We tested predictions from fairness heuristic theory that justice judgments are more sensitive to early fairness-relevant information than to later fairness-relevant information and that this primacy effect is more evident when group identification is higher.
As predicted, the timing of fairness-relevant experiences showed a primacy effect on fairness judgments and acceptance of authority in the high identification conditions and no evidence of such an effect in the low identification conditions.
In a manipulation of the timing of fairness-relevant experiences, the supervisor refused to consider explanations on the first, second, or third of three work trials (but did consider explanations on the other two trials) or the supervisor never refused to hear the explanations.
"I'm not sure fairness was relevant".
Here is where questions of justice or fairness are relevant.
Fairness preferences are relevant for redistribution outcomes only if fair-minded voters are pivotal.
To summarize, the studies mentioned above suggest that participants could have had their relevant fairness norm activated in this case, the norm that flipping a coin and conforming to its results is the morally right way to behave and even be motivated to some extent to do so.
This difference is important because while measures designed to support decisions should essentially be precise and theoretically correct, when a RAP measure is used as a performance target for an organizational unit, fairness is more relevant than precision, and the key issue is whether or not the target measure is able to produce desired behaviors.
As Lady Hale put it: "In the particular context of inter-generational fairness, it must be relevant that at an earlier stage in his life, a partner or employee may well have benefited from a rule which obliged his seniors to retire at a particular age".
It is true of course that Mr Scudamore may have had far less reason to think that his email chain could be passed on, and the issue of privacy (as well as the issue of how the emails were obtained) would be relevant to fairness.
