An affective-experiential perspective on reactions to fair and unfair events: individual differences in affect intensity moderated by experiential mindsets

Abstract

The present paper focuses on what psychological processes are driving people's reactions to fair and unfair events. Specifically, by extending on ideas that people's reactions to fair and unfair events consist at least partly of affect-related responses, and by adopting the assumption made in cognitive-experiential self-theory that the operation of experiential mindsets is intimately associated with affect-related experiences, we formulate the hypothesis that individual differences in affect intensity will moderate reactions to fair and unfair events. Introducing a novel manipulation of experiential and rationalistic mindsets to the research literature, the findings of two studies indeed reveal that especially for people in experiential (vs. rationalistic) mindsets negative affective reactions to fair and unfair events increase with high (vs. low) scores on affect intensity. Implications for the literature on social justice, experiential mindsets, and affect intensity are discussed.