Ramona Bobocel

Professor

Fellow, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)

Fellow, Association of Psychological Science (APS)

Fellow, Canadian Psychological Association (CPA)

Recipient, Arts Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching (2022)

Recipient, Arts Faculty Outstanding Performance Award (2019, 2022)

Recipient, Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award (2002)

Research interests

My research program focuses on social justice and the study of fairness/justice in the workplace. Overall, my research aims to understand how unfairness affects employees, why unfairness persists in the workplace, and how to promote the fair treatment and well-being of employees. My goal is to ultimately create more effective and functional workplaces.

Select publications

† denotes student coauthors at the time of the research. These and other publications are available for download as PDFs on the Fairness at Work Lab webpage.

  • Bobocel, D. R., & Brockner, D. R. (2024). Application of justice theory to address social issues: Introduction to the special issue. Organizational Psychology Review, 14(2), 282-287.
  • Brockner, J., & Bobocel, D. R. (2024). How theory and research in organizational justice can help to address organizational and social issues. Organizational Psychology Review, 14(2), 288-306.
  • †Mu, F., Shen, W., & Bobocel, D. R., & †Barron, A. H. (2024). Investigating gendered reactions to manager mistreatment: Testing the presumed role of prescriptive stereotypes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 45(5), 720-740.
  • †Brienza, J. P., †Dorfman, A., & Bobocel, D. R. (2024). Mind the gap: Wise reasoning attenuates gender pay gap scepticism in men. European Journal of Social Psychology, 54(1), 237–250.
  • Bobocel, D. R. (2021). Current directions in organizational justice. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science: Special Issue on I/O Psychology in Canada, 2, 98-105.
  • †Holt, L., Bobocel, D. R., & †Chen, V. (2021). Delivering bad news fairly: Higher construal level promotes interactional justice enactment through perspective taking. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 42(6), 708-725.
  • †Carter, A., Bobocel, D. R., & Brockner, J. (2020). When to explain why or how it happened: Tailoring accounts to fit observers' construal level. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 26, 158-170. 
  • †Gevaux, N.S., Nilsen, E. S., Bobocel, D. R., & †Gault, S. F. (2020). Children’s reactions to inequality: Associations with empathy and parental teaching of just world beliefs. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 70, 101-189.
  • †Brienza, J. P., †Kung, F. Y. H., †Santos, H. C., Bobocel, D. R., & Grossmann, I. (2018). Wisdom, bias, and balance: Toward a process-sensitive measurement of wisdom-related cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115, 1093-1126.
  • †Brienza, J. P., & Bobocel, D. R. (2017). Employee age-alters the effects of justice on emotional exhaustion and organizational deviance. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article ID 479, 1-15.
  • Grossmann, I., †Brienza, J. P., & Bobocel, D. R. (2017). Wise deliberation sustains cooperation. Nature Human Behaviour, 1 (#0061), 1-6. Plus Supplementary Information, 1 (#0061), 1-20.
  • †Rizvi, S. & Bobocel, D. R. (2016). Promoting forgiveness through psychological distance. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 875-883.
  • Brockner, J., Wiesenfeld, B. M., Siegel, P. A., Bobocel, D. R., & †Liu, Z. (2015). Riding the fifth wave: Organizational justice as a dependent variable. Research in Organizational Behavior, 35, 103-121.
  • †Zdaniuk, A., & Bobocel, D. R. (2015). The role of charismatic leadership in promoting workplace forgiveness. Leadership Quarterly, 26, 863-877.
  • †Rizvi, S., & Bobocel, D. R. (2014). Using the concept of distance to broaden the horizons of organizational justice. In S. Gilliland, D. Steiner, & D. Skarlicki (Eds.), Research in social issues in management: Social dynamics of organizational justice (Vol. 8, pp. 37-59). Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
  • †Day, M. V., & Bobocel, D. R. (2013). The weight of a guilty conscience: Subjective body weight as an embodiment of guilt. PLoS ONE 8, 1-7: e69546. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069546.
  • †Zdaniuk, A., & Bobocel, D. R. (2013). The automatic activation of (un)fairness behavior in organizations. Human Resource and Management Review, Human Resource and Management Review, 23, 254-265.
  • Bobocel, D. R. (2013). Coping with unfair events constructively or destructively: The roles of overall justice and self-other orientation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98, 720-731.

Edited book

Bobocel, D. R., Kay, A. C., Zanna, M. P., & Olson, J. M. (Eds.) (2010). The psychology of justice and legitimacy: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 11). New York: Psychology Press.

Teaching interests

  • Psychological Measurement (Psychometrics)

  • Research Methods in I-O Psychology

  • Justice and Fairness in the Workplace

Professional memberships

  • Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
  • Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
  • Academy of Management  
  • International Society for Justice Research
  • Society for the Study of Social Issues
  • American Psychological Association
  • Canadian Psychological Association
  • Association for Psychological Science