‘Fairness brings together psychological processes that matter in society’

When and why did you become interested in fairness?

When I was four-years-old, the two toughest guys in Kindergarden were blocking me and the other children from the sandbox, our preferred leisure activity during the breaks. Fortunately, my mother explained to me that I did not need to accept these kinds of unfairness at the playing ground. I pushed the two kids aside, after which the whole class played happily in the sandbox.

Years later, as a young student, I became interested in issues of fairness, in part because it helped to bring together my fascination for psychological processes that matter in society. A classic saying holds that 'fairness is where the individual meets the group'. That is, fairness matters because when you receive fair treatment this signals that you are valued by important people from your group, community, or society. And unfair treatment hurts so badly, because this communicates that your group, community, or society do not care that much about you. Thus, fairness and unfairness help to bridge individualistic notions in psychology with important social and societal issues.

What is the 'fair process effect'? 

The fair process effect is the positive effect that people show when they are treated in genuinely fair and just manners by societal authorities and other fellow human beings.

When people are treated in a polite manner and with respect, when they are able to voice their opinions, and when their opinions are seriously listened to by competent and professional authorities and others who matter, then it is likely that the fair process effect will occur. That is, when people thus feel fairly and justly treated, and hence feel to be members of their group, community, or society that matter, they are more likely to trust other people and are more willing to work together with them in cooperative ways and to do what is good for society at large. 

The fair process is a psychological phenomenon that can help to repair important instances of distrust, can temper hot and affective reactions within and between polarised groups, and may help to prevent suspicious ideas about conspiracies among elites or other authorities in this world. 

The fair process effect has been shown in many different domains of human life and is often surprisingly powerful in unleashing the prosocial quality of many individuals.  People are also very good at distinguishing sincere instances of fair and just treatment from not so sincere attempts to lure them into something that is not good for them and not so well-intended. This makes the fair process effect quite sturdy against potential abuse by persons with no-good intentions.

People have occasionally described me as 'allergic to injustice' – although sadly that's more in an interpersonal sense, rather than any kind of useful societal level! Why does it matter so much to me? 

Unfairness and injustice tend to signal that you do not really belong in your group, that important members of your group do not really value you as an important component of the group and do not really care about you. In contrast, being treated in genuinely fair and just manners indicate that you do matter as a full-fledged member of your group, community, working organisation, and/or society.

Treating each other in genuinely fair and just ways help to give people the respect that they deserve. This can strengthen the fabric of our communities and societies, something that it is really needed in our current state of the world, I think. Importantly, the fair process effect aims to do all this without 'pampering' people, but adressing both rights and duties of people in their group, community, and society.  

I think another cornerstone of my approach to life, and work, is that trust and respect have to be earned… they're not things that come with status and position. In your book, you seem to allude to that in saying that it's 'crucial we stay critical about social authority'. 

People especially tend to be oriented toward what authorities think of them and how they evaluate them. One reason for this is that authorities have power over people and can exclude them from important groups or grant them permission to become full-fledged members of those groups. 

There sometimes are good reasons to distrust societal authorities and institutions. After all, there are clear instances in which these agencies do not function properly. For example, there are toxic supervisors at work, malfunctioning judges, politicians committing terrible acts, and sometimes small group of elite decision makers pulling the strings of what is going on in certain societies. 

In these kinds of conditions, it is genuinely warranted to be aware of what is going on and to be at least moderately distrusting of the motives and actions of the persons and organisations under scrutiny. Thus, it is important, indeed crucial, to stay critical about the current state of social institutions, such as government, law, and science. It would be wrong to take any form of distrust in these and other institutions to be inaccurate and misguided.

The fair process effect may help to better understand these processes and give insight in how to perhaps counter them. In circumstances in which personal and informational uncertainty are high, people rely strongly on the perceived fairness of persons representing social institutions. This means that the individual civil servant, politician, judge, lawyer, and scientific researcher and teacher have important responsibilities: When they act in ways that are truly fair and honest, giving people opportunities to voice their opinions at appropriate times, carefully listening to these opinions, and thus treat people with respect as full-fledged citizens of their society this can increase trust in institutions and prevent unwarranted levels of distrust.

Social media is the enemy of fair process – discuss. 

I my book, I propose that the Internet often facilitates unwarranted distrust, growing polarisation between groups, and enhanced conspiracy thinking. Indeed, the Internet and so-called 'social media' can easily lead people to start adopting exaggerate levels of distrust in social institutions, letting go of self-control, inflaming emotional responses, and start sympathising with attempts to break the law in order to reach their goals. 

