Implicit Effects of Justice on Self-Identity

The authors provide one of the first tests of whether justice has effects at implicit or subconscious levels. By manipulating justice in a laboratory experiment, they found that the activation of interdependent and individual self-identities were higher when people experienced fairness and unfairness, respectively. Although these effects occurred at both implicit and explicit levels, they were stronger in the former case. These identity-based effects proved to be important because they mediated the effects of justice on trust and on cooperative and counterproductive behaviors. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.