Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience


Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience

Russell S. Cropanzano1 • Sebastiano Massaro2 • William J. Becker3

Received: 25 June 2014 / Accepted: 28 January 2016 / Published online: 2 March 2016

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract According to deontic justice theory, individuals

often feel principled moral obligations to uphold norms of

justice. That is, standards of justice can be valued for their

own sake, even apart from serving self-interested goals.

While a growing body of evidence in business ethics

supports the notion of deontic justice, skepticism remains.

This hesitation results, at least in part, from the absence of

a coherent framework for explaining how individuals

produce and experience deontic justice. To address this

need, we argue that a compelling, yet still missing, step is

to gain further understanding into the underlying neural

and psychological mechanisms of deontic justice. Here, we

advance a theoretical model that disentangles three key

processes of deontic justice: The use of justice rules to

assess events, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy.

Together with reviewing neural systems supporting these

processes, broader implications of our model for business

ethics scholarship are discussed.

Keywords Affect and cognition � Deonance � Deontic
justice � Empathy � Organizational justice � Workplace
fairness � Organizational neuroscience

Abbreviations

aCC Anterior cingulate cortex

DMN Default Mode Network

EEG Electroencephalography

fMRI Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

IFG Inferior frontal gyrus

OFC Orbitofrontal cortex

pCC Posterior cingulate cortex

PET Positron Emission Tomography

PFC Prefrontal cortex

PMC Posteromedial cortex

qEEG Quantitative electroencephalography

rTPJ Right temporoparietal junction

TMS Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

TPJ Temporoparietal junction

vmPFC Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Organizational justice is important to workers. When they

feel fairly treated, employees tend to report less stress and

better health (Cropanzano and Wright 2011), as well as

more positive attitudes toward their jobs (Cohen-Charash

and Spector 2001). Employers also benefit through higher

worker job performance (Colquitt et al. 2001), more

organizational citizenship behaviors (Fassina et al. 2008),

and lower turnover intentions (Aryee and Chay 2001). In

this paper, we seek to describe the underlying psycholog-

ical processes—and supporting neural systems—that

employees use when evaluating whether an event was fair

or unfair. In particular, we focus on deontic justice, the

& Sebastiano Massaro
sebastiano.massaro@wbs.ac.uk

Russell S. Cropanzano

russell.cropanzano@colorado.edu

William J. Becker

w.becker@tcu.edu

1
Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder,

Boulder, CO 80309, USA

2
Warwick Business School - Behavioural Science, University

of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

3
Department of Management, Texas Christian University,

TCU Box 298530, Ft. Worth, TX 76129, USA

123

J Bus Ethics (2017) 144:733–754

DOI 10.1007/s10551-016-3056-3

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view that justice is of value for its own sake. Toward this end,

we present and discuss a theoretical model that disentangles

the psychological mechanisms involved in the formulation of

these fairness judgments and review these processes through

an analysis of relevant neural correlates. Overall, we argue

that individuals evaluate fairness by applying normative

criteria called justice rules (Cropanzano et al. 2015; Scott

et al. 2008). As we shall see, these fairness judgments are

moderated by both affective and cognitive processes. How-

ever, people are most likely to make the effort to apply jus-

tice rules, when they experience both cognitive empathy and

affective empathy toward another person.

To refine and extend our understanding of these complex

mechanisms, we will review the principal brain regions

involved in both justice rules and in these two types of

empathic processes. In order to accomplish these objectives,

we first examine the available research on organizational

justice, paying particular interest to the various reasons why

workers care about fairness. We then focus in more detail on

deontic justice, which is the principal concern of this paper.

Afterward, we discuss the three main components of our

model—application of justice rules, cognitive empathy, and

affective empathy. Throughout, we consider the implications

of our model for research and practice.

Organizational Justice

While research strongly suggests that justice matters to

employees, scholars have proposed multiple explanations

of why this is so. There has been some degree of conver-

gence on the idea that justice matters to employees for

multiple reasons (Cropanzano et al. 2001); yet, tradition-

ally, three main theoretical frameworks have been pro-

posed: The instrumental approach, the relational approach,

and the deontic approach (e.g., Colquitt and Greenberg

2001; Folger and Salvador 2008).

Overview of the Three Motives for Justice

The instrumental model, which is historically the oldest,

maintains that individuals prefer justice because it provides

them long-term control over valued outcomes (for discus-

sions, see Greenberg 1990; Tyler 1997, 2006). As one

might expect, empirical evidence supports this view:

Employees are egocentrically biased to view decisions that

favor them as more fair (Cropanzano and Moliner 2013)

and their views on justice are positively related to outcome

favorability (e.g., Ambrose et al. 1991).

A subsequent view, the relational framework, refers to a

set of theories—the group-value model, the relational

model, and the group engagement model—that focus on

and emphasize the relationship between the individual and

his or her workgroup (Blader and Tyler 2015). Together,

these three models posit that justice, and especially pro-

cedural justice, is central because fair treatment signals that

an individual is respected and regarded within a significant

social group that he or she values (Lind and Tyler 1988).

This concept is consistent with, and supported by, empir-

ical tests within organizational settings (e.g., Tyler and

Blader 2000; Tyler et al. 1997).

While research strongly supports the existence of

instrumental and relational concerns, these do not appear to

be the only reasons why workers care about organizational

justice. A third approach, the deontic model of justice

(Folger and Glerum 2015; Folger and Salvador 2008),

argues that employees often maintain ethical standards or

moral principles (Blader and Tyler 2001), sometimes called

‘justice rules,’ that guide the moral treatment of others. As

of result of these normative criteria, they adopt a moral

duty (deon = duty) to uphold their principles (Folger 2001,

2011; Hannah et al. 2014). In this way, justice is valued for

its own sake, not simply because of the personal benefits

that it may bring to a person (Folger et al. 2005; for

additional empirical evidence, see O’Reilly et al. 2016;

Skarlicki and Rupp 2010; Skarlicki et al. 2008).

While deonance does not seem to be the only justice

motive (cf. Folger et al. 2013), it does appear to be a

notable one. For example, reactions to justice are partially

influenced by personality dispositions indicative of trait

morality (Colquitt et al. 2006). Likewise, research on ‘al-

truistic punishment’ (Fehr and Gächter 2002), shows that

individuals will sacrifice economic benefits in order to

punish someone who violates social norms (Fehr and

Fishbacher 2004; Fehr and Gächter 2002; Fehr et al. 2002).

Interestingly, the same act, even if it is equally hurtful, will

be punished more harshly if it violates a group norm and

less harshly if it does not (DaGloria and DeRidder 1977,

1979; DeRidder 1985).

Research among management scholars is consistent with

this notion (cf. O’Reilly and Aquino 2011). Turillo et al.

(2002) found that individuals will punish an unjust cow-

orker, even when the victim is a stranger (for similar

findings, see the studies reported by O’Reilly et al. 2016).

Likewise, managers who are high in moral identity are

more likely to punish transgressors than managers low on

this measure (Skarlicki and Rupp 2010), though this may

depend somewhat on the dimension of moral identity under

examination.

Similarly, when people feel that they have been harmed

by an immoral action, evidence suggests that they prefer a

resolution outcome that validates their normative beliefs

(Reb et al. 2006; for related findings, see Skarlicki et al.

2008). Evidence of this kind suggests that deontic justice

provides a critical account of why employees care about

justice: They do so, in part, because they possess moral

734 R. S. Cropanzano et al.

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standards and duty to uphold them (Folger and Glerum

2015; Folger and Salvador 2008; Hannah et al. 2014).

