The Routledge Companion to Trust

10Trust and Fairness

E. Allan Lind

Introduction

We have known for a long time that trust is linked to perceptions of fairness, especially perceptions of procedural fairness. The very first study of procedural justice (Walker, LaTour, Lind, & Thibaut, 1974) showed that disputants in a laboratory conflict resolution process trusted the judge more when fair procedures were used – specifically, when the procedure allowed the disputants themselves more control over the presentation of evidence. In another early study, Tyler, Rasinski, and McGraw (1985) found citizen perceptions of procedural fairness to be an exceptionally strong predictor of overall trust in government. In the years since, Tyler and others have demonstrated repeatedly the close ...