In the aftermath of unfair events : understanding the differential effects of anxiety and anger

After decades of domination by social exchange theory and its focus on a manager-centered perspective, fairness scholars have recently issued numerous calls to shift attention toward understanding employees’ subjective “lived-through” experiences and in situ responses to unfair events. Using appraisal theories, we argue that focusing on the employee’s perspective highlights the importance of emotions in fairness experiences. Further, this emphasis creates opportunities for novel insights regarding the emotions that are likely to be relevant, the constructive responses that can emerge from unfairness, and the interplay between unfair events and entity fairness judgments. Using a daily diary study with event sampling, we highlight the importance of anger and anxiety in understanding how individuals experience and react to unfair events. Results indicated that anger elicited counterproductive work behaviors, whereas anxiety initiated problem prevention behaviors (i.e., a subdimension of proactive work behavi...