Despite evidence that organizational justice can be

motivated by something other than self-interest, this notion

has been met with some skepticism (e.g., Greenberg 2001;

Colquitt and Greenberg 2001). In a sort of conceptual ‘path

dependence,’ these concerns appear to be rooted in the

history of ethics scholarships. Hatfield and colleagues

(Hatfield et al. 1978, pp. 128–129) maintained that ‘the

majority of scientists […] interpret apparent altruism in
cost-benefit terms, assuming that individuals […] perform
those acts that are rewarded […] and […] avoid those acts
that are not. Either self-congratulation or external reward,

then, must support apparently altruistic behavior.’ Like-

wise, Gillespie and Greenberg (2005, p. 205) assert that

‘the only ultimate goal(s) of individuals [is/]are self-di-

rected’ (italics added). On this view, the concern is not

limited to justice. Rather, people appear to be incapable of

motivated behavior that is not self-interested (for a review

and critique, see Cropanzano et al. 2007).

Deontic Justice and the Question of ‘How?’

A close look at the literature suggests that scholars have yet

to fully investigate and explain the intrapersonal mecha-

nisms responsible for deontic justice. Fortunately, scientists

from several disciplines have begun to focus attention on

the underpinnings of human justice. In particular, cognitive

neuroscience has recently offered remarkable insights on

the neural basis of moral behaviors (e.g., Greene et al.

2001; Moll et al. 2005); at the same time, business ethics

has begun to explore the value of neuroscience methods

and findings to advance theory on organizational justice

(Beugré 2009; Dulebohn et al. 2009; Massaro and Becker

2015; Robertson et al. 2007; Salvador and Folger 2009).

Despite such vibrant and compelling interest, relatively

little is clearly known regarding the processes by which

one’s brain can be ‘recruited’ for another person’s justice.

We call this the ‘how?’ question—How can deontic justice

be realized in an individual’s brain? And what are the

related implications for business ethics?

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience:
An Overview

We shed light on these matters by integrating a set of psy-

chological processes, and supporting neural systems, into a

unique theoreticalframework that aimsto advance our current

understanding of deontic justice. In other words, we aim to

elucidate core mechanisms by which a worker comes to care

about the moral principles that have been applied (or violated)

for another individual through the lens of organizational

neuroscience (Beckeretal.2011).Thus,ourcontributionaims

to go beyond an ordinary exploration of what we might learn

individually from the dedicated organizational, neuroscience,

or psychology literatures. Rather, we aim to cross-fertilize

among these disciplines in order to create an integrated model

of deontic justice for business ethics.

In this paper, we explicate and defend a single proposi-

tion: Deontic justice, and in particular the ability to take into

account the ethical quality with which others are treated, is

grounded on a set of three largely integrated processes: The

use of justice rules to assess events, cognitive empathy, and

affective empathy. We acknowledge that this is a bold

proposition, not yet commonly held in the business disci-

plines. For this reason, we devote considerable attention to

supporting our foremost argument—that workers take jus-

tice seriously even when they are not selfishly benefited—by

introducing neuroscience evidence. As we shall see, our

brain is a complex organ consisting of many structures

working synchronously and simultaneously to produce

thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions, including the

ability to morally relate to others. As such, there is not a

single brain center for justice, rather, justice is a whole-brain

affair that relies on the integration of cognitive and affective

neural systems and psychological processes (Casebeer

2003; Tancredi 2005; Yoder and Decety 2014).

Overview of the Present Model

Our primary aim is to provide a much needed, but largely

neglected, theoretical rationale for how a set of synergistic

processes provide an explanatory account for deontic jus-

tice. Our reasoning is substantiated by merging evidence

from several literatures. The resulting theoretical model

depicted in Fig. 1 underscores the conceptual challenges.

This figure is only intended to provide a cursory sum-

mary and guide to our model of deontic justice. We have

not yet provided an account of specific neural systems

supporting our model. Rather, here we describe how indi-

viduals make justice judgments (Cropanzano et al. 2015).

Notice that people are often motivated to make sense out of

a salient but harmful event. Moreover, the degree of

empathy frequently impacts how these events are evaluated

(Scott et al. 2008). As mentioned above, a key insight of

deontic justice theory is that an unfortunate or harmful

event is evaluated with respect to some ‘normative criteria’

(Cugueró-Escofet and Fortin 2014, p. 2) or ‘justice rules’

(Hollensbe et al. 2008, p. 1099) or ‘moral intuitions’

(Greene and Haidt 2002, p. 517). When a transgressor’s

behavior toward another violates these rules, the observer

or witness believes that the victim has been treated unfairly

(Cropanzano et al. 2015; Rupp and Paddock 2010). As we

shall see, justice rules are emotionally weighted and they

can be distinguished from simple social conventions, which

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience 735

123



are instead situational and somewhat arbitrary (e.g., Sme-

tana et al. 1993).

Yet, a key challenge for deontic justice theory lies in

explicating the extent to which a justice rule will be applied

and the extent to which it will not. All events in business

organizations are not necessarily evaluated with respect to

moral principles (Folger and Cropanzano 1998, 2001). For

example, it is not uncommon for people to ignore

mistreatment received by others, especially when individ-

uals are part of different social groups (Greene 2013). This

allows for callous disregard in relation to ‘out group’

individuals (Hein et al. 2010). Thus, if businesspeople

could increase their circle of regard, more people would

receive fair treatment (cf., Clayton and Opotow 2003).

By introducing neural systems associated with these

psychological processes, we advance knowledge of how a

worker’s disinterest in the needs of others may result from

what we could call a ‘breakdown’ in his or her empathic

system (i.e., the capacity to understand what another person

is experiencing from within the other person’s frame of

reference) (Greene 2013). Supported by this and other

evidence, we argue that justice rules in the workplace are

more likely to be applied when the third-party observer or

witness has a sense of empathy for the victim (e.g., Blader

and Tyler 2001; Patient and Skarlicki 2005). In particular,

we suggest that two interrelated types of empathy are rel-

evant: Cognitive empathy and affective empathy.

Cognitive empathy involves knowing the contents of

other people’s feelings through deliberate thought. That is,

one must understand what others are thinking and feeling in

order to know when they are distressed (for an overview on

empathy, see e.g., Walter 2012). However, ‘knowing’ per se

is insufficient. When a worker observes a coworker in dis-

tress, he or she may experience affective empathy without

any deliberate thought or intention. Affective empathy

involves automatic sharing in the emotional experiences of

others (e.g., Walter 2012). Cognitive and affective empathy

reinforce one another (Zaki and Ochsner 2012).

Closing Thought and Looking Ahead

In the sections that follow we further unravel the model

presented in Fig. 1. We begin with a review of the evidence

related to justice rules in the next section. Subsequently, we

turn our attention to the two forms of empathy, beginning

with cognitive and moving later to affective. While we

treat cognitive and affective empathy separately in order to

facilitate our discussion of the brain regions reviewed, we

emphasize that both these and the related psychological

processes are highly interconnected.

Recognizing and Applying Justice Rules

Research on deontic justice suggests that individuals make

their moral decisions by observing or becoming aware of a

triggering event—e.g., a potential mistreatment by a work

supervisor, and evaluating this event with respect to some

justice rule. A ‘justice rule’ is a ‘self-based standard, or

expectation, derived from individuals’ socialized or inter-

nalized values, regarding the moral obligations of indi-

viduals in a specific context’ (Lau and Wong 2009, p. 281).

This rule is used as a sort of measuring device to evaluate

the moral appropriateness of the event (Scott et al. 2008).

