The Department of Psychology presents a colloquium
Speaker: Dr. Karl Aquino, University of British Columbia
Dr.
Aquino’s
research
is
devoted
to
understanding
the
moral
foundations
of
organizational
and
social
life.
His
current
work
explores
how
moral
identity
influences
morally-relevant
cognitions,
emotions
and
behavior.
Dr.
Aquino
also
investigates
how
people
cope
when
they
have
been
mistreated
by
others,
the
antecedents
and
consequences
of
workplace
victimization,
and
the
role
of
status,
power,
and
dominance
in
organizational
process.
Dr.
Aquino
received
his
Ph.D.
from
Northwestern
University,
and
is
currently
the
Richard
Poon
Professor
of
Organizations
and
Society
at
the
Sauder
School
of
Business
at
UBC.
Title
and
Abstract
Third
Party
Responses
to
Justice
Failure:
An
Identity-Based
Meaning
Maintenance
Model
This presentation will introduce a new model for thinking about how third parties evaluate and respond to justice failure, defined as events where a person who commits a moral violation and benefits from it goes unpunished. The model is based on the notion that justice failure can be experienced as a meaning threat. Building on principles from the Meaning Maintenance Model (Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006), we test the prediction that people who are exposed to information about a justice failure will experience this as a meaning threat which can lead to cognitive distress which they seek to alleviate. One way to do this is by affirming an alternative meaning framework. We extend the MMM by suggesting that the choice of framework is driven by an identity that is highly accessible within the current structure of the self. In a series of studies, we test the predictions of our model using moral identity as a source of identity-driven affirmation.
All are welcome