Expected and experienced daily justice, emotions, and counterproductive work behavior

Understanding the root causes of harmful work behaviors is critically important for organizations. Within this context, justice perceptions (particularly interpersonal justice) represent a core area of interest. This literature generally assumes a straightforward, linear response to a given level of equitable treatment: Higher experienced justice yields beneficial outcomes, while lower justice leads to less favorable outcomes. Lost in this view is recognition that employees do not merely evaluate the treatment they receive in a vacuum but, rather, contrast their treatment with how they expect to be treated. That is, little if any consideration has been given to how justice expectations for a given day may impact the way employees subsequently react to the actual, experienced levels of daily treatment. This notable oversight oversimplifies the complexity of the justice phenomenon, consequently constraining theoretical advancements. To examine the interplay between expectations and experiences of interpersonal justice, we cast expected-experienced justice (in)congruence as a heretofore unexplored phenomenon that may exhibit differential counterproductive outcomes than would otherwise be expected by current theoretical models. Findings from our two-study design promise to push the justice literature in new theoretical directions while holding practical import for managers in organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).