In a recent law review article, Peter Blanck (2006) writes movingly about disabled individuals’ experiences with, and reactions to, workplace discrimination, “… they wanted real jobs. They did not want to live on welfare checks; they wanted paychecks. They fought to be participants in society and not view the world as outsiders from a nursing home bed.” (p. 694). Blanck’s stories are about disabled Americans who fought against discrimination. The individuals were discriminated against because of their disabilities: they were fired from their jobs; denied the necessary accommodations to perform their assigned tasks; and denied equal access to governmental services and public facilities. Typically, the relative deprivation these individuals experienced stemmed from procedural biases, formal or informal, that netted them less desirable outcomes, not because they were incapable of performing their assigned tasks, nor because they were unmotivated to do so, but because they were disabled.

This confounding of biased procedures and undesirable outcomes is precisely the sequence that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) was designed to address. Yet, although the problems addressed by the ADA, as well as the mandated responses, are both procedural and distributive, it is my impression that much of the scholarly work focuses on distributive concerns, such as real jobs, real paychecks, equal benefits, and public services. While it is clear that procedures are not ignored (in the same article, for example, Blanck notes that US society has not fully confronted the fact that “millions of persons with disabilities … continue to face segregation and isolation, stigma and discrimination” p. 705), the procedural aspects of workplace disability seem infrequently to be the primary concern. In other words, seemingly few scholars focus on the procedures (formal or informal) that produced disadvantageous outcomes, or the procedures employed to respond to discrimination, in and of themselves, independent of the outcomes they produce, as the primary, or even a critical component of the environment faced by disabled individuals in the workplace.

In this chapter, I summarize some of the psychological research and theory on procedural fairness, with an eye toward the implications of this scholarship for understanding the attitudes and behaviors of those who encounter workplace discrimination against disabled individuals – whether they are the target of discrimination, the employer who formulates a response to a request for a reasonable accommodation, or a coworker who is simply observing this interaction. I focus primarily on those attitudes and behaviors that have been shown to be responsive to variations in procedural fairness, such as satisfaction with the outcomes of these interactions, satisfaction with, and the perceived legitimacy of the authorities who administered those procedures and decided on those outcomes, and satisfaction with, and support for the organizations those authorities represent.

The psychological research and theory concerning fairness began with a focus on outcomes, and subsequently advanced to incorporate a focus on procedures. I will briefly summarize this procedural justice research and one of its critical discoveries: that procedural fairness – merely the fairness of the way individuals are treated – is an important determinant of satisfaction, sometimes even more so than either fair, or even purely beneficial, outcomes. Throughout my comments, I will emphasize the implications of this scholarship for thinking about the strictly procedural aspects of discrimination against disabled individuals and about the ADA.

Finally, the bulk of my comments focus on research that reveals how several variables can moderate the influence of procedures on people’s judgments of fairness and satisfaction, and I speculate about how these variables might play a role in settings involving discrimination against disabled individuals. The moderating variables I will consider are (1) beliefs about deservingness; (2) one’s role as either a decision maker or a decision recipient in an encounter; and (3) group membership and group identity, such as identification with one’s organization versus identification with the community of disabled individuals seeking equal opportunities across organizations.

A Brief History

In an early fairness study, social psychologists J. Stacey Adams and William B. Rosenbaum (Adams & Rosenbaum, 1962) lead undergraduates at NYU to believe they had been hired for part-time work as interviewers. Upon their arrival for their first day of work, these students were randomly assigned to believe either that they were appropriately qualified (“You meet all of the qualifications required for the job…”) or under qualified (“You don’t have nearly enough experience…”) for their $3.50 hourly wage. Based on an equity theory of distributive justice (and in contrast to a simple economic theory of human motivation), the researchers predicted that those employees who believed they were under-qualified for their hourly wage would experience discomfort with their over-compensation, which would lead them to increase their performance in order to reduce the distributive injustice of being over-paid. This equity theory hypothesis was supported: the “under-qualified” workers produced 42% more interviews than those workers who believed they were appropriately qualified for the job. While subsequent theory and research proposed formulations of distributive fairness based on other criteria than equity, such as equality and need (Deutsch, 1975), this finding, like others reported in numerous studies across a wide variety of contexts, supported the authors’ prediction that satisfaction is influenced by the fairness of one’s outcomes independently of the absolute value of those outcomes (for reviews, see Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001, 2002; Walster, Berscheid, & Walster, 1976).

About a decade after distributive justice researchers had begun to make the case that outcome fairness models could enhance predictions of satisfaction beyond those made by purely economic models, Thibaut and Walker’s (1975, 1978) research and theorizing initiated a marked transformation away from the focus on distributional fairness by posing a question about the role of the procedures employed for allocating resources: What procedures are just? According to their procedural justice theory, the manner in which people are treated during their social exchanges can influence their satisfaction independently of either their absolute outcomes or the fairness of those outcomes. In their seminal research, Thibaut and Walker found that, as predicted, when disputants’ conflicts were resolved by fair procedures, they were more satisfied with their treatment than when they were resolved by unfair procedures. Furthermore, they reported what has come to be referred to as the fair process effect – that fair procedures increased disputants’ satisfaction with their outcomes, regardless of whether those outcomes were favorable or unfavorable (e.g., Greenberg & Folger, 1983).

Thibaut and Walker and their colleagues (Houlden, LaTour, Walker, & Thibaut, 1978; Thibaut & Walker, 1975, 1978) went on to ask what procedural criteria would influence judgments of procedural fairness. They theorized that since disputants are motivated to obtain fair and satisfactory outcomes (as predicted by distributive justice theories), they would judge procedures as fair according to the manner in which they allocated two kinds of control: control over the presentation of information (process control) and control over the final decision (decision control). Overall, the research in the decade following Thibaut and Walker’s original claims – claims concerning the fair process effect, as well as claims concerning the importance of process control, or as it came to be called, “voice,” (Folger, 1977) and decision control as determinants of procedural fairness – was very supportive of their theory: fair treatment influenced satisfaction independent of fair, or favorable outcomes, and judgments of fair treatment were shaped by voice and decision control (for an overview, see Lind & Tyler, 1988).

However, about a decade later, there was another considerable transformation in the theorizing about fairness. This transformation followed several reports of an unexpected finding. Whereas Thibaut and Walker’s control theory implied that outcome control would be a more important determinant of satisfaction than process control, evidence began to accumulate that pointed to a more prominent role for process control – a variable that had been operationalized in most of this research as voice, or having one’s say prior to a decision being issued. In a classic experimental demonstration of the problem, Lind, Kanfer, and Earley (1990) led undergraduates to believe that the experimenter had made an important decision about the amount of work that would be required of them during their experimental session. Although all participants were lead to believe that the experimenter had decided on a workload that was slightly higher than most of them thought to be desirable, the study varied the description of the procedure employed to decide on that outcome. In one condition, participants were lead to believe that the experimenter had decided on the outcome after having solicited their input about their preferred decision. In another condition, the participants were lead to believe that the experimenter had decided the outcome before soliciting their input. Compared to participants whose input had not been solicited at all, both of these groups of participants judged the experimenter’s procedure to have been fairer. In other words, voice enhanced fairness even when it could not have influenced the final decision. Such findings posed a strong challenge to the instrumental assumptions of Thibaut and Walker’s theory, and they lead to a theory that continues to exert a profound influence on the thinking about procedural fairness, the group value theory.

