Justice and personality: Using integrative theories to derive moderators of justice eVects

Although organizational justice has been shown to have behavioral consequences, there remains a surprising amount of variation in how individuals react to fair and unfair treatment. The present study drew on three integrative theories in the justice literature— fairness heuristic theory, uncertainty management theory, and fairness theory—to identify personality traits that could explain such variation. From these theories, we identiWed trust propensity, risk aversion, and morality (rooted in circumplex models of personality) as potential moderators. A laboratory study provided some support for the prediction that the three traits moderate the eVects of procedural, interpersonal, and distributive justice on task performance and counterproductive behavior. The moderating eVects of the three traits explained more variance in the outcomes than moderators based in the justice literature (equity sensitivity, sensitivity to befallen injustice) or the Wve-factor model of personality. Taken together, the results suggest that the three integrative theories can inform the search for personality-based moderators of justice eVects. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.