Because this type of assessment is based on the use of

moral principles, it has also been called ‘principlism’ (e.g.,

Batson 1999, p. 303; Blader and Tyler 2001, p. 235). These

judgments are not ‘context free,’ and various elements of

Fig. 1 Theoretical model of
deontic justice. Notice the three

critical elements: Application of

justice rules, cognitive empathy,

and affective empathy. Note

also that empathy has both a

moderating and a main effect

736 R. S. Cropanzano et al.

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the decision environment can impact the evaluations (for

empirical evidence, see Nicklin et al. 2011; for a review,

see Cropanzano and Moliner 2013). While context effects

are important, they are somewhat beyond the scope of the

present article, which aims to understand the underlying

intrapersonal processes of deontic justice.

Historically, justice rules have been organized into three

families (Cropanzano et al. 2015): Distributive justice,

which pertains to the outcome allocation; procedural jus-

tice, which relates to the decision-making process; and

interactional justice, which concerns the interpersonal

treatment received from another person. Some researchers

have found it useful to further divide interactional justice

into two sub-dimensions (e.g., Colquitt et al. 2001). In this

approach, interpersonal justice relates to the dignity and

respect that one receives, whereas informational justice

pertains to keeping people informed, providing explana-

tions, and so forth. Each of these types of justice has its

own set of justice rules (cf. Colquitt and Rodell 2015).

While research is still ongoing (e.g., Hollensbe et al.

2008), we consider it a useful taxonomy (Colquitt 2001) to

understand what ‘justice rule’ means. According to this

categorization, there are at least three just ways to dis-

tribute outcomes. These are equity (to each according to

contributions), equality (to each the same), and need

(Deutsch 1975, 1985). Likewise, a just procedure should be

bias-free, consistently applied, accurate, correctable, rep-

resentative of all, and ethical (Leventhal 1980). Colquitt

(2001) adds that interpersonally just treatment is polite,

dignified, respectful, and contains no inappropriate

remarks, while informationally just communication is

candid, thorough, timely, and tailored to individual needs.

While future research may yield additional standards,

Colquitt’s (2001) work provides a good sense of what is

intended by a ‘justice rule.’ Overall, within deontic justice

theory, justice rules are essentially seen as a type of moral

norm (Folger 2001, 2011; Folger and Salvador 2008). As

with other moral norms, these do not depend on the opinion

of an authority figure (i.e., tend not to change due to third-

party norm enforcement), and their violations warrant

punishment (Smetana 1981, 1984, 1985, 1989).

Development of Moral Norms

Social and developmental psychology research has offered

important insights to further understand this concept by

suggesting that human beings recognize and apply moral

standards from a very early age. For instance, in a study

conducted by Hamlin and Wynn (2011), toddlers watched a

puppet show in which the characters behaved either helpfully

or unhelpfully toward other puppets. Children, as young as

5 months, preferred the kindly puppets to the disobliging

ones (for a review, see Bloom 2013; Hamlin et al. 2010).

These childhood preferences reflect an ‘innate’ distinc-

tion that persists into adulthood—that between moral

norms and social conventions (for a discussion on innate-

ness and morality, see Haidt and Joseph 2007; Suhler and

Churchland 2011). A social convention is a rule of

behavior that, while making community life potentially

more efficient, is not seen as correct for its own sake

(Nucci and Nucci 1982). To at least some degree, children

as young as three or four can distinguish social conventions

(e.g., eating with fingers, standing during nap-time) from

moral transgressions (e.g., pushing, stealing, hitting), and

by age five they are quite good at telling the two apart

(Smetana et al. 1993).

Moral Norms and Neuroscience

We will now turn our attention to neuroscience evidence

that elucidates how our brain applies moral norms. We

begin with a focus on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and

review studies of moral decision-making that highlight its

involvement in two different types of moral violations. We

then cover additional brain regions, such as the insulae,

which are involved in emotional responses and in the

application of justice rules.

The Trolley Problem, the Prefrontal Cortex, and Two

Types of Moral Violations

Greene et al. (2001) conducted a functional Magnetic

Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study inspired by moral

dilemmas that are often used in ethics research. One of the

most remarkable dilemmas that influenced this research is

the trolley problem (Thomson 1986). Usually, researchers

present participants a scenario showing a runaway trolley

with five people on it, which are tied and unable to move. If

the trolley were to proceed on its path it would kill its

occupants. The only way to save them is to activate a

control that would switch the trolley’s path. When people

are asked whether they are ought to press the button to save

five people at the expense of one, most say yes. Yet, when

people are posed with a different scenario their decisions

are likely to be opposite. In this case, the participants are

told that they are standing next to a stranger on a bridge

obstructing the trolley’s path. The only way to save the five

people is to push this stranger off the bridge causing his or

her death. Although the ultimate result, from a rational

perspective, is the same in both scenarios, people are less

willing to save the five others by pushing the stranger.

Research on the trolley problem suggests that business

ethics should attend more closely to a distinction between

two different types of moral breaches—personal and

impersonal. According to Greene and Haidt (2002), vio-

lations of moral norms are especially salient when the

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience 737

123



misbehavior is personal. These are behaviors that do rel-

atively serious harm to a specific individual and that do so

through the direct agency of the transgressor. In contrast,

impersonal violations lack the aforementioned criteria.

Moreover, Greene and colleagues (Greene et al. 2001,

2004) showed that personal transgressions are processed in

areas of the brain pertaining to emotions, while those that

are impersonal are processed in brain regions that pertain

more strongly to cognition. Specifically, brain regions

associated to emotions, like medial frontal gyrus, posterior

cingulate gyrus, and angular gyrus, were more activated in

the personal condition rather than in impersonal and even

non-moral scenarios; parietal lobes, among other regions

associated to cognition, were instead significantly less

active in the personal condition than in the other paradigms

(Greene et al. 2001).

Interestingly, Greene et al.’s (2001) findings closely

parallel long standing observations by organizational jus-

tice researchers that interpersonal justice violations tend to

generate greater outrage than do other types of injustices

(Folger and Cropanzano 1998; Skarlicki and Folger 2004).

Individuals with strong moral identities are especially

likely to retaliate when observing interpersonal injustice

(Skarlicki and Rupp 2010; O’Reilly et al. 2016). Likewise,

interpersonal injustice, as opposed to other types, is more

strongly related to workplace deviance (Colquitt et al.

2001; Judge et al. 2006). Research based on the trolley

problem suggests that the importance of interpersonal

justice may be ‘hard wired’ into our brain functioning.

This research (Greene et al. 2001) also revealed that

reaction times were longer when participants judged per-

sonal violations as morally appropriate, as compared to

when subjects judged them to be wrong, suggesting a key

role for ‘executive control’ brain regions. Thus, in a fol-

low-up study, Greene et al. (2004) focused on brain activity

in the subjects’ prefrontal cortex (PFC), while deliberating

over similar scenarios. The PFC is the anterior part of the

frontal lobes of the brain—an area crucial for integrative,

executive, and goal-directed functions (Fuster 2001).

Research has often focused on the subdivisions of the PFC,

in particular the ventromedial or vmPFC (Damasio 1996),

orbitofrontal (Rolls 1996), and dorsolateral (Goldman-Ra-

kic 1987) (for a more extensive review, see Christoff and

Gabrieli 2000). While these regions have a vast network of

connections and intertwined functions, speaking generally,

the dorsolateral PFC is more critical for cognitive control

(e.g., attention), while the orbitofrontal and vmPFC are

largely associated to emotional processes and affective

decision-making (Damasio et al. 1990; Gray et al. 2002;

Rolls and Grabenhorst 2008).

In the trolley problem just described (Greene et al.

2001), researchers found increased ventromedial and de-

creased dorsolateral PFC activity in response to personal

(i.e., bridge scenario) as opposed to impersonal (i.e.,

switching the trolley’s path) moral choices; the difference

between these two situations also related to the salience of

the victim. Moreover, in Greene et al. (2004) the dorso-

lateral PFC showed increased activity for difficult, as

compared to easy personal dilemmas. Further, Luo et al.

