Cojuharenco, I., Van Prooijen, J.-W., & Patient, D. (2011). The role of memory in judgments of organizational justice. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner, and D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.). Emerging Perspectives on Organizational Justice and Ethics (pp. 33-48).  Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Abstract:

We discuss the role of memory in judgments of organizational justice. Building on memory and cognition research, we suggest that self-relevance biases in justice judgments are partly due to differential availability in memory of information about past experiences. We predict that self-relevance biases are stronger in memory-based judgments than in judgments immediately following events. Consequently, the greater the extent to which others are central to self, the more likely it is that memory-based judgments of fairness take into account the experiences of others. We present research designs that can be used for the study of memory effects and report preliminary findings from 2 studies. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of considering the malleability of justice judgments as a function of memory biases over time.