Emotional reactions to perceived injustice: Anger, Envy or Sadness?

Organizational justice research has mainly focused on attitudinal, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes. Although the roles of emotions are often discussed in justice theories, they have been largely underresearched. The objective of current study was to examine the emotional reactions of employees to perceived injustice, in a field setting. The study analyzed the emotional responses of employees (N= 408) to decision of annual salary raise. The study, being conducted on employees of different sectors of Pakistan, measured the employees' perceptions of justice (distributive and procedural) and feeling of emotions (Anger, Envy, and Sadness) after the announcement of annual salary raise. We found that sadness was more strongly related to perceptions of injustice as compared to anger and envy. Generally, the results found support for our hypotheses. We concluded with limitations and directions for future research.