(2006) showed increased vmPFC activity in response to

more critical moral transgressions compared to less sev-

ere (see, Blair 2007). What is more, lesions to the PFC

create impairments for these types of moral decisions,

supporting its essential role in applying moral rules

(Ciaramelli et al. 2007; Koenigs et al. 2007).

Additional Brain Regions Involved and Justice Rules

Moll et al. (2002) provided additional insights into the

relationship between human moral rules and emotions. They

asked subjects to read short statements and judge them as

being either right or wrong. In this way Moll and his col-

leagues forced participants to take a stand irrespectively of

the content of the sentences. Some of the statements

described either emotional situations provoking moral

responses, others were emotionally negative scenarios with

no moral substance, and others were non-emotional situa-

tions. These researchers found that moral judgments asso-

ciated with negative emotions prompted activation in the

antero-medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)—whose activation

correlates with subjective emotional experiences. In support

of this finding, injury to this part of the OFC impairs emo-

tional behavior (for a review, see Rolls and Grabenhorst

2008). Non-moral judgments associated with unpleasant

emotions induced activation of the lateral OFC and the

amygdalae. The amygdalae have traditionally been associ-

ated with processing emotionally arousing stimuli and with

sharing others’ emotions (Adolphs et al. 1994). In the study

of Moll and colleagues, somewhat surprisingly, the amyg-

dala did not show increased activation in the moral judgment

condition. The researchers suggested that this is because the

medial OFC ‘controls’ the amygdala’s activity (see

also Baxter et al. 2000). Thus, the OFC could be critical for

integrating our moral knowledge with emotions that rein-

force moral actions.

Another brain region particularly salient to ‘justice

rules’ is the anterior part of the insulae. This region is

highly engaged in our emotional life, in particular when we

experience disgust (Krolak-Salmon et al. 2003) and when

we observe other people feeling disgust (Wicker et al.

2003). This basic emotion, which seems to have benefited

our ancestors by helping them avoid unhealthy experi-

ences, might have been co-opted by evolution to serve a

moral purpose (Haidt 2003, 2006). In fact, it is common for

people to respond to certain moral violations, especially

those involving a perception of impure contamination, with

738 R. S. Cropanzano et al.

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a sense of disgust (e.g., Schnall et al. 2008, 2009; Skarlicki

et al. 2013). Given such indication, one would expect

involvement of the insulae when people make moral

assessments on unfair events. Indeed, this seems to occur.

Sanfey et al. (2003) offered support to this claim by

employing the Ultimatum Game in an fMRI study. In this

game, a proposer gets an amount of money by the researchers

and suggests how to divide the sum with another player. The

receiver chooses to either accept or reject the proposal. If the

second player accepts, then the money is divided accord-

ingly. Otherwise, neither party gets any money. According to

a rational choice perspective (e.g., Tversky and Kahneman

1986), the second player should accept any offer given, since

this would always provide more money than what they

originally had; however, in practice, divisions seen as unfair

are often rejected. In Sanfey and colleagues’ experiment

(2003), those offers judged as unfair elicited activity both in

participants’ brain ‘cognitive’ areas (e.g., the dorsolateral

PFC), as well as in the ‘emotional’ areas, such as the anterior

insulae (and in particular the right insula). Of interest here,

this region showed higher activity on rejected unfair offers

compared with fair offers, thereby suggesting, once again, a

key role for emotional involvement in judgements of what is

fair and what is not.

Finally, neuroscience research focusing on empathy and

on Theory of Mind has also investigated how people make

judgments about others’ actions (see e.g., Van Overwalle

and Baetens 2009). For one, Singer and colleagues (2006)

investigated how brain empathic responses are modulated

by the affective link between individuals. These research-

ers measured brain activity of people observing confeder-

ates receiving pain when the accomplices had participated

in a previous fairness game. Singer et al. (2006) found that

subjects showed activation in fronto-insular and anterior

cingulate cortices toward fair players who were allegedly

being hurt. However, these responses were significantly

reduced when people observed an unfair confederate

receiving pain. In contrast, for unfair accomplishes the

participants showed an increased activation in brain

areas associated to reward. This evidence resonates with

the idea of altruistic punishment, which, as we shall see

later in more detail, is consistent with our theoretical model

of deontic justice.

Conclusions and Research Needs

Overall, the studies described above provide a good

example, not only of how recent neuroscience research has

investigated neural correlates of justice paradigms, but also

of how these insights advance business ethics by revealing

that neural systems involved in both emotional and cog-

nitive processes are relevant in the appraisal of moral rules.

Moreover, this evidence suggests that ethical behavior

involves an alignment between cognition and affect.

Interestingly, the observation that ethics involves the right

thoughts for the right reasons has long been observed by

virtue ethicists (e.g., Annas 2011). This suggests that affect

should play a larger role in business ethics, an idea that is

consistent with theories of deontic justice (Folger et al.

2005).

Business ethicists should also take into account the

implications of the trolley problem because there are dif-

ferent patterns of neural activation sustaining two distinct

types of moral breaches—personal and impersonal (Greene

et al. 2001). This has implications for a number of ethical

problems. For example, consider the problem of white

collar crime. Though white collar crime is far more costly

to society than so-called ‘street crime,’ citizens persist in

viewing white collar offenses as less problematic (Frie-

drichs 2010). In particular, the impersonal nature of white

collar corruption may make it seem less troublesome than

face-to-face misconduct. Subsequently, this could pose a

challenge for ethical training and even law enforcement.

Closing Thoughts on Justice Rules

Organizational and psychological research suggests that

justice rules are a type of moral norms: They are often

deeply held universal standards, which emerge early in life

(Smetana 1985, 1989). However, consideration of the

experiments exploring the neural substrates of moral rules

allows us to disentangle their meaning because it suggests

that justice rules involve key brain regions that are relevant

both to discriminating between personal and impersonal

scenarios and to cognitive and affective experiences

(Greene 2013). The latter evidence is particularly impor-

tant for deontic justice theory for another reason relevant to

the organizational life. Indeed, while justice rules can be

seen as internalized standards for assessing the fairness of

events, workers (and humans more generally) often fail to

make use of them (Folger and Cropanzano 1998; Cropan-

zano et al. 2015). It is important to understand why this is

the case.

As we shall see, we argue that this relationship is

moderated by an individual’s empathy for others. When

people feel empathy for others, they are more likely to treat

them justly and respond to their unjust treatment by others

(Blader and Tyler 2001; Hoffman 1994; Lerner and

Goldberg 1999). If workers are not able to appreciate,

internalize, and share others’ feelings, it becomes difficult

to judge whether they are being treated justly and thereby

to act accordingly. What is more, empathy relies on a

dissociable cognitive and emotional neural system, which

can moderate and also directly promote deontic justice.

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience 739

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Deontic Justice as an Empathic Process

Empathy, as the term is used here, refers to the set of pro-

cesses that allows a person to share the psychological

experience, both thoughts and feelings, of another individual

(Batson 1999; Hoffman 1994). A rich body of research

suggests that, when individuals feel empathy for others, they

become more altruistic and cooperative toward them (e.g.,

Batson 2006; Batson and Ahmad 2001). Hoffman (2000,

p. 3) has this sort of evidence in mind when he remarks that

empathy is ‘the spark of human concern for others, the glue

that makes social life possible.’ Additional evidence sup-

porting the role of empathy in human morality has been

explored by social psychologists (Batson 2009; Eisenberg

and Fabes 1990; Tyler et al. 1997; Wispé 1986), philoso-

phers (Churchland 2011; D’Arms 1998), and natural scien-

tists (Decety and Lamm 2006; de Waal 2008; Preston and de

Waal 2002). Likewise, Aderman et al. (1974) found that

individuals are less prone to blame victims for their own

moral adversity when they empathize with them.

