ABSTRACT
So far we have only considered one causal relationship between justice and affect-the former engenders the latter. The experimental evidence we have already discussed, especially in Chapter 2 and Chapter 4, supports this contention. That said, while a justice-to-affect paradigm seems to be the dominant perspective among fairness scholars, it is not the only possibility. Scher and Heise (1993), for example, suggest that the causal arrow may go in the other direction. According to their affect control theory, which we review later in this chapter, justice and emotions are correlated because the experience of negative emotion prompts one to cognitively evaluate fairness. Without this emotional “shove,” individuals are less likely to do the cognitive work necessary to ascertain justice. Similarly, in his social intuitionist model of moral judgment Haidt (2000; 2001; 2006) argues that our feelings precede and then influence our subsequent ethical decisions. In addition to this view of affect impacting the process of fairness evaluation, other more content-oriented approaches, such as uncertainty management theory (van den Bos and Lind, 2002), which we also review later in the chapter, show how affect might also become an input in the whole judgment process.