Why would voice enhance fairness perceptions even if it occurred after the decision had already been made? According to the group value theory of procedural fairness (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler, 1989), the favorable influence of voice, absent any instrumental effect on the resulting outcomes, could be explained by taking a broader view of the motives of individuals in a social exchange. In addition to a motive to obtain fair or beneficial outcomes (a motive that assumed a central role in Thibaut and Walker’s theory), Tyler and Lind drew on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Tajfel, 1982) to develop the claim that we care about our relationship with our valued groups because we take pride in identifying with them (Blader & Tyler, 2003). From this perspective, one’s treatment was postulated to carry important symbolic or relational content: being asked for one’s input influenced judgments of procedural fairness because it communicated that the decision maker respected the decision recipient as a valued member of one’s valued group. Because individuals are concerned with their long-term relations with social groups (Kramer & Brewer, 1984; Sedekides & Brewer, 2001; Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Tyler & Blader, 2000), the group value and relational theories (Tyler & Blader, 2000; Tyler & Lind, 1992; Tyler & Smith, 1999) assert that non-instrumental, or relational, variables such as trust, neutrality, and respect, assume important symbolic meaning: participation in group procedures signifies one’s positive standing in valued social groups.

In a classic early test of the group value theory, Tyler (1989) surveyed Chicago residents about an encounter with either a cop or a judge. In addition to being asked how favorable an outcome they obtained from this encounter, respondents were asked questions about how much process control (opportunity to tell their side of the story) and how much decision control (influence over the decision made by the authority) they had in this encounter, as well as questions about the extent to which they were treated in a trustworthy, neutral, and respectful manner. While this study replicated the finding that the control variables were linked to the respondents’ judgments of both procedural and distributive justice, as well as their reactions to the authority with whom they had the encounter, the group value variables were more strongly linked to these justice and affective judgments. Most importantly, once the group value variables were included in the predictive model, the influence of the control variables was trivially small – a finding that is strongly supportive of the group value theory.

An extensive literature now supports the group value and relational models’ claim that individuals base procedural fairness judgments on cues about belongingness (De Cremer & Blader, 2006; De Cremer & Tyler, 2005b; Tyler & Lind, 1992). Furthermore, this research has established the importance of these relational concerns in a wide variety of contexts, including legal (e.g., Tyler & Huo, 2002; Tyler, 1990), political (Leung, Tong, & Lind, 2007; Peate, Platow, & Eggins, 2008), and organizational (e.g., Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001) ones.

Procedural Justice and the ADA: Do Procedures Influence Satisfaction Beyond Accommodations?

It is natural and reasonable to think about the implications of the ADA in terms of its implications for the distribution of valued resources, including mandated accommodations, and the ancillary benefits that accrue to disabled workers when accommodations are implemented: the satisfaction stemming from gainful employment; the ability to perform one’s assigned tasks; the maintenance of valued social relationships (Ward & Baker, 2005); and the realization of meaningful citizenship that derives from full participation in the work force (Barton, 1993). In addition, the theory and research on distributive justice referred to above has established the importance of fair distributions for enhancing satisfaction in a wide variety of contexts, including one’s workplace. Although there is a paucity of research testing the role of distributive fairness in contexts involving accommodations for people with disabilities, justice scholars have argued that beliefs about distributive fairness will influence the likelihood that a disabled individual will request an accommodation (Baldridge & Veiga, 2001), and at least one study has shown that distributive fairness judgments can shape the reactions of non-disabled employees to the accommodations made for their disabled coworkers (Colella, 2001).

However, the procedural justice research has shown that the fairness of the procedures employed to respond to accommodation requests might be equally, or in some circumstances even more important than distributional concerns for shaping the satisfaction of disabled workers, and for achieving such goals as enhancing employees’ satisfaction with their job, their employer, and their workplace, and their enthusiasm for assigned tasks and their inclination to engage in discretionary, organizational citizenship behaviors.Footnote 1 Furthermore, these salutary effects seem likely to extend to the coworkers of employees whose disabilities are accommodated – Brockner and colleagues repeatedly have found that workers respond more favorably to their organization when their coworkers are treated fairly (Brockner, 1990; Brockner, DeWitt, Grover, & Reed, 1990; Brockner, Wiesenfeld, & Martin, 1995).

There is also ample reason to expect that these procedural effects emanate from both formal procedures, such as those mandated by the ADA regarding the manner in which supervisors or organizations respond to requests for accommodation (Colella, Paetzold, & Belliveau, 2004), and informal ones, such as the manner of treatment received by disabled individuals in routine encounters with fellow employees or organizational authorities. Although Thibaut and Walker’s original research focused mostly on formal procedures, numerous studies have examined less formal procedures such as corporate culture or organizational norms. Brockner and colleagues (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Brockner et al., 2001), for example, distinguished between procedural concerns that are structural (minimizing bias, permitting voice, or considering appeals) versus more informal ones that relate to the nature of the social interaction, or interpersonal concerns (e.g., politeness, dignity, and respect).

Regrettably, there is some reason to think that the formal and informal workplace procedures that are being employed are not well suited to the task of enhancing fairness and satisfaction. Of the formal procedures that are relevant to perceptions of procedural fairness among disabled workers, perhaps the most obvious is the procedure employed to consider an accommodation request, as specified in the ADA. However, Colella et al. (2004) suggest that some of these mandated procedural criteria might actually work against workers’ perceptions of fairness. For example, the ADA specifies that coworkers may not play a role in determining whether accommodations are made or whether the requests are reasonable, that cases are to be decided on an individual basis; and that the nature of peoples’ disabilities should be disclosed on a need-to-know basis. Together, these rules might interfere with procedural fairness criteria such as voice, consistency across persons, and the provision of accounts for decisions (Bies & Moag, 1986), a shortcoming on a procedural dimension that has been referred to as informational justice (Greenberg, 1993).Footnote 2

There is some reason to think that informal procedures are falling short as well. According to Schur, Kruse, and Blanck (2005), local corporate culture can exert considerable effects on the manner of treatment directed toward people with disabilities, including discrimination and prejudice, or even the subtler discomfort evidenced by some workers when interacting with their disabled coworkers. Such informal behaviors, whether stemming from local norms, or individual idiosyncrasies, seem likely to diminish the extent to which disabled individuals feel included, or valued by their workgroup – a fundamental fairness concern. Noting the social significance of the work environment, Ward and Baker (2005) suggest that such informal factors might infringe on workers’ sense of freedom or autonomy, a form of indignity that also communicates a message of exclusion.