While this work is impressive, research suggesting that

empathy makes us behave more justly toward other people

is even more relevant to business ethics and deontic justice

theory. Patient and Skarlicki (2010) investigated the impact

of empathy on justice judgments in the workplace, arguing

that workers care more about justice when they share the

other person’s emotions. In their first experiment, managers

completed a role-playing scenario taking the perspective of

someone who was downsizing an employee. Those who

scored higher in empathy reported that they would behave

more justly than did those who scored lower. In their

second study with undergraduate participants, the authors

also found that empathy induction increased the justice

with which subjects behaved.

Empathy: Some General Remarks

In psychological research, the term empathy has been

defined in various ways, some of which are not entirely

consistent with one another (Batson 1995). Some scholars,

for example, appear to treat empathy as a specific emo-

tional state, which involves mindfulness of, and respon-

siveness to, another individual’s concerns (cf., Bagozzi and

Moore 1994; Batson et al. 1995). However, it is more

common to view empathy as a ‘vicarious emotion,’ which

is associated with particular types of motivated behavior

(Batson et al. 1987, p. 19). For example, people who feel

empathy are more likely to assist a distressed individual,

even if they are provided with an opportunity to exit the

situation (Batson 1995). Other definitions of empathy are

somewhat more rational, referring to understanding another

person’s thoughts and feelings, rather than the sharing of

their affect (Cohen and Strayer 1996).

These are important conceptual matters, but it is beyond

our scope to thoroughly discuss all of empathy’s definitions

here (for a comprehensive review, see Batson 2009). For

the purposes of our model, and without gainsaying other

approaches, we are primarily concerned with empathy as

the sharing of other people’s feelings (Batson 1995),

including the comprehension of their psychological con-

tents (Cohen and Strayer 1996). In this way, we also

incorporate the recognized distinction between cognitive

empathy and affective empathy (e.g., Ang and Goh 2010;

Hogan 1969). The former refers to understanding the

contents of another person’s thinking and feeling (Pe-

cukonis 1990). The latter refers to sharing the affective

experiences of another individual (Hoffman 1994, 2000).

Consistent with this distinction, the neuroscience liter-

ature provides further evidence for disentangling these two

types of empathy (e.g., Shamay-Tsoory 2011; Walter 2012;

Zaki and Ochsner 2012). According to recent research with

imaging and lesion studies (i.e., studies that enable the

association of impaired brain areas to specific functions;

Massaro 2015), there are two dissociable neural systems

for empathy: One cognitive and the other emotional

(Shamay-Tsoory et al. 2009). The two are highly related

and both are important. A fully empathic experience

involves (at least) components of affective sharing, cog-

nitive self-awareness, and self-other distinction (Baron-

Cohen and Wheelwright 2004; Blair 2005).

Remarkably, business ethics has not generally made this

distinction explicit. For example, references to Batson’s

(2009) definition of empathy appear to be more closely

associated with cognitive empathy; Patient and Skarlicki’s

work (2010) instead investigates affective empathy. To

address this important concern for deontic justice theory,

here we refer to cognitive empathy as the deliberate psy-

chological process of recognizing and understanding

another person’s thoughts and feelings. On the other side,

affective empathy captures the similarity of feelings

between one person and another, the so-called ‘experience

sharing,’ which is more automatic and non-reflective

(Walter 2012; Zaki and Ochsner 2012). We argue here that

both types of empathy are critical for deontic justice.

Cognitive Empathy: Understanding the Victim’s

Psychological Experience

As discussed earlier, deontic justice hinges on the way a

person has been disadvantaged due to a violation of a social

norm (Folger and Cropanzano 1998, 2001). In many situ-

ations, we gain such information through our evaluation of

what the victim is thinking and feeling. Cognitive empathy

provides the mechanism by which we evaluate another

person’s psychological point of view (Frith and Singer

2008). Notice that the adjective ‘cognitive’ may be a bit

740 R. S. Cropanzano et al.

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misleading here, since it refers to how the observer under-

stands the contents of another individual’s mind and feel-

ings, not the accuracy of that understanding. Accordingly,

our representation of other persons’ cognitions and emotions

allow us to make inferences regarding their reactions to

events. Relative to deontic justice, if we witness another

person who is angry or frustrated by unfair treatment, cog-

nitive empathy provides our appraisal of their feelings and

the appropriateness of those feelings. However, it does not

extend to sharing those feelings: Cognitive empathy, per se,

maintains a sort of emotional distance between the victim

and the third-party observer (e.g., Walter 2012).

As we shall show, current neuroscience research has begun

to reveal key brain regions involved in cognitive empathy: the

temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the posteromedial cortex

(PMC), the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and the cingulate cortex.

Next, we review evidence for each of these regions.

Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ)

The TPJ is that area of the brain where the parietal lobe

meets the temporal lobe. Several studies indicate that the

right TPJ (rTPJ) in particular is involved in our represen-

tations of other people’s cognitions and meta-cognition

(Decety and Lamm 2007; Saxe 2006) and that the

responses in this area peak just at the time when someone’s

thoughts are described (Saxe et al. 2009; Young et al.

2007). For instance, Saxe and Wexler (2005) asked

research participants to consider their feelings when eval-

uating two different types of information. First, they con-

sidered socially relevant information, which was presented

as a scenario involving another person. Second, they con-

sidered a description of what that person ‘wanted’ or ‘be-

lieved.’ Their results showed that the rTPJ response was

low when subjects were reading descriptions of the social

background and rose when the psychological state of the

protagonist was described. Moreover, the response in the

rTPJ was higher when the protagonist’s background and

the psychological state were incongruent, as compared to

when they were consistent (Saxe and Wexler 2005).

While rTPJ activation seems to be aligned with the

cognitive empathic idea that ‘people’s feelings have to be

predicted from their own subjective desires’ (Terwogt and

Rieffe 2003, p. 74), recent research indicates that fairness

is also strongly related to activation of the rTPJ. Specifi-

cally, the hemodynamic response (i.e., a parameter

employed to measure brain activation in fMRI research) in

rTPJ shows a differentiation between morally good and bad

actions before such response arises in other regions, such

as the dorsolateral PFC (Yoder and Decety 2014). This

supports the overall insight that rTPJ likely plays an

anticipatory role in the cognitive empathic processes

involved in deontic justice.

Posteromedial Cortex (PMC)

Another relevant brain area involved in cognitive empathy

is the posteromedial cortex. This is an architectonically

discrete region, which has been often understudied because

of its anatomical location (Cavanna and Trimble 2006).

Interestingly, this complex area has been just recently

identified as the most active brain region during the so-

called ‘resting state’ (Cauda et al. 2010)—that state when

brain activity is measured in the absence of a task or

experimental stimuli (Mastrovito 2013). Positron Emission

Tomography (PET) studies, which are able to couple

functional analyses with metabolic ones (for a method-

ological overview, see Massaro 2015), showed that PMC

consumes about 40 % more glucose than the hemispheric

mean, providing support for this view (Raichle et al. 2001).

While the resting state typically represented a control

condition in early fMRI experiments, this view changed

drastically with the discovery of functionally relevant infor-

mation from resting-state activity (Biswal et al. 1995).

Specifically, the Default Mode Network (DMN), a network of

regions active during resting state has been identified using an

array of recording techniques (Shulman et al. 1997; Mazoyer

et al. 2001; Raichle et al. 2001). The DMN includes areas of

the PMC, the inferior parietal cortices, as well as the dorsal

and ventral areas of the medial frontal cortex (Uddin et al.

