Synergistic person × situation interaction in distributive justice judgment and allocation behaviour

Traditional models of distributive justice behaviour have focused predominantly on either person-specific or context-specific explanations. We suggest supplementing these models by including interaction effects between functionally equivalent situation and person factors. Two experiments were conducted to replicate results from a previous vignette experiment in which the effect of situational information that would justify an unequal distribution of burdens was lower for individuals with a positive attitude toward the equality principle than for individuals with a negative attitude toward this principle. The results of the present experiments are consistent with this finding. Again, situational information that would justify an unequal distribution of outcomes had a weaker effect for participants with a favourable attitude toward equality than for participants with an unfavourable attitude. Based on these results and results from other research domains, we concluded that the synergistic person × situation interaction is a general phenomenon that deserves more attention in theory and research. Several cognitive mechanisms, such as motivated perception, selective attention, and the availability of attitude-congruent situation schemas that may account for synergistic interactions in justice behaviour are discussed.