Dispute Resolution, Psychology Of

Procedural Justice Literature

The psychological perspective on dispute resolution builds on the classic procedural justice research of psychologist John Thibaut (1917–1986) and attorney Laurens Walker. They published, in 1975, the first systematic experiments investigating the types of trial procedures that individuals favor for resolving disputes. Much of their research examined how individuals evaluate two particular procedural models: the adversarial and the inquisitorial. As defined by these researchers, the “adversarial” model, which essentially consists of formal adjudication as it exists in United States courtrooms, assigns responsibility for the presentation of evidence and arguments at trial to the disputants. In contrast, in the “inquisitorial” model, the development of the issues and evidence is controlled by the decision maker (for example, the judge) and his or her agents. By having U.S.-based participants evaluate dispute resolution options for a hypothetical legal dispute, Thibaut and Walker found a preference for the adversarial model, and argued on the basis of their findings that participants favored adversarial procedures because they found them more fair. Scholars subsequently replicated this preference for the adversarial model even in countries with more inquisitorial systems, such as France and West Germany, suggesting that U.S.-based participants did not favor the adversarial model simply because it reflected the system to which they were culturally accustomed.

Many subsequent studies explored the idea that individuals evaluate procedures primarily based on how fair they perceive them to be. This line of research, which typically involved participants evaluating hypothetical disputes, revealed that individuals use fairness standards to evaluate both the outcomes of procedures and the process that yielded those outcomes, and that they evaluate these two dimensions separately. Individuals who believe that the process they experienced was fair and the outcomes they received were favorable tend to report the greatest satisfaction with a given procedure, but those who receive unfavorable outcomes are also satisfied provided that they perceive the process as fair. Given that early justice research had focused on outcome fairness (distributive justice) on the assumption that outcome was the primary determinant of evaluations, the finding that fair treatment (procedural justice) contributed independently and significantly to overall assessments of procedures was surprising and highly important. Subsequent research found that disputants not only reported greater preference for procedures that they perceived as offering fairer treatment; they were also more likely to comply with the outcomes of such procedures.

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