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Procedural Justice and Authority: Tyler Addresses CCSR Meeting

Psychologist Tom Tyler, a professor from New York University, spoke about the role of procedural justice with respect to a person’s reaction to authority at November’s CCSR meeting in Evanston.

According to Tyler, rather than focusing on outcomes, procedural justice focuses on the process in contacts with authority, such as police interactions, or pay and promotion decisions. People tend to view interactions as more procedurally fair if they are treated respectfully, given a chance to tell their side, and if they feel the authority is motivated by fairness and is acting in good faith.

Tyler examined procedural justice in a study of financial services employees. While testing for overall outcome satisfaction, he demonstrated that procedural justice has a high correlation with a number of factors. These included quality of decision making, quality of treatment (both formal and informal), distributive justice, and overall outcome favorability. In other words, employees were shown to rate overall satisfaction higher when the process was fair regardless of the outcome.

In another study, Tyler conducted informal interviews in Chicago traffic court. He found that almost every litigant left without a fine, yet they still seemed angry. As for an explanation, Tyler notes, "They wanted to have a trial in which they could present their evidence and receive a legal decision about the merits of their traffic ticket. Receiving a favorable outcome was less important to them than having their day in court."

Additionally, Tyler has examined group identification as both a mediator and a moderator of procedural justice. Testing a moderation model, he has found that when a person does not identify with authority, outcome favorability is more important than procedural justice. For example, if Anne feels no loyalty or identification with her employer, she is more concerned with how much she gets paid than how she is treated. If she does identify with the organization, then the way she is treated (procedural fairness) is more important to her.

Testing procedural justice as a mediator, Tyler found that it leads to greater group identification, which directly impacts overall satisfaction with the interaction. Thus, employers who treat employees with respect and fairness have employees who identify more strongly with the organization and are therefore more satisfied with their jobs.

In terms of law enforcement, Tyler’s results indicate that citizens are more satisfied with their interactions with police if they feel they have been treated impartially and respectfully, regardless of the outcome of the contact. They may also be more willing to cooperate with officers and obey the law in the future.

Tom Tyler received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Los Angeles and has long studied social justice and law enforcement issues.

Nate Niesen