Procedural Justice Research
Dr. William Gaeddert
william.gaeddert@plattsburgh.edu

I am developing a line of research regarding the psychology of justice. Three major concepts are studied in this area. Distributive justice refers to people's beliefs about the fairness of outcomes, procedural justice refers to perceptions of fairness in the procedures used in allocation of outcomes, and interactional justice refers to people's beliefs about the fairness with which they have been treated by authority figures.

Student coauthors and I have completed a number of projects in this area--abstracts are below. I welcome students' participation in my research projects, and encourage interested students to contact me about possibilities for taking Psy 302-Research Practicum or engaging in independent studies (e.g., Psy 499) in this area.

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Gaeddert, W., Mulroy, D., Seymour, J., Shah, T., Shankar, B., & Webster, J. (2009, May). Procedural Justice Effects on Students' Emotional and Withdrawal Behaviors. Poster presented at the Meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, San Francisco, CA

Procedural justice perspectives were used to assess the impact of fair and unfair treatment (Study 1) and fair and unfair course policies (Study 2) on students' emotional and withdrawal behaviors. Unfair treatment and policies were associated with greater stress and worry, but not with withdrawal behaviors among college students.
 

Gaeddert, W., Amell, A., DePaul, M., Bly, M., Wolcott, C. (2007, May). Procedural justice considerations affect students’ perceptions of course policies. Poster presented as the Meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC.

Procedural justice perspectives were used to identify characteristics of course policies students consider to be fair. Undergraduate students rated examples of exam makeup and attendance policies. Policies rated by students to be fair contained strong elements of accuracy, consistency and correctability. Policies rated by students to be unfair lacked correctability.

Students’ perceptions of the fairness of grading policies: Procedural Justice considerations.
Poster Presented at Showcase 06, Plattsburgh State
Amanda Amell, Marcy Depaul, Megan Bly, and Christopher Wolcott
(Faculty Sponsor: William Gaeddert)

 Six procedural justice criteria were applied to fairness evaluations of sample grading policies. Results indicated that grading policies that were high in correctibility were perceived as most fair.

Operationalizing procedural justice rules
Poster Presented at Showcase 05, Plattsburgh State
Omewha Beaton, Benjamin Brien, Patrick Crawford, Gregory Hewko, Fitz Joseph & Martin Ngo.
(Faculty Sponsor: Dr. William Gaeddert)

 Abstract: People’s perceptions of the fairness of formal rules (procedural justice perceptions) may be determined according to six rules suggested by Leventhal (1980). In order to test hypotheses regarding these rules, we first needed to operationalize them appropriately. To that end, we constructed a 42 item questionnaire. Data were collected from college students, and results and discussion will focus on item analyses designed to assess the adequacy of our operationalization.

 Fairness of course policies.
Poster Presented at Showcase '04, Plattsburgh State
Adam Wolf & Tiffany Bracy
(Faculty Sponsor: William Gaeddert)

Perceptions of justice were assessed using scenarios varying the consistency of treatment, appropriateness of questions, and outcome of a resident assistant selection procedure. The strong effects for these variables are consistent with past research and may be applied to the selection of resident assistants.