Most of the discussion so far has emphasized the research supporting the claim about the unique contribution of procedures on fairness and satisfaction, and about the symbolic, or relational (as opposed to instrumental) bases of this procedural effect. In essence, this evidence supports the group value theory’s claim that these procedural effects on fairness are mediated by their effect on beliefs about being valued by one’s group. However, some research has shown that, even with the relational effects accounted for, the procedural effects on fairness and satisfaction are also mediated by their effect on expected outcomes. Two studies conducted in non-organizational contexts (Heuer, Penrod, Hafer, & Cohn, 2002) have shown that procedural effects reflect resource value (fair or favorable outcomes) as well as relational value (e.g., within-group status). This resource-mediated effect of procedures seems likely to be the sort of effect of informal procedures on outcomes described by Colella (2001) who asserts that informal procedures can influence whether accommodations for disabilities are requested, and if so, whether they are granted. According to Colella (2001), informal interactions with coworkers can communicate disapproval of accommodation requests, which in turn might discourage disabled individuals from seeking accommodations. Similarly, Blanck and Marti (1997) assert that the negative treatment emanating from a work environment that is hostile toward accommodations, while legally irrelevant, is, as a practical matter, an influential factor in determining the success of accommodation requests.

One recent set of studies shows a procedure-outcome link that works in the other direction: Just as procedural effects can reflect resource value, outcome effects can reflect relational value. In these studies, Okimoto (2008) examined the effect of providing victims of procedural injustices with material compensation – a sequence broadly analogous to ones in which accommodations or compensation are provided under the ADA after workplace procedural failures have contributed to an environment of stigma, inequality, or discrimination (Blanck, 2006; Chapter 7 by M. Selmi, this volume). Across the set of studies, Okimoto found that the provision of material resources, and even the mere effort to provide such compensation, helped to alleviate the negative effects of prior procedural injustices, but only when the compensation was attributed to benevolent motives. Additional measures revealed that the compensation’s positive effects occurred because the effort communicated the same message as the one communicated by fair procedures – the symbolic message that the victim of the injustice was seen as a valued and respected group member.

The primary claim advanced in this section is that there is ample reason to expect that procedural fairness effects – ones that have been well established in a variety of contexts, though not in settings involving individuals with disabilities – will generalize to these settings as well. Furthermore, the fairness of both formal and informal procedures will contribute to the satisfaction of individuals with disabilities and their coworkers, a contribution that is independent of outcome effects, and that is due in part to the procedure’s value as a signal about social, or relational concerns such as the concern with one’s within-group standing. In short, a clear implication of the procedural justice research is that a full accounting of the reactions of disabled workers and their coworkers to workplace accommodation of employees with disabilities must include a consideration of the fairness of the procedures employed to decide on these allocations.

Potential Moderators of Procedural Fairness Effects

Having advanced a broad claim concerning the generalizability of the procedural justice research findings to contexts involving disability accommodations, the remainder of this chapter considers potential limits to the generalizability of these effects. Absent more research testing these procedural effects in a disability context, it is impossible to rule out the potential for interactions of these procedural variables with a host of contextual ones, such as variables unique to settings involving disability concerns, or variables that occur in different magnitudes in these settings than those where these effects have been more extensively examined. Numerous moderators have already been identified. For example, Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996) have shown that procedural justice is more important for people’s reactions when outcomes are unfavorable. In addition, van den Bos and Lind (2002) point to numerous studies that show that procedural justice is more important among individuals who are high in uncertainty, such as uncertainty about an authority’s trustworthiness, or uncertainty about one’s job security. Furthermore, Skitka and colleagues (e.g., Skitka & Houston, 2001; Skitka, 2002) have shown that procedural fairness matters less than outcomes among people who see the outcomes at stake as threats to their core moral values.

In this final section I summarize three lines of research revealing the way that three different variables (beliefs about deservingness; decision makers versus decision recipients; and ingroup versus outgroup encounters) can alter procedural justice effects, or alter the interpretation of procedures in ways that raise practical and theoretical questions. First, I describe several studies suggesting that much of the procedural justice research has overlooked the influence of people’s judgments about the type of treatment they deserve. After describing work showing that beliefs about deservingness can vary considerably across individuals and across settings, and that these beliefs can exert a considerable influence on people’s reactions to the kinds of treatment implicated by procedural justice theories (treatment such as respect, or voice, or neutrality), I speculate about how beliefs about deservingness might play out in workplace contexts when issues of discrimination arise.

Second, I describe a set of studies that examines the way in which decision makers (those who would typically formulate a response to discrimination or requests for accommodations) respond differently to procedural fairness than decision recipients (those who are likely to be the targets of discrimination, or the ones requesting accommodations). After summarizing research suggesting that decision makers are less sensitive to procedural concerns, and more sensitive to outcome concerns than has typically been observed to be the case among decision recipients, I speculate about the ways in which this role variable might influence the nature of workplace encounters involving discrimination.

Finally, I describe a recent set of studies indicating that respectful treatment communicates a message about more than just within, or intragroup, standing (the relational concern highlighted by the group value theory). These studies show that respectful treatment can also convey a symbolic message about what outgroup members think about one’s ingroup. I will speculate that this alternative intergroup message might be a particularly relevant one in workplace contexts when issues of discrimination against disabled individuals arise.

Research on Procedural Fairness and Beliefs About Deservingness

Although the group value theory asserts a direct effect of respectful treatment on judgments of procedural fairness (such that as respect increases, perceived fairness increases), Heuer and colleagues (Heuer, Blumenthal, Douglas, & Weinblatt, 1999) suggest that the effect of respect on procedural fairness is qualified in a potentially important way – one that distributive justice theories explicitly recognized, but that is not acknowledged by the group value theory. Distributive justice theorists have consistently asserted that fairness judgments are dependent on beliefs about deservingness. So for example, in developing equity theory, Adams was clear about the importance of deservingness judgments for people’s reports that they had received a fair outcome:

Many men, when comparing their rewards to those of another, will perceive that their rewards are smaller, and yet they will not feel that this state of affairs is unjust. The reason is that persons obtaining the higher rewards are perceived as deserving them (p. 273, italics added).

Relative deprivation theories have also included feelings of deservingness as an important determinant of the anger that accompanies the experience of deprivation. For example, Crosby listed two conditions as essential for the experience of relative deprivation among working women: lesser outcomes than one wants and lesser outcomes than one deserves. Adopting this reasoning, Heuer et al. (1999) proposed that procedural justice might be similarly influenced: Rather than a direct relationship between respectful treatment and procedural fairness, this relationship might be moderated by beliefs about the extent to which one deserves respectful treatment. If so, how would this deservingness be assessed?

