“If Only My Supervisor Had Acted Differently…”: An Analysis of Target Effects on Counterfactual Thought Generation and Justice Perceptions

Judgments of justice relate to many important work outcomes, but their formation remains unclear. We conducted an experiment with 292 student respondents to examine the effects of justice level (i.e., just, ambiguous, unjust situations) and target (i.e., supervisor, organization) manipulations on counterfactual thought generation. Findings suggest that although individuals generate both thought types, only the frequency and strength of thoughts regarding better outcomes were related to decreasing justice perceptions. Crucially, the target matters: Participants generated more frequent and stronger counterfactuals when attributing blame to a supervisor rather than an organization. Affect may partially explain these findings. This has implications regarding whether supervisors or organizations should be positioned as responsible for communicating negative information.