Approach or Avoid? Exploring Overall Justice and the Differential Effects of Positive and Negative Emotions

As empirical research exploring the relationship between justice and emotion has accumulated, there have been key questions that have remained unanswered and theoretical inconsistencies that have emerged. In this article, the authors address several of these gaps, including whether overall justice relates to both positive and negative emotions and whether both sets of emotions mediate the relationship between overall justice and behavioral outcomes. They also reconcile theoretical inconsistencies related to the differential effects of positive and negative emotions on behavioral outcomes (i.e., performance, withdrawal, and helping). Across two field studies (Study 1 is a cross-sectional study with multirater data, N = 136; Study 2 is a longitudinal study, N = 451), positive emotions consistently mediated the relationship between overall justice and approach-related behaviors (i.e., performance and helping), whereas negative emotions consistently mediated the relationship between overall justice and avoidance-related behaviors (i.e., withdrawal). Mixed results were found for negative emotions and approach-related behaviors (i.e., performance and helping), which indicated the importance of considering context, time, and target of the behavior. The authors discuss the theoretical implications for the asymmetric and broaden-and-build theories of emotion as well as the importance of simultaneously examining both positive and negative emotions.