In some early tests of the Justice Motive, Lerner (Braband & Lerner, 1974; Lerner, 1980; Simmons & Lerner, 1968) showed that judgments of deservingness can be based on the value of one’s attributes or the value of one’s behaviors. Subsequently, Feather (1994) extended this reasoning to judgments of distributive justice: Positive outcomes will be seen as most fair when they follow positively valued behaviors, whereas negative behaviors will be seen as most fair when they follow negatively valued behaviors. Feather’s research applied this reasoning to better understand the observation that Australians had been reported to derive pleasure from such events as seeing politicians caught in a foolish act. Two possible explanations examined for the reputed schadenfreude were envy and resentment: envy of those in higher status positions, and resentment stemming from the observation of others who are undeserving of their good fortune. This research found that Australians thought well of high achievers and derived no particular pleasure from hearing about their fall. In fact, they felt badly about the fall of both high and average achievers. However, when participants in a subsequent study learned of a similar misfortune for someone who had cheated to attain their favorable position, they reported pleasurable reactions, particularly the fall of tall poppies (high achievers). According to Feather, these studies argue against envy as an explanation for the Australians’ schadenfreude (which would predict undiscriminating pleasure in the misfortunes of others who are more successful than oneself), and in favor of resentment stemming from beliefs about deservingness – those who cheated to attain their high positions, and who were thus personally responsible for a mismatch between their input and their outcomes, were deserving of their fall from grace. Feather’s (2006, 2008) research has been strongly supportive of his analysis.

Whereas Feather’s analysis focused on the role of deservingness for judgments about the fairness of outcomes, Heuer and colleagues (1999) applied similar reasoning to suggest a role for deservingness as a mediator of the relationship between respectful treatment and the fairness of procedures. Rather than a direct relationship between respect and fairness, as implied by the group value theory, we predicted that people would judge respectful treatment more or less favorably depending on their beliefs about the treatment they deserved. Thus, people who were responsible for positively valued behaviors would feel more deserving of respectful treatment, and those who were responsible for negatively valued behaviors would feel more deserving of disrespectful treatment. Furthermore, we predicted that across all individuals, the relationship between respectful treatment and procedural fairness would be mediated by beliefs about the extent to which respectful or disrespectful was deserved.

We tested this prediction in three studies. In two of the studies participants read about a fictitious social encounter. Our vignettes manipulated three variables, so that in an encounter between two individuals, one individual was treated either respectfully or disrespectfully by the other after having been more or less responsible for performing a positively or negatively valued behavior. In both studies, as predicted, the relationship between respectful treatment and fairness judgments was qualified by judgments of deservingness. So, for example, participants in Study 1 reported that a supervisor’s respectful treatment was most fair when it was directed at a coworker who had turned in a favorable performance at work, and least fair when it was directed at a coworker who turned in a negative performance at work. Similarly, disrespectful treatment was judged most fair when directed at a coworker who had performed unfavorably, and least fair when directed at a coworker who had performed favorably. Furthermore, the relationship between the value of the coworker’s behavior, respectful treatment, and judgments of procedural fairness was strongest when the coworker was seen to be personally responsible for his successes or failures. The second study replicated this finding among college students asked to imagine themselves as the target of more or less respectful treatment from their professor after having performed well or poorly in class. This study added a measure of the participants’ judgments of whether respectful or disrespectful treatment was deserved, which permitted a test of our claim that deservingness judgments would mediate the relationship between the value of an actor’s behavior and judgments of the fairness of the way he or she had been treated. The mediation test supported our prediction.

In a third study, we extended the same reasoning to predict that people with high self-esteem would perceive themselves as more deserving of respectful treatment in their own social encounters compared with those with low self-esteem. The study was again supportive of our prediction that the relationship between respectful treatment and judgments of procedural fairness was not the direct one implied by the group value theory; instead, the relationship was mediated by people’s beliefs about the extent to which they were deserving of respectful treatment, such that those respondents with high self-esteem reported themselves as most deserving of respectful treatment, and they were most indignant when it was not received.

In a subsequent study, Sunshine and Heuer (2002) tested the deservingness hypothesis for procedural fairness by surveying New Yorkers about how fairly they’d been treated in a recent encounter with a New York City police officer. Our prediction, that respondents would report their treatment by a police officer as most fair when there was a match between how respectfully they were treated and how respectfully they deserved to be treated, was again supported.

Overall, these studies combine to make a strong case that people judge the relationship between the manner of their treatment and the fairness of their treatment as a function of the fit between the treatment they deserved and the treatment they received. Furthermore, the deservingness reasoning leads to some predictions that do not readily follow from the group value theory. For example, it permits the prediction that there are circumstances under which disrespectful treatment might be viewed as more fair than respectful treatment, and this finding was obtained by Heuer et al. (1999, Study 1). Similarly, group value theorists (Tyler & Smith, 1999; Tyler, 2001) have asserted that respect is important because of its implications for group membership and group status, and that respect will be particularly important for group members who are insecure about their status (De Cremer & Tyler, 2005b; De Cremer, 2002). However, Diekmann, Sondak, and Barsness (2007) predicted that beliefs about deservingness would lead high-status group members, who are presumably relatively secure regarding their group membership and group status, to care more about fair treatment than low-status members; a prediction that was supported in each of their three organizational field studies (see also, Chen, Brockner, & Greenberg, 2003).

Deservingness Judgments in a Workplace Disability Context

The research reviewed above suggests that beliefs about deservingness can lead to judgments that people (including oneself) associated with undesirable behaviors or undesirable personal attributes are less deserving of the kinds of treatment generally considered fair: respectful and unbiased treatment, decision makers’ concern for their welfare, the opportunity to communicate their views to decision makers, accurate procedures, and so on. In this section I consider the potential implications of such views about deservingness for people’s beliefs about the fair treatment of disabled individuals in the work place. I will address three questions: (1) Is there reason to think that non-disabled individuals, such as coworkers, or superiors, or legal decision makers, such as judges or lawyers, might think disabled individuals are less deserving than non-disabled individuals? (2) Is there reason to think that such judgments about deservingness actually occur in settings involving disabled workers and potential claims for accommodations? (3) Is there reason to think that disabled workers might think themselves less deserving than their non-disabled coworkers?

There are various suggestions from social psychological theory and research that non-disabled individuals will perceive disabled individuals as less deserving, so that they might judge it fair to grant them fewer procedural considerations than would be granted to others. For example, Lerner’s (Lerner & Simmons, 1966; Lerner, 1980) Just World theory (JWT) postulated a basic human need to believe that the world is a fair place where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. In his own early research on this question, Lerner (1965) showed that when research participants were led to believe that only one of two individuals whom they knew to have performed similarly on an assigned task could be paid, they subsequently rated the paid worker as having contributed more to the joint effort. This effect has also been shown to have a negative impact on impressions of the victims of random negative events. For example, Lerner and Simmons (1966) showed that observers who witnessed a research participant suffer through a series of shocks subsequently rated this victim as a less attractive and less desirable potential acquaintance.

Since these early studies, evidence has accumulated to support the Just World theory’s claim that people respond to the threat of random misfortunes by implementing strategies to protect their just world belief, or as Lerner (1980) says, their “fundamental delusion.” Among the strategies enlisted is the derogation of a victim’s personal attributes or behaviors (Karuza & Carey, 1984; Lerner & Miller, 1978) so they can be seen as deserving of their negative fate (Hafer & Begue, 2005). According to Just World theory, the successful implementation of this strategy enables people to continue to interact with their environment as if it were an orderly and stable one where people get what they deserve (Hafer, 2002). Of course, such derogation of people’s behaviors or their personal attributes are precisely the kinds of judgments that would be expected to produce lowered estimates of deservingness in subsequent social interactions as well.

