When unfair treatment leads to anger: The effects of other people's emotions and ambiguous unfair procedures

Abstract

The present research examines how emotions of a third party interacting with an authority who has treated him or her unfairly affect one's feelings of anger toward the authority as a function of the ambiguity of the unfair treatment. Across a scenario and a laboratory study, it was found that when participants did not receive voice and it was unclear whether this was the result of an authority's unfair intentions, participants were less angry when the third party expressed shame, rather than anger, toward the same enacting authority. A second laboratory study replicated this effect, but now by showing that one's feelings of anger (in the case of ambiguity) were lower when the other person expressed guilt, relative to anger. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.