2009). A core characteristic of the DMN is that it consistently

exhibits increased activity at rest, and decreased activity

during task performance. The reliability of this observation,

together with those on the brain’s metabolism, suggest that

deactivation may be a way for the brain to sustain self-ori-

ented psychological processes (Fransson 2005).

Of particular interest for our aims is the flexibility of the

DMN. Indeed, the literature has revealed that tasks that

activate the DMN share core processes, but differ across

content and goals. For instance, Greene et al. (2001)

observed that certain forms of moral judgment—the personal

cognitive moral dilemmas—activate brain regions involved

in the default network. Hence, deciphering moral dilemmas

seems to be a situation where people cognitively empathize

by a psychological understanding of events occurring to

others (for related discussion, see Moll et al. 2005). The

DMN as a whole likely plays an important role in forming a

cognitive judgment of how fairly others are treated.

Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)

As discussed earlier, the prefrontal cortex is important for

justice. Because it provides executive and goal-directed

functions (Fuster 2001), this region is also be heavily

involved in cognitive empathy (Shamay-Tsoory et al. 2003).

Both the dorsolateral and ventromedial regions of the PFC

have been related to morally just behavior (Carrington and

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience 741

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Bailey 2009; Moll et al. 2005). vmPFC is particularly rele-

vant to empathic processes according to evidence from

neuroscience experiments involving pathological subjects.

Shamay-Tsoory and Aharon-Peretz (2007) studied individ-

uals with lesions in the ventromedial PFC and found that the

ability to cognitively represent other people’s emotions was

impaired. Yet, brain damage did not have the same disrup-

tive effects when an individual was thinking about another

person’s cognitions. Speaking more generally, damage to the

vmPFC tends to impair decision-making by disrupting

emotional processing (Bechara et al. 1997, 2000). These

neurological subjects cognitively understand the situations

they face, but lose the ‘affective signal’ that helps healthy

brains to make ‘good’ choices (Damasio et al. 1990). These

findings suggest that the vmPFC mediates the process of

affective, though not cognitive, empathy.

Moreover, Greene et al. (2004) showed engagement of

the dorsolateral PFC in moral cognitive control, and

damage to the orbitofrontal PFC has been associated with

misinterpretation of social situations and socially inappro-

priate behavior (Rolls 1996), supporting the PFC’s over-

arching empathic role in deontic justice evaluations. This

feature of the PFC is supported further by a recent study

investigating brain activity during empathy for social

exclusion, which showed how individuals who have more

empathy for others experiencing negative social treatment

will make greater efforts to help and support the victims in

these situations (Masten et al. 2011).

Cingulate Cortex or Cingulum

Another important region for cognitive empathy is the

cingulate cortex. This area integrates inputs from different

sources and influences activity in other brain regions by

modulating motor, endocrine, and visceral responses (Bush

et al. 2000). It is subdivided into three regions: anterior,

posterior, and medial. While, the anterior cingulate cortex

(aCC), a large region around the rostrum of the corpus

callosum, is generally involved in emotional awareness

(Devinsky et al. 1995), a recent meta-analysis of neu-

roimaging research on empathy found that the left dorsal

anterior mid-cingulate cortex is specifically pertinent to

cognitive empathy (Fan et al. 2011). Similarly, the poste-

rior cingulate cortex (pCC) appears to be engaged when

individuals infer others’ feelings. For example, Maddock

et al. (2003) found in an fMRI study that the pCC showed

increased activation when research participants considered

words (hence, understood) related to emotion.

A Complex Outlook

While the regions described above are ‘key players’ in

cognitive empathy, other brain areas appear to be also

relevant. For instance, the superior temporal sulcus has

shown activation peaks in tasks evaluating our under-

standing of the intentions and goals of other people’s

actions (Lee et al. 2014; Pelphrey et al. 2004). People are

concerned with intentionality attributions (Lyons et al.

2006) when assigning moral blame to others. Individuals

are less likely to be held responsible for a potential injus-

tice if their alleged transgression was made with no

intention to harm (Hewitt 1975; Karniol 1978; Miller and

McCann 1979; Umphress et al. Umphress et al. 2013).

Thus, it is important to note that other brain areas and

psychological processes may be crucial for our overall

deontic justice experience, including outcome prediction,

associative learning, and flexible evaluation of contingen-

cies (Moll and de Oliveira-Souza 2007; Rolls 1996).

However, while the interaction of these complex cognitive

abilities with justice is surely a novel and fascinating area

of research, evidence to support a more multifaceted

framework in this respect is just beginning to appear (Moll

and de Oliveira-Souza 2007), thus inevitably falling

beyond the scope of the current work.

Affective Empathy: Sharing the Victim’s

Psychological Experience

While cognitive empathy refers to the understanding of

other people’s responses to injustice, this does not neces-

sarily mean that we internalize these emotions in our moral

behavior. In order to truly partake in another person’s plight,

it is therefore essential for us to share their feelings.

Affective or emotional empathy promotes such response

(Davis 1994) and is often believed to be a largely involun-

tary, vicarious response to affective cues from another per-

son (Decety and Jackson 2006; Hoffman 1994). As such, it

is an affective state, elicited by the emotive non-verbal cues

of the other(s), oriented toward such person(s), and similar

(or isomorphic) to his or her state (Walter 2012).
1
Moreover,

it includes some sort of meta-knowledge about both the self

and the other. As explained below, four brain areas appear to

be particularly relevant to affective empathy in relation to

deontic justice: the anterior insulae, the amygdalae, the

somatosensory cortices, and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG).

1
Interestingly, scholars have debated whether or not affective

empathy involves emotional contagion. Some researchers have

argued that emotional contagion is a distinct construct because it

indicates the lack of awareness as to whether the source of the

experienced state is the self or another person (e.g., Fan et al. 2011;

Walter 2012). Other scholars have instead supported the view that

affective empathy holds characteristics similar to those of emotional

contagion (e.g., Zaki and Ochsner 2012). Such debates may result

from the different definitions that researchers give to empathy and its

forms (Batson 2009). We cannot resolve this issue here, but it

illustrates the sort of interesting research questions still remaining.

742 R. S. Cropanzano et al.

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Anterior Insula

In each brain hemisphere, the insula is located at the interface

of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes; it is densely con-

nected with several regions including the dorsolateral PFC,

amygdala, and cingulate cortex (Augustine 1996; Mesulam

and Mufson 1982). Neuroscience research has widely shown

thatseveralemotions—includinganger,disgust,fear,sadness,

and also happiness, a positive emotion (Phan et al. 2002)—are

associated with insular cortex’s activation, supporting the

understanding that this region, and in particular the right

insula, has a key role in affective empathy (Bernhardt and

Singer 2012; Fan et al. 2011; Singer 2006).

Moreover, connectivity data support the idea that the

insula plays an important integrative role in affect: Patterns

of connectivity in resting-state functional neuroimaging

studies suggest a key function of its anterior part in com-

bining interoceptive and affective information (Critchley

et al. 2004). These models propose that the anterior insula

enables a subjective affective experience and global

‘feeling state’ (Cauda et al. 2011; Craig 2009). This is

consistent with studies showing its role in sensitivity to

moral justice, such as social exclusions (Masten et al. 2011;

Robertson et al. 2007).

Amygdala

In each brain hemisphere, the amygdala is located near the

temporal pole and has traditionally been associated with

fear, among other emotions (Fanselow and Gale 2003;

Phillips and LeDoux 1992). Fear, in our case, is relevant in

relation to normative conformity because the fear of retri-

bution can promote compliance toward others (Pfaff 2007).