Alternatively, Louis, Duck, Terry, Schuller, & LaLonde (2007) drew on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), to predict that members of advantaged groups who perceived a threat to their group’s status from a lower-status group (a likely perception among workers who view accommodations for the disabled as a threat to their own resources) would be more supportive of efforts to exclude the outsiders from the advantaged group. Their survey of Australians about their attitudes and behavioral intentions toward asylum seekers supported this prediction. Furthermore, their study found that the effect of perceived threat on exclusion was mediated by fairness judgments: group threat lead members of advantaged groups to think it was procedurally fair to engage in the exclusionary treatment of outsiders, and the procedural fairness beliefs, in turn, led to support for the exclusion of the asylum seekers. Although not explicitly tested in this study, this fairness effect is consistent with a process by which the members of the advantaged group judged the members of the disadvantaged one as less deserving of fair treatment.

Still other theorists have proposed that individuals are motivated to justify existing inequalities between groups. According to social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), individuals are motivated to justify the dominance of their high-status groups over lower status ones (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). Furthermore, system justification theory (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) asserts that members of both advantaged and disadvantaged groups adjust their views so as to rationalize existing inequalities, a claim that has also been advanced by social dominance theorists (Sidanius, Levin, Federico, & Pratto, 2001). Each of these theories is consistent with the claim that various motives (whether a motive to believe the world is a fair place, or that one’s own group is superior to others, or that group inequality is justified) are capable of initiating psychological processes that might culminate in a judgment that those who have less deserve to have less.

Is there any reason to think that such judgments about deservingness actually occur in settings involving disabled workers who might be seeking accommodations? In addition to the early experimental evidence of the derogation of innocent victims (see Lerner & Miller, 1978, for a review), research has linked just world beliefs to reactions to people who have been the victims of a wide variety of negative outcomes, including cancer (Furnham & Procter, 1992; Maes, 1994), AIDS (Correia & Vala, 2003), and other illnesses (Clyman, Roth, Sniderman, & Charrier, 1980; Hafer, 2000). More to the point, correlational evidence from a survey of British adults revealed a negative relationship between the belief in a just world and comfort with the thought of interacting with individuals with disabilities (Furnham, 2005). Such findings are consistent with the notion that disabled individuals might pose a threat to the just world beliefs of non-disabled individuals, which, in turn, might be sufficient to engage defensive mechanisms culminating in derogation and potentially lowered beliefs that disabled individuals deserve accommodations.

Drawing from social psychological research more broadly, Colella (2001) points to research showing that observers react more negatively to persons whose disabilities are believed to be self-caused, such as those resulting from an accident involving a degree of negligence (Bordieri & Drehmer, 1987; Bordieri, Drehmer, & Comninel, 1988; Weiner, 1979; Weiner, Perry, & Magnusson, 1988) and she predicts that when disabilities are ones that are not obviously visible (such as back-pain or depression) or are perceived as self-caused (such as ones resulting from negligence), coworkers will perceive accommodations, either distributive (Colella, 2001) or procedural (Colella et al., 2004) as less fair. Colella’s hypothesis – that observers’ judgments regarding the fairness of accommodations are shaped by their beliefs about the recipient’s responsibility for his disability – is consistent with the role of responsibility reported for observers’ distributive fairness judgments (e.g., Feather, 2008) and procedural justice judgments (Heuer et al., 1999) in work summarized above.

Furthermore, whereas the social psychological research on justice implies that beliefs about deservingness are relevant to the issue of accommodating disability concerns in workplace contexts, other scholars point to more direct indicators of its effects. In 1890 Congress passed the Disability Pension Act (a precursor to the ADA), which considerably expanded the number of veterans eligible for illness or disability pensions. Blanck (2001) reports that after the passage of this Act, the number of pensioners more than tripled, a result that quickly lead to criticism that undeserving individuals were exaggerating their disabilities, and the individuals most likely to be targeted by such criticism were those whose disabilities were poorly understood or not obviously visible, such as psychological impairments.

Today, more than 100 years later, similar notions of deservingness continue to exert a pervasive effect on disability judgments (Anderson, 2000). Noting that the ADA is unique among civil rights statutes in that the protected class must be determined on a case-by-case basis, Anderson argues that the statutory language guiding the courts as they issue decisions about eligibility has increased the opportunity for value judgments about who deserves protection (e.g., the blind and the deaf) and who does not (e.g., persons with back or psychological impairments). As a telling example, Anderson points to the Casey Martin–PGA golf cart case. Casey Martin was a professional golfer who had a congenital circulatory disorder that made it difficult for him to walk. When the PGA denied his request to use a golf cart, he sued, claiming that the ADA’s protections extended to his right to accommodation in a professional sport (in 2001 the Supreme Court agreed with him). Anderson (2000) reports that one legal scholar characterized Martin’s case as “a ‘trivial cause’ that diverted attention from individuals with ‘genuine’ disabilities who have been losing their cases under inappropriately narrow interpretations of the term ‘disability’” (p. 2).

Finally, is there any reason to think that the processes leading to judgments that the disabled are less deserving than their non-disabled coworkers might affect beliefs among disabled individuals concerning their own deservingness? In our own work, in both laboratory (Heuer et al., 1999) and field settings (Sunshine & Heuer, 2002), we showed that people judged the treatment of others, as well of themselves, to be fairer when there was a match between their inputs (positive or negative behaviors or attributes) and their more or less respectful treatment. Furthermore, just world beliefs have also been shown to lower people’s judgments of their own deservingness (Hafer & Olson, 1989), and, as mentioned above, system justification theorists claim that those in disadvantaged positions (such as disabled individuals) might engage in even greater justification of existing status hierarchies (Jost, 2001; Jost et al., 2004).

Decision Makers Versus Decision Recipients: Role as a Moderator of Procedural Fairness Concerns

The “fair process” effect is a highly reliable one, and by most indications it generalizes well across settings (e.g., legal, political, organizational, educational), populations (the effect appears to be stable across cultures, gender, ethnic groups), and research methods (e.g., laboratory experiments, field experiments, correlational surveys). Still, as the research on procedural justice has proliferated, there’s been increasing interest in identifying variables that are capable of moderating the fair process effect. So for example, Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996, 2005) have consistently shown that the fair process effect is less pronounced when outcomes are favorable than when outcomes are unfavorable. In another line of work Linda Skitka and colleagues (Skitka & Houston, 2001; Skitka, 2002; Skitka, Bauman, & Mullen, 2008) have shown that the fair process effect is considerably diminished when people perceive that the outcomes at stake are ones that pose a threat to their core moral values. In one early test of the moral mandate hypothesis Skitka surveyed US residents about the dispute concerning whether Elián Gonzalez, the 5-year-old Cuban boy who survived when his mother perished in her attempt to immigrate from Cuba to the United States, should remain in Florida with relatives, or be returned to Cuba to live with his father. This study revealed that the respondents’ satisfaction with the resolution of this dispute as well as their judgments of the fairness of the government’s procedures in this case were better predicted by the fit between their moral mandates and the outcome of this case than by their assessments of the procedures employed by the US government.

