Effects of Interpersonal Affect Upon Fairness Judgment

Abstract

We examined the effect of interpersonal affect on fairness judgment. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to write down fair and unfair behaviors that positive and negative persons performed, giving as many examples as possible within 5 minutes. Participants wrote more fair behaviors for the positive person than for the negative, and wrote more unfair behaviors for the negative person than for the positive. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects rated the perceived frequency of 60 behaviors (30 fair and 30 unfair). In both experiments, they evaluated fair behaviors by the positive person to be more frequent than those of the negative, and unfair behaviors by the negative person to be more frequent than those of the positive. The results indicate that fairness judgment is influenced by the participant's positive and negative affect toward the judged object. The effects of positive and negative interpersonal affect on fairness judgment are discussed.