First Impressions of Manager Fairness: Set in Stone or Revision-Prone?

Abstract

Manager fairness matters to employees and has important work outcomes. The current research explored whether differences exist in the rate of revision (change) of first impressions of a manager’s interactional and procedural fairness/unfairness. After observing impression-inconsistent information, participants’ initial impressions of interactional fairness/unfairness were hypothesized to exhibit greater amounts of impression revision than impressions of procedural fairness/unfairness. A 2 (fairness type: interactional vs. procedural) x 2 (initial behaviour: fair vs. unfair) x 2 (time of rating: initial vs. revised) experimental design involving 165 participants was implemented. Results show that the rate of change in ratings of interactional fairness over time was significantly greater than the rate of change in ratings of procedural fairness in the unfair initial-impression condition, as predicted. This was not true for the fair initial-impression condition. Unexpectedly, first impressions of fairness in general did not exhibit more revision than unfair first impressions. Implications are discussed.