In our own work (Heuer, Penrod, & Kattan, 2007) we have explored another potential moderator of procedural justice effects that until recently has received little attention. The procedural justice research has been conducted overwhelmingly among individuals who were the targets of those procedures, or the subordinates in authority – subordinate encounters. Therefore, rather little is known about whether authorities, or decision makers, exhibit the same fair process effect that has been repeatedly observed among decision recipients. Our investigation of this question began with the observation that Supreme Court justices have described their own decision-making in a number of fourth amendment cases (ones in which plaintiffs’ challenge the reasonableness of a search or seizure) as focusing primarily on search outcomes, such as the harm to the target of the search versus the benefit to the state, rather than search procedures. The Court’s cost-benefit analysis, particularly when applied to an evaluation of a legal procedure, poses a challenge to several decades of research and theory showing procedural concerns such as respect and neutrality to be an important determinant (often as important or more important than distributed fairness or absolute outcomes) of satisfaction with both procedures and decisions.

In two closely related studies, we sent a summary of a hypothetical case to a sample of state appellate court judges (Study 1) and circuit court judges (Study 2). The materials described a hypothetical case in which an airline passenger was stopped for questioning based upon the results of a technology called voice stress analysis. The search culminated in the passenger’s arrest, and ultimate conviction. The case described the defendant’s appeal of his conviction on the argument that the search leading to his arrest constituted a violation of his fourth amendment rights. Because the defendant’s appeal challenged the search procedure employed prior to his arrest, the judge’s decision in this case amounted to a procedural evaluation.

Each judge received one of four versions of the case summary; the versions varied according to the description of the search procedure employed by the police prior to the passenger’s arrest, and according to the description of the search outcome. A test of the procedural fairness prediction was created by varying the description of the police search as one that was conducted respectfully (e.g. the police were polite and permitted the passenger an opportunity to explain his side of the story) or disrespectfully (the police were rude and hostile, and denied the passenger an opportunity to explain his side of the story). A test of the cost-benefit prediction was created by varying the description of the outcome of the police search as one that produced a high (the search of the passenger’s luggage revealed a.45 caliber pistol) or low societal benefit (the search of the passenger’s luggage revealed one marijuana cigarette in Study 1, or several stolen credit cards in Study 2). After reading the case summary, the judges completed a questionnaire that included questions about the fairness of the search procedure, the fairness of the search outcome, the individual and societal costs and benefits of the search, and their likely decision in this case.

Several findings of these two studies are noteworthy. First, of the manipulated variables of the search procedure and the search outcome, the outcome variable was the only one to significantly influence the judges’ decisions. Additional analyses revealed that the outcome manipulation affected the judges’ decision by way of influencing their fairness assessments. Critically, additional analyses revealed that between the measured variables of outcome fairness and procedural fairness, only outcome fairness contributed significantly to the judges’ decisions. Overall, while these analyses are supportive of the view that fairness concerns were important to the judges as they considered this case, they revealed that the judges’ evaluations were more heavily influenced by outcome fairness than procedural fairness. Finally, both of these fairness judgments were largely determined by cost-benefit concerns similar to those described by the Supreme Court justices themselves.

While these studies pose a challenge to the generalizability of a body of research, neither of them included a manipulation of the participant’s role as a decision maker or decision recipient. Therefore, two additional studies were conducted. Study 3 employed a vignette that posed a similar problem to the one described to the judges, but adapted to a setting that would be more familiar to this study’s undergraduate participants (a student was appealing a penalty imposed by the College after a search of her room uncovered a more or less serious violation of campus housing regulations). Like Studies 1 and 2, this one also varied the search procedure to be one that was enacted in a more or less respectful manner. Unlike Studies 1 and 2, this study also varied the perspective adopted by the participants as they read the description of the search, so that one group of participants imagined themselves as the authority who conducted the search, while another group imagined themselves as the student whose room was searched. Overall the findings of this study were consistent with those obtained among actual judges: authorities’ decisions were influenced by outcomes, but not by procedures. In addition, this study added the critical experimental finding that the concern with procedures versus outcomes was moderated by the manipulated variable of one’s perspective when considering this case: among those who imagined themselves as the student whose room was searched, procedural fairness was an important determinant of their satisfaction with the outcome of this case; however among those who imagined themselves in the role of the authority as they read this case, the search outcome influenced their decisions, but procedural fairness did not.

A final study testing this effect was conducted in a field setting. In this study, we approached restaurant managers and restaurant employees in various restaurants throughout New York City and asked them to read a fictitious newspaper story describing a procedure being proposed by the City Health Department to curb the threat of a hepatitis outbreak in New York restaurants. Like our previous studies, this one included a manipulation of the seriousness of the threat, and the procedure being proposed to minimize it. Because the group value theory suggests that within-group standing can be communicated by dignity, as well as by respect and politeness (Tyler, 1989, 1994), the procedure manipulation in this study varied the dignity of the procedure proposed to curb the threat: high-dignity condition participants were told that employees would be required to sign a contract agreeing to wash their hands after a visit to the restroom; low-dignity employees were told that a designated employee must observe all employees wash their hands after a visit to the restroom. In order to manipulate threat, we varied what participants were told about a hepatitis outbreak: high-threat participants were told that hepatitis was easily transmitted, that its symptoms included nausea and jaundice, and that the likelihood of highly damaging civil lawsuits resulting from its outbreak was high; low-threat participants were told that hepatitis was difficult to transmit, that its symptoms were mild ones such as a headache or scratchy throat, and that the likelihood of civil lawsuits was very low.

After reading the news article, all participants indicated their approval of the procedures being proposed by the Health Department. Overall this study replicated our previous findings: the manipulation of the threat of a hepatitis outbreak exerted a greater effect on approval of the proposed procedure among restaurant managers than among restaurant employees, and procedural concerns exerted a greater effect on approval among employees than among managers.

In sum, these studies are strongly suggestive of an authority – subordinate distinction concerning the importance of procedural fairness for procedural evaluations: relative to decision recipients, decision-makers’ judgments of procedural fairness and procedural satisfaction are more influenced by cost-benefit criteria and less influenced by the procedural criteria typically linked to fairness by procedural justice theories. Below I speculate on some potential implications of this finding for thinking about the social dynamics of providing appropriate and legal accommodation for the disabled in work settings.

Role Effects in a Workplace Disability Context

The research on decision makers and decision recipients suggests that employers who are confronted with evidence of discrimination in the workplace, or who are responding to requests for accommodations from disabled individuals, might be less concerned with the procedural fairness of their response than are the individuals who are seeking accommodation. For example, an employer confronted with evidence that its organization’s work environment is hostile toward accommodating the needs of disabled individuals might interpret this as an argument against accommodation because she views the hostility and its consequences as a physical cost to be exacted on the organization if accommodations are provided. In the employer’s view, then, denying the accommodation might seem the fair and appropriate response. Furthermore the employer might expect her cost-based fairness analysis to be shared by her employees. However, the research consistently suggests that the employees – those who are seeking accommodation and their coworkers – will be highly attentive to the procedural element of the encounter. Paradoxically then, the employers’ best efforts to respond fairly might lead to alienation among employees, who perceive the employers’ response as disrespectful, undignified, or as a violation of the employees’ rights, and hence, unfair.

