Individual and corporate dispute resolution: using procedural fairness as a decision heuristic.

Two studies examined how litigants' evaluations of the outcome and process of lawsuits affected their judgments about the fairness of procedures and their acceptance of awards from court-ordered arbitration. The studies tested predictions concerning the operation of a "fairness heuristic" - that procedural justice judgments mediate the effects of process impressions and outcome evaluations on the decision to accept or reject the directives of an authority. Participants in the studies were corporate and individual litigants in federal tort and contract actions that were subject to court-orde