To be explicit, I do not think that the Internet is the direct source of all evil in this world. But I do believe that the Internet can function as an important moderator of the appraisal process that people use to make sense of what is going on. After all, on the Internet people can easily find information that helps them to assess what is happening, what is wrong about this, and what can and should be done about the injustices thus observed.

I further argue that the search for information on what is going on as well as existential fears should be less important motivations for people when they are treated fairly and justly by important people who convey to them that they matter and genuinely belong to their group and are full-fledged members of their society.

You make an interesting point that 'nonparticipation is not spread evenly across different groups in our world'. That's presumably a problem for any psychological study, but particularly in these areas around trust? 

Yes, I do think these issues are especially important when focusing on trust in power holders and social institutions that have power over us. 

In our work, we note that an important prerequisite for democratic societies to function smoothly is that citizens put trust in the law and as such trust the judges in their country. Therefore, whether various participants indeed trust the law is an important topic in many different studies. Our work notes that insights into trust in law among lower educated participants is relatively lacking. Recently published field experiments show that when completing questionnaires given to respondents by interviewers presenting themselves as coming from Law Schools, lower educated people indicated that they hold higher levels of trust in their country's judges than when the same interviewers presented themselves as coming from Regional Community Colleges. These findings indicate a robust phenomenon overlooked thus far in the literature, namely that trust in the judiciary can vary systematically among lower educated citizens as a function of interviewer affiliation. Our future research will focus on why precisely this is the case.

Can you give a societal example of where the fair process effect has led to positive interventions? 

In the Netherlands, our Ministry of the Interior ran a 'Fair Tracks' project. In Fair Tracks, public officials engage in interpersonal conversations with citizens upon receiving citizens' complaints or objections against government decisions. Public officials typically do so by phone and the purpose of the open communication that follows is to discuss together what the problem is and how the citizen's problem can best be handled. 

Why Fair Tracks works is because it activates perceived procedural justice. Furthermore, higher levels of perceived procedural justice were associated with more satisfaction about the outcome reached during the conversation with the public officials, more trust in mutual compliance with the outcome, more trust in government, and higher levels of conflict resolution.  

You're also realistic about what the fair process effect can't achieve, saying we '…cannot expect to mend what does not want to be mended'.

The fair process effect is no 'super glue' that on its own will fix all societal issues at hand, nor will it be able to glue together all parts of society that have been broken over several years. Thus, the fair process effect should not and cannot be used as a superficial measure to repair what is fundamentally wrong with the status quo and current societal arrangements and structures.

I'm interested in your hopes for this book, including influencing policy makers to make genuine change around fairness.

My book is not primarily a practical book, heavily oriented towards developing practical interventions. This would go beyond the scope of my current expertise. This noted, I do think that the various insights put forward in this book can be used by other people in future projects to develop, test, implement, and evaluate these kinds of interventions.

Furthermore, working not only at a Psychology Department, but also being affiliated at a Law School, I do think that we should not be shy and stay away from developing our normative standpoints. We all tend to have normative perspectives on issues such distrust, polarisation, and conspiracy thinking. I think it is important to make our assumptions explicit. And that is why I convey my reliance on respect and working hard for the proper and improved functioning of democracy and the rule of law. This also implies that we should be quite adamant in our analyses and attempts to counter instances where democratic principles are violated, the rule of law is considered to be irrelevant, or when social institutions do not function well enough to create meaningful democracy and a proper operation of the rule of law.

It seems that what you would like to see from people is a 'critical-constructive attitude towards what is happening in our world'. Can you give our readers a simple tip or two around how they might achieve this 'opening up'? 

The fair process effect may be one important social dynamic that may come into play when trying to combat conspiracy theories. 

For example, when your brother or sister, an aunt or another relative, a good friend or colleague, or someone else starts to belief strongly in a conspiracy theory, consider treating this person in fair and just manners, communicating to the person that you will still be there for that person and want to include the person in your group, community, and society. Perhaps 'agree that you disagree' on some important information underlying your and the other person's opinions, but still being there for that person as a family member, friend, colleague, or member of your community or society may work here. 

Fulfilling the social motivations of the person involved, and not excluding the person from your group, may work in the long run, for example when the person may start to have some doubts on some aspects of the conspiracy theory or those who defend the theory in very strong and perhaps aggressive manners. Being there for that person, and continuing to engage in procedurally fair behaviours toward the person, may be one way in which some people may open up at some point.