Although there appears to be little research that addresses this tension in settings involving disability discrimination, research in organizational settings is suggestive of a decision maker–decision recipient distinction similar to the one revealed in the studies described above. For example, Lissak and Sheppard (1983) interviewed employees about disputes at work and the procedures that were used to respond to them. Half of those interviewed were managers and half were non-managers. This study found fairness to be a top priority among the non-managers, but managers rated fairness as less important than getting at the facts, resolving the dispute, and reducing the likelihood of future conflicts. Similarly, Tyler and Griffin (1991) surveyed managers and found that procedural and distributive fairness mattered when the goal was to enhance favorable employee relations, but that neither type of fairness was relevant when the goal was increased productivity. Finally, studies by Field and House (1990) and Heilman, Hornstein, Cage, and Herschlag (1984) suggest that subordinates are more concerned than authorities with opportunities for participation in conflict resolution procedures.

Research on the Symbolic Consequences of Respect: In-Group Versus Out-Group Encounters

Recently in New York, a group of deaf actors assembled to protest the casting of a Broadway production of The Miracle Worker. Of concern to the protesting actors was the fact that the role of a deaf character was being played by a hearing actor. According to one of the protesters, it was not okay to cast the role of Helen Keller “without seriously considering an actress from our community” (Healy, 2009, emphasis added). While the play’s producer defended the casting as the only way to make money for the production’s investors, the protester asserted that “There are other, larger human and artistic issues at stake here.” Two aspects of this protest are relevant to the research I will describe here. First, these “human” issues seem less likely to refer to any particular actor’s gainful employment than to more symbolic concerns such as recognition and respect; thus the protest seems to reflect precisely the sort of procedural concerns discussed throughout this chapter. Second, the concern with respect being articulated here seems inconsistent with the nature of respect as it is characterized by the group value theory. Rather than expressing a concern about any individual’s standing within their own highly valued group, the protesters seem concerned with the extent to which one group (e.g., Broadway producers) is granting their own group (deaf actors) the recognition and respect it deserves. This concern with intergroup respect (as opposed to intragroup respect) is the topic of the final line of research to be described.

This work takes its start from a simple test of a central claim of the group value theory, a fundamentally symbolic, or relational theory, which proposes that people evaluate the manner of their treatment according to what it implies about their standing within their valued social groups, a claim that has been well supported (De Cremer & Blader, 2006; De Cremer & Tyler, 2005a). Importantly, this theory about the symbolic value of voice, or respectful treatment, implies a moderation hypothesis that could not have been derived from Thibaut and Walker’s control theory: because of its significance as a communication about once standing within one’s valued groups, the effect of respect should be greater in encounters with ingroup members than in encounters with outgroup members (De Cremer & Tyler, 2005a; Huo, Smith, Tyler, & Lind, 1996; Tyler & Lind, 1990; Tyler, Lind, Ohbuchi, Sugawara, & Huo, 1998). Furthermore, according to the group value theory, the influence of respect on procedural fairness should be mediated by feelings of ingroup standing.

Our own research on this question began with multiple studies conducted to test the moderation hypothesis that respect would matter more for ingroup than for outgroup encounters (Heuer & Stroessner, 2009). To our surprise, in three quasi-experimental field studies and one laboratory experiment (each of which included a substantial manipulation of respect versus disrespect, from either a member of a valued ingroup or a member of an outgroup), we did not obtain the predicted group membership by respect interaction. Rather, across all of the studies, the effect of respect on judgments of procedural fairness was consistently high: when respect was present, procedures were judged to be more fair – an effect that was virtually identical regardless of the group membership of the source. In order to provide the strongest possible test of this moderation hypothesis, we conducted a meta-analysis of these four studies, thus pooling them to permit the most powerful test of the hypothesized group membership by respectful treatment interaction. This analysis, which included more than 500 respondents, revealed a trivially small and non-significant effect of the interaction (mean effect size across the four studies, z r = 0.007, which, transformed to a correlation effect size of r = 0.007). Again, the effect of respect on fairness was positive, and strong, but this effect was unqualified by whether the respectful treatment came from an ingroup or an outgroup member.

Based upon this combination of a consistent positive impact of respect on procedural fairness and the failure to obtain evidence that this effect is moderated by group membership, we proposed that procedural justice is multiply determined. Respectful treatment communicates justice-relevant information in intergroup encounters just as it has been so clearly shown to do in intra-group encounters. However, just as respect from ingroup members can communicate information about our standing within our valued groups, we proposed that it can also communicate information about whether outgroup members think highly of our valued groups. If respectful or disrespectful treatment is as capable of communicating about intergroup as about intragroup standing, this would explain our consistent finding of a respect–fairness relationship both between, and within groups.

Our proposal, that respectful treatment will be interpreted as a judgment about the status of valued groups fits comfortably with social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Tajfel, 1982), which asserts that people derive identity information from their attachment to social groups, and that they take pride in the standing of their own group relative to others. It is also consistent with another line of work concerning the causes of inequality or cruelty directed at groups, including ones based on gender or ethnicity. One interpretation of the cruelty exhibited by the US’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II (Nagata, 1990, 1993), for example, is that some Americans viewed this population as “subhuman” (Opotow, 1993, 1995, 2007) and thus outside the scope of just treatment. In other words, for these groups, justice is irrelevant. To the contrary, Hafer and Olson (2003) assert that such treatment can follow directly from a motive for justice: Victims are sometimes seen as deserving of negative treatment (Feather, 1992, 2002; Heuer et al., 1999; Sunshine & Heuer, 2002). We agree that intergroup relations are critical (rather than irrelevant) for justice judgments, and we proposed that one’s treatment by a member of an outgroup is likely to be interpreted as a message about that person’s evaluation of the standing of one’s group vis-à-vis the relevant outgroup.

Our theorizing about the influence of respect on procedural fairness – that it can stem from the interpretation of respectful treatment as either a message about either one’s status within one’s valued group, or one’s group’s status vis-à-vis other groups, led to several hypotheses, that we tested in two laboratory experiments and one quasi-experimental field study. First, we predicted that a communication from an outgroup member about the value of one’s group would influence fairness judgments just as would a communication from an ingroup member about one’s standing within one’s valued group. Second, we predicted that respectful or disrespectful treatment would impact fairness because of its impact on either of these two messages – the intragroup standing message or the intergroup standing message.

Across three studies both of these predictions were strongly supported (Heuer & Stroessner, 2009). So, for example, in the field study, we surveyed over 800 New York City police officers about a recent on-duty encounter. The officers were randomly assigned to recall either an ingroup encounter (one with another member of the NYPD), or an outgroup encounter (with a civilian). The survey asked multiple questions concerning how respectfully the officer had been treated in the encounter, as well as questions about the officer’s judgment of the other person’s view of (a) the NYPD as a group, and (b) the officer’s status within the NYPD. Several findings are relevant to our predictions. First, we found that respectful treatment favorably influenced the officers’ report that they had been treated fairly (this is consistent with either the group value theory’s intra-group standing hypothesis, or our own inter-group hypothesis). Second, we found that, consistent with our multi-value hypothesis, both of the two value judgments – that the other person in the encounter thought highly of the NYPD, and that the other person thought highly of the officer’s standing within the NYPD – had a favorable impact on procedural fairness. Finally, we found that the effect of respectful treatment on fairness was mediated by both of these two value judgments. We interpret these findings as strong support for our theorizing about the role of respect as a message about valued groups, as well as support for the group value theory’s assertions about the role of respect as a message about one’s standing within one’s valued group.

