Kees van den Bos
Department of Social and Organizational Psychology
Utrecht University
Heidelberglaan 1
3584 CS Utrecht
The Netherlands
Home Page
Phone: +31 30 253 3460 / 14
Fax: +31 30 253 4718
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In our world conflict is omnipresent. For example, nationalism, greed, stupidity, misunderstandings, ideological differences and clashes between cultural worldviews, all of these yield conflicts. Future humans will even face a steady increase in the potential for various sorts of conflicts. For instance, the rising expectations of a continuously growing population in competition for control over rapidly diminishing resources are likely to create situations of conflict. It may be argued, therefore, that the quality of human life is likely to be determined by how we resolve conflicts. Therefore, methods of conflict resolution deserve our attention.One important way to prevent or resolve conflicts is by paying appropriate attention to cultural norms and values that people value. Cultural norms and values constitute a fundamental feature of human life and hence many prominent lines in social psychology have focused on the issue of why cultural norms and values are important to people. The research my colleagues and I have developed aims to obtain more insight into why and when people adhere strongly to their cultural norms and values, and hence react in strong negative terms toward events or persons who threaten their cultural worldviews and in positive terms toward things that uphold or bolster these norms and values. Several cultural norms and values are important and are studied in our research program. For example, we focus on people's reactions to fair versus unfair events. Scientists from various disciplines have shown convincingly that fairness is one of the most important social norms and values in human life. In most situations, therefore, most people judge unfair treatment to be in violation with cultural norms and values. In other words, unfair treatment violates people's cultural worldviews (Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000). Therefore, an important cultural worldview defense reaction that our program focuses on concerns people's reactions to unfair treatment. Furthermore, fair treatment may positively affect the prevention and resolution of conflicts, and it therefore deserves our attention as well. In my work, fair and unfair treatment, morality, and cultural worldviews are, in fact, a main focus of attention. Research questions that I am interested in include "why and when is fairness important to people?", "what makes people to judge a particular event to be fair or unfair?", "why do people respond to events they judge to be fair or unfair in the ways that they do?," "what is the relationship between fairness and other human motives, such as self-interest?", and "how can fair treatment diminish clashes between people's cultural worldviews?" In answering these questions, my colleagues and I have developed a research program that investigates the social-cognitive processes pertaining to how people form fairness judgments exactly, how they use these judgments in their daily lives, what affects the relative importance of their fairness concerns versus other motives (e.g., Van den Bos, Peters, Bobocel, & Ybema, 2006), and what are the antecedents of people's negative reactions toward events that violate their cultural norms and values. Basic studies in this research program examine the social psychology of fairness, morality, and cultural worldviews. Insights that follow from these studies are applied in important societal and organizational contexts as well as contexts related to law and human behavior. Although fairness definitely constitutes one of the most important social norms and values in human life, people's reactions to cultural norms and values encompass more than how they react to fair and unfair treatment. For instance, social groups and the values they convey enable individuals to alleviate existential concerns by providing self-esteem resources and epistemic knowledge. Thus, another type of cultural worldview processes that our program focuses on is how people react to praise and criticism of groups that are important and relevant to them. One of the insights that follows from our research program is that personal uncertainty can constitute an alarming experience for people and that conditions of personal uncertainty hence may lead people to react more strongly to fair and unfair events as well as to other events that bolster or violate their cultural worldviews (e.g., Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). Conditions of information uncertainty may also moderate the relationship between affect and cognition, especially as to how affect and cogniton influence the psychology of fairness judgments (e.g., Van den Bos, 2003). Our work on uncertainty management issues has implications not only for the social psychology of fairness and justice, but also for other theories about cultural worldview defense such as terror management theory (e.g., Van den Bos, Poortvliet, Maas, Miedema, & Van den Ham, 2005), and for other social psychological theories and concepts, such as self-regulation, affect and cognition, decision making, the human alarm system (e.g., Van den Bos, Ham, Lind, Simonis, Van Essen, & Rijpkema, 2008), and the social psychology of terrorism and radical behavior. Recent work also focuses on associative-propositional evaluation models, such as the influence of experiential and rationalistic mindsets on reactions to innocent victims (Van den Bos & Maas, in press), and on the role of behavioral disinhibition in explaining and predicting normative behavior, such as what people do in bystander situations (e.g., Van den Bos, Müller, & Van Bussel, in press). Besides fairness, morality, uncertainty, and cultural worldviews, my other research interests include social cognition, the psychology of religion, law and psychology, organizational behavior, and decision making.
 Journal Articles:
 Van den Bos, K. (2003). On the subjective quality of social justice: The role of affect as information in the psychology of justice judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 482-498.
- Van den Bos, K. (2001). Uncertainty management: The influence of uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 931-941.
- Van den Bos, K. (1999). What are we talking about when we talk about no-voice procedures? On the psychology of the fair outcome effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 560-577.
- Van den Bos, K., Bruins, J., Wilke, H. A. M., & Dronkert, E. (1999). Sometimes unfair procedures have nice aspects: On the psychology of the fair process effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 324-336.
- Van den Bos, K., Ham, J., Lind, E. A., Simonis, M., Van Essen, W. J., & Rijpkema, M. (2008). Justice and the human alarm system: The impact of exclamation points and flashing lights on the justice judgment process. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 201-219.
- Van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2002). Uncertainty management by means of fairness judgments. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 1-60). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
- Van den Bos, K., Lind, E. A., Vermunt, R., & Wilke, H. A. M. (1997). How do I judge my outcome when I do not know the outcome of others? The psychology of the fair process effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1034-1046.
- Van den Bos, K., & Miedema, J. (2000). Toward understanding why fairness matters: The influence of mortality salience on reactions to procedural fairness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 355-366.
- Van den Bos, K., Müller, P. A., & Van Bussel, A. A. L. (2009). Helping to overcome intervention inertia in bystander dilemma's: Behavioral disinhibition can improve the greater good. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 873-878.
- Van den Bos, K., Peters, S. L., Bobocel, D. R., & Ybema, J. F. (2006). On preferences and doing the right thing: Satisfaction with advantageous inequity when cognitive processing is limited. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 273-289.
- Van den Bos, K., Poortvliet, P. M., Maas, M., Miedema, J., & Van den Ham, E.-J. (2005). An enquiry concerning the principles of cultural norms and values: The impact of uncertainty and mortality salience on reactions to violations and bolstering of cultural worldviews. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 91-113.
- Van den Bos, K., & Van Prooijen, J.-W. (2001). Referent cognitions theory: The role of closeness of reference points in the psychology of voice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 616-626.
- Van den Bos, K., Vermunt, R., & Wilke, H. A. M. (1997). Procedural and distributive justice: What is fair depends more on what comes first than on what comes next. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 95-104.
- Van den Bos, K., Wilke, H. A. M., & Lind, E. A. (1998). When do we need procedural fairness? The role of trust in authority. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1449-1458.
- Van den Bos, K., Wilke, H. A. M., Lind, E. A., & Vermunt, R. (1998). Evaluating outcomes by means of the fair process effect: Evidence for different processes in fairness and satisfaction judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1493-1503.
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