Adolphs et al. (1996) found that damage to the amygdala

made it more difficult for individuals to correctly feel fear

and other negative emotions, like anger and sadness. Inter-

estingly, however, the ability to feel happiness was not

harmed (Adolphs et al. 1994). As Gazzaniga (2008) points

out, if damage to the amygdala makes us less able to feel an

emotion, then we are correspondingly less able to share it

with others. Indeed, the amygdala has also been found to be

central in fairness and emotionally weighted moral decision-

making (Blair 2007; Greene and Haidt 2002; Moll et al.

2002). Along these lines, there is increasing evidence from

both neuroimaging and genetics studies that impairment of

the amygdala may be involved in the etiology of antisocial

(and even criminal) behavior (DeLisi et al. 2009).

Somatosensory Cortices

The human somatosensory cortices may also play an

important role in our emotionally shared responses to deontic

justice. These insights emerge from studies on pain. Indeed,

our ability to experience another’s pain is a key characteristic

of affective empathy (Singer et al. 2004). Singer et al. (2004)

assessed brain activity while research subjects underwent a

painful stimulus, and compared this activity to that elicited

when the same subjects observed their beloved partners (who

were present during the experiment) receiving similar pain

stimuli. While the first-hand experience of pain resulted in

the activation of the subjects’ somatosensory cortices, these

regions showed no significant activation in response to the

observation of the partners experiencing pain. The authors

concluded that the aCC and bilateral anterior insula were

affective mediators of empathy for pain, while the

somatosensory cortices were not. In another fMRI study

(Morrison et al. 2004), participants were presented images of

hands and feet in painful or neutral situations and asked to

envisage the level of pain that these conditions would pro-

duce. Once again, no signal change was detected in the

somatosensory cortices, while there were significant activa-

tions in the cingulate cortex and in the insula.

However, at odds with these findings is a Transcranial

Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) study in which individuals

observed needles penetrating hands or feet of a human

model and in objects. Avenanti et al. (2005) reported that the

observation of pain does involve sensorimotor representa-

tion. Specifically, the results showed empathic inference

about the sensory qualities of others’ pain together with an

embodiment in the research subjects’ motor systems. This

evidence is noteworthy because the TMS method is more

sensitive to detection of subtle changes in cortical activity

than fMRI techniques (Decety and Lamm 2006). Thus, this

evidence suggests that observing another individual in a

painful situation may yield ‘empathic responses’ in the

somatosensory cortices. Moreover, overlaps between first-

hand experiences of pain and perception of pain in others

seem to reveal some degree of correspondence between self

and others’ experiences (Decety and Lamm 2006).

There is more to add to this. The brain network involved

in the perception of pain in others is also implicated in

disgust and in situations involving risk. These are occur-

rences that spark visceral and somatosensory responses.

Similarly, activation in the somatosensory cortex is not

necessarily exclusive to the emotional appraisal of pain.

Hence, it seems likely that neural responses in these areas

are coupled with broader behavioral mechanisms, such as

aversion and retraction (e.g., Decety and Lamm 2006;

Singer and Lamm 2009), which are also typical of deontic

justice. In support of this view, aversive representations

similar to those observed in anticipation of, and response

to, negative outcomes trigger activation in the somatosen-

sory cortices (Bechara and Damasio 2005; Knutson and

Greer 2008; Shenhav and Greene 2010). Overall, these

cortical areas may play an important role in our sharing of

others’ feelings following a ‘painful’ and unfair situation.

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience 743

123



Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG)

Finally, one other brain region deserves our attention when

discussing affective empathy. Neuroimaging studies of

empathizing with people suffering serious threat or harm

(Nummenmaa et al. 2008) reported the involvement of the

Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) in affective empathy (Sha-

may-Tsoory 2011). In particular, research has shown evi-

dence for the existence of mirror neurons in the human

IFG (Kilner et al. 2009). Mirror neurons are a class of

visuomotor neurons, originally discovered in an area of the

monkey premotor cortex, that are electrophysiologically

responsive when an individual observes another individual

performing a particular action and then does a similar

behavior (for a thorough review, see Rizzolatti and

Craighero 2004).

Despite the intense debate on this topic (for a primer, see

Keysers 2009), a growing number of neuroimaging studies

show that the IFG has activation peaks when a person sees

another person experiencing an emotion. This supports the

idea that this area could also be a principal neural site for

empathy. Specifically, IGF activation has been reported in

negative emotional responses and decision-making in

conditions of justice dilemmas (Majdandžić et al. 2012),

suggesting its relevance for deontic justice.

Cognitive and Affective Empathy Working Together

In normal healthy adults, cognitive and affective empathy,

whose main supporting neural systems are summarized in

Table 1, tend to work in concert (Pessoa 2014).

Both are engaged in moral behavior (Zaki and Ochsner

2012), with each playing important and complimentary

roles. In short, cognitive empathy allows us to appreciate

other people’s minds, including both their thoughts and

their emotions, while affective empathy allows us to share

their emotional experiences, softening the boundaries that

separate individuals (Pfaff 2007). We can illustrate this

idea further by considering evidence from clinical and

neuropsychological research. Koeings et al. (2007), for

instance, found that individuals with a damage to their

vmPFC, which prevented the normal processing of affec-

tive information, tended to make moral decisions in a

‘cold’ logical way, which these authors term ‘utilitarian.’

Similarly, psychopaths have reasonably sound abilities

to make cognitive inferences (Brüne and Brüne-Cohrs

2006), but appear to be emotionally disinterested in the

suffering of others (Baron-Cohen 2011). Thus, in psy-

chopathy only affective empathy is impaired, while cog-

nitive empathy is maintained and possibly heightened

(Blair 2005; Shamay-Tsoory et al. 2010). Autistic patients

instead seem to have deficiencies in both their cognitive

and affective empathy (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright

2004). Notice that the moral comportment is impaired in

both psychopathy and autism, though the resulting patterns

of behavior are different for each condition. In any case,

moral thinking can be impeded if either type of empathy is

diminished (Moll et al. 2005). This suggests that the two

types of empathy help people to behave justly. This is

important for deontic justice in organizations because a

wide variety of organizational contexts (culture, training,

leadership, etc.) can influence the manifestation of each

type of empathy.

This said, when making fairness judgments regarding

others, cognitive and affective empathy work closely

in a ‘bi-directional fashion’ (see Fig. 1). Neuroscience

research has suggested that a dual-path—‘top-down’ and

‘bottom-up’—system may be relevant in processing

human morality and empathy (Table 2) (Walter 2012;

Zhan et al. 2013).

This remark resonates with other neuroscience and

psychological perspectives on dual processing systems. For

instance, much debate has focused on how emotions arise

(Lazarus 1984; Zajonc 1984) via low-level processes—that

provide quick, bottom-up affective considerations of

stimuli—or via high-level—top-down cognitive appraisal

processes that draw upon stored knowledge. Speaking

generally, dual process mechanisms are believed to be

recurrent ways of processing information in the brain.

Similarly, cognitive empathy may act as the ‘high road’

or ‘top-down’ processing, while affective empathy as ‘low

road’ or ‘bottom-up’ processing of deontic justice. The

‘low road’ path essentially means that some basic features

of an individual, representing strong affective states or

suffering conditions (i.e., facial expressions, body move-

ments, or obvious features like injuries), trigger an auto-

matic response. Conversely, the ‘high road’ to empathy

suggests that it also relies on higher cognitive mechanisms,

like reasoning based on logical and contextual relations and

situations, that cascade in a top-down process.