Below, we speculate on the potential impact of our findings about intergroup respect, as well as about the impact of intergroup respect for thinking about some of the psychological dynamics that influence the manner in which policy makers or employers respond to requests for appropriate accommodations, as well as how they influence the attitudes and behaviors of individuals with disabilities toward their rights, as well as toward their employers.

Ingroup Versus Outgroup Respect in a Disability Context

The group value model of procedural justice is clear about the prediction that respectful treatment, unbiased decision making, and trustworthy authorities, are important fairness considerations because of what they imply to the treatment recipient regarding their standing within a valued social group. Group value researchers have also asserted that respect will have less influence in encounters with outgroup members (De Cremer & Tyler, 2005a; Huo et al., 1996; Tyler & Lind, 1990; Tyler et al., 1998). Tyler & Smith (1999) state this explicitly: “If the group is not important to one’s sense of identity, the relational implications of treatment should not matter” (p. 229).

While an assertion about the relative magnitude of the effects of intergroup versus intragroup respect on fairness judgments seems premature until this question is examined more extensively, the Heuer and Stroessner findings suggest a way in which encounters with outgroup members – even with outgroup members whose groups are not important to one’s sense of identity – can have important consequences for beliefs about fair treatment. Tyler’s (1989) classic demonstration of the intragroup implications of respectful treatment (summarized above) showed that Chicagoan’s surveyed about a recent encounter with a cop judged the cop’s treatment as more or less fair as a function of how politely and respectfully they were treated. While this finding is consistent with the group value prediction that respectful treatment influenced fairness because of its implications for the cop’s view of the civilian’s standing in a shared, identity-relevant group (e.g., Chicagoans), it does not preclude the possibility that a message other than one about within group standing was communicated, and that this other, intergroup message also influenced the civilians’ fairness judgment. Consider an encounter between a young black male and a middle-aged white cop. It seems plausible that the civilian in this encounter would respond to the cop’s more or less respectful treatment partly according to his sense of what the cop’s treatment implied about a social group that was important to his own social identity – but that could not include the cop (e.g., young black males, black males, or blacks in general). Such intergroup identities might engage similar intergroup dynamics in encounters between individuals who represent virtually any two identity-based groups, including ones between disabled individuals and their coworkers or their employers.

For our findings on intergroup respect to have any bearing on such workplace encounters would require that disabled individuals develop a social identity as a member of a common group. According to Longmore (1985) this identity formation is a likely consequence of the movement for disability civil rights, and the effort to resist stigmatization and create an alternative, positive identity – factors consistent with ones identified by social psychological research as facilitating the formation of social identities (e.g., Ellemers, De Gilder, & Haslam, 2004).

Once this is in place, several lines of work are consistent with the suggestion that when members of disadvantaged groups interpret their disadvantage as linked to their group membership, and they see their attempts at upward mobility blocked, intergroup comparisons become more likely, with the attendant consequence that judgments of unfairness are more likely, as is collective action to restore fairness (Dube & Guimond, 1986; Major, 1994; Taylor & McKirnan, 1984; Winnifred & Taylor, 1999; Wright, Taylor, & Moghaddam, 1990).

Overall, then, while these intergroup identity processes have not been examined in workplace settings involving disability rights, they seem a likely result of the situation that some individuals with disabilities will find themselves in. If so, injustice reactions to intergroup disrespect such as those reported above might play a role in these individuals’ attitudinal and behavioral responses. In fact, these reactions might aggravate even further the tendencies toward dissatisfaction and collective action that are initiated once people begin to see obstacles to their advancement as linked to group relations and group boundaries.

Summary

I began this chapter with the informal observation that the scholarly work concerning the Americans with Disabilities Act devotes considerable attention to questions concerning fair outcomes for individuals with disabilities (e.g., in a workplace setting, outcomes such as hiring, promotion, compensation, and accommodation), but relatively little attention to questions concerning their fair treatment, despite the fact that the ADA is a response to discrimination on the basis of disability – a confounding of unfair outcomes resulting from unfair (e.g., biased, disrespectful, exclusionary) procedures, both formal and informal, played out in interpersonal, organizational, legal, or political contexts. Furthermore, the ADA imposes explicit requirements concerning the procedures employed by managers or organizations for responding to accommodation requests (Colella et al., 2004).

In light of these observations, it is an easy argument that greater attention to the procedural justice literature is in order, and I offered a brief summary of that research, concluding that it has clearly established the importance of fair procedures for enhancing people’s satisfaction with their outcomes, with decision makers, and with the institutions that those decision makers represent. Furthermore, I advanced the claim that this research offers a potentially rich source of insight to the dynamics of interactions between individuals with disabilities and their employers (or coworkers), particularly when requests for accommodations present conflicts over the allocation of limited resources.

Finally I summarized three lines of research pointing to factors that might moderate the manner in which these procedural justice effects occur. First, I described research on the role of deservingness for procedural fairness judgments. This work showed that, while respect is clearly an important procedural fairness criterion, its influence on procedural fairness is moderated by people’s judgments of the extent to which the targets of treatment are seen as deserving of respectful treatment. I concluded by claiming that these deservingness judgments might influence that way that coworkers or supervisors, and even individuals with disabilities, think about the importance of treating disabled individuals with respect. Second, I summarized work showing that decision makers and decision recipients think differently about the importance of procedural fairness versus outcomes in allocation contexts, such as ones regarding accommodation requests: decision recipients pay more attention to the manner of their treatment than do the authorities, who pay more attention to the outcomes being allocated. This work suggests a potential paradox as authorities, perhaps doing their best to assure fair or beneficial outcomes, pay insufficient attention to the procedural criteria that the decision recipients are particularly sensitive to. I concluded this section by arguing that this paradox might inflate workplace tensions, if supervisors, trying to act fairly, focus on fair outcomes, while disabled individuals and their coworkers focus on the fairness of the supervisor’s treatment of disabled employees. Finally, I described work showing that respectful treatment influences fairness and satisfaction in part because of the symbolic message it communicates about what the sources of that treatment think about the identity-relevant social groups of the targets of that treatment (e.g., what does this hiring decision say about me, and others like me?). I argued that such considerations have the potential to shape the way individuals with disabilities respond to their treatment by their employers.

Overall, my claims concerning the generalizability of this procedural justice research to workplace contexts involving individuals with disabilities is largely speculative, since very little of this research has been conducted in this context. Such context-specific research offers the potential of further insights concerning the role of procedural justice for thinking about the ADA and the workplace, while also offering the potential for further advances in our theorizing about procedural justice.