural GDP growth in alleviating rural poverty in LDCs. Cross‐sectional regression analysis indicates that GDP growth by itself takes a very long time to reduce poverty significantly. It suggests that decreases in land concentration could have a more immediate impact on reducing rural poverty; the budgetary and other costs of implementing such changes are not, however, considered. The preferred approach is a combination of equitable growth and redistributive measures.