Toward understanding why fairness matters: The influence of mortality salience on reactions to procedural fairness

This article focuses on the question of why fairness matters to people. On the basis of fairness heuristic theory, the authors argue that people espec ially need fairness when they are uncertain about things that are important to them. Following terror management theory, the authors focus on a basic kind of human uncertainty: fear of death. Integrating these two theoretical frameworks, it is proposed that thinking about their mortality should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of three experimen ts support the authors' line of reasoning: Asking participants to think abo ut their mortality led to stronger fair process effects (positive effects o f perceived procedural fairness on subsequent reactions) than not asking th em to think about mortality. It is argued that these findings suggest that fairness especially matters to people when they are uncertain about fundame ntal aspects of human life such as human mortality.