Specifically, we argue that cognitive and affective

empathy are reinforcing mechanisms for each other, which

can differently elicit evaluations of justice rules. Thus, the

‘high road’ processing implies that workers are consciously

evaluating the mistreatment of others. By doing so, they

Table 1 Summary of main neural systems involved in cognitive and
affective empathy

Cognitive empathy Affective empathy

Temporoparietal junction Anterior insulae

Posteromedial cortex Amygdalae

Prefrontal cortex Somatosensory cortices

Cingulate cortex Inferior frontal gyrus

744 R. S. Cropanzano et al.

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will consequently engage affective empathy. On the other

side, when empathy takes the ‘low road’ employees may

first experience affective empathy. This intuitive and

automatic process can then powerfully engage their cog-

nitive empathy.

Conclusions and Research Needs

While the two forms of empathy are experimentally dis-

sociable, we shall stress that they normally work in concert.

Moreover, neuroscience insights are gradually yielding

toward a merged perspective holding that both top-down

and bottom-up processes are involved and important for

our information processing (for affective processing, see

Ochsner et al. 2009; for justice processing, see Moll et al.

2005). In this way, knowledge of sequences of social

actions or events would be ‘filtered’ in brain regions like

the PFC and the cingulate cortex, in turn enabling emer-

gence of just behavior (Moll et al. 2005; Zhan et al. 2013).

Folger and Salvador (2008) and Folger and Glerum (2015)

have argued that researchers have paid insufficient atten-

tion to the role of intuitive, bottom-up ethical judgments.

These researchers appear to be making an important

argument that is consistent with the neuroscience evidence

we have reviewed. This would seem to be an important

direction for future business ethics research. In addition,

the distinction between cognitive and affective empathy is

important for deontic justice research in organizations

because a wide variety of organizational contexts (culture,

training, leadership, etc.) can influence the manifestation of

each type of empathy. Future research can draw on insights

and methods from neuroscience to investigate the unique

effects further.

Empathy’s Direct Effects on Behavior: Too Much
of a Good Thing?

We have thus far emphasized empathy as a complex

moderator of the relationship between an event and the

application of a justice rule. As we have discussed,

empathizing with others tends to make workers behave

more fairly (Patient and Skarlicki 2005). However, there is

more to the matter. When others are in distress, we are also

more likely to render empathic altruistic assistance (Batson

1995, 2006; Masten et al. 2011). We have represented this

effect in Fig. 1 by the inclusion of a direct link from

empathy to fairness. We explore this possibility below.

Empathy and the Potential for Preferential

Treatment

To better illustrate this case let us consider the work of

Batson et al. (1995). In their initial experiment, these

scholars had undergraduate research participants work with

two other students. In the critical conditions, research

subjects were read a note from one of the other individuals

in the experiment. The note came from a ‘Participant C.’

The experimenter instructed them to either ‘imagine how

this [Participant C] student feels,’ whereas others were told

to ‘take an objective perspective.’ The former instructors

promoted empathy, while the latter did not. The subject

was then given the opportunity to assign the other stu-

dents—either Participant C or Participant B—to a task with

positive consequences or else to a task with negative

consequences. When empathy had been induced for Par-

ticipant C, then the subject was more likely to assign that

individual to the positive task, at the expense of leaving the

negative task for the other student. These findings were

replicated in a second experiment. Thus, empathy directly

caused decision-makers to show unfair preferential treat-

ment. That is, while empathy (both cognitive and affective)

will often motivate us to behave altruistically (Batson

1995), it will not motivate us to treat everyone consistently.

Empathy-Induced Preferential Treatment

and Justice

Thus far, our account of empathy-induced preferential

treatment would suggest that employees who feel empathic

concern for another person would ignore issues of justice.

However, that does not seem to be the case—at least not

from the perspective of the individual enacting the

behavior. In an important contribution, Blader and Roth-

man (2014) present four studies which replicate the rela-

tionship between empathic concern and preferential

treatment. However, these authors offer two additional

insights.

Table 2 Possible role of the PFC in the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processing of justice and empathy

Process Role of PFC

Top-

down

The frontal cortex ‘represents’ moral goals that control the information flow in other cortical and subcortical areas when an

automatic response needs to be overcome (see e.g., Miller and Cohen 2001)

Bottom-

up

vmPFC stores links of subcortical ‘somatic markers’ and action knowledge in posterior brain areas. This would explain problems

with decision-making after brain lesions (see e.g., Bechara et al. 2000)

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience 745

123



First, they found that if a decision-maker was held

accountable by a third party, then he or she would not tend

to show preferential behavior when empathy was high.

Second, Blader and Rothman (2014) measured fairness

perceptions. They found that fairness mediated the effects

of empathy. That is, high-empathy participants believe that

they made fair choices, both when they exhibited prefer-

ential treatment (in the low accountability conditions) and

when they did not (in the high accountability conditions).

These findings are very important to our model (see also

Blader and Tyler 2001). Individuals who empathize believe

that they are behaving fairly, even when they show pref-

erential treatment. Or, one might say, even when they

violate rules of even-handed justice (e.g., consistent treat-

ment, equity). While this could be a significant problem for

organizations, Blader and Rothman (2014) offer a solution.

The disinterested perspective of an informed third party

may serve to counterbalance the biased viewpoint of an

empathic individual. Organizations may wish to design

interventions that include active third parties that monitor

decisions where their might be conflicts of interest created

by empathy (Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011).

Discussion

Historically, most theories of justice in business ethics have

argued that workers want to be fairly treated because it

benefits them, either through long-term instrumental con-

trol or else through enhancing their social status (Cropan-

zano et al. 2003; Folger and Butz 2004). In contrast to these

earlier models, deontic justice emphasizes the notion of

‘oughts’ (Folger and Glerum 2015). Other people should be

treated in a way that they deserve, in accordance with

standards of fairness (Folger 2001, 2011). While evidence

favoring a deontic model of justice has been steadily

increasing (e.g., Colquitt et al. 2006; Folger et al. 2013;

Reb et al. 2006; Turillo et al. 2002), skepticism remains

(e.g., Colquitt and Greenberg 2001; Gillespie and Green-

berg 2005; Greenberg 2001).

We argue that this skepticism could be better addressed,

at least in part, by articulating a model of deontic justice,

supported by current neuroscience evidence, to explain

how a worker can transcend self-interest by being con-

cerned with the plight and needs of others (Folger and

Salvador 2008). To address this theoretical need we have

focused on three interrelated psychological processes and

reviewed supporting neural systems:

• Justice rules People sometimes interpret events in
ethical terms. As such, individuals distinguish between

practical, but somewhat arbitrary social conventions

(e.g., drive on the left side of the road in the United

Kingdom, but the right side in the United States), and

moral principles (i.e., Thou shalt not kill!). When

compared to social conventions, justice rules (a) tend

not to be based on social authority, and (b) their

violations warrant punishment (Smetana 1985, 1989).

• Cognitive empathy This implies that individuals under-
stand and recognize the contents of others’ minds. That

is, they shall ‘cognitively comprehend’ what others are

thinking and feeling when victims of injustice.

• Affective empathy ‘Knowing’ is not the same as
‘caring.’ Individuals also emotionally connect and

share the affective state of potential victims of injustice.

When they experience the pain that other people feel

due to unfair treatment, it becomes more substantive

and important to them.

According to our model, we argue that deontic thinking

involves using a justice rule to make sense out of an

unfortunate situation for others. If the rule was violated,

then the worker is apt to conclude that unfairness occurred.

This rule is most likely to be applied when one experiences

cognitive and affective empathy toward the victim.

Though, at times, when empathy is strong, an individual

may bypass the justice rule and preferentially intervene to

help a colleague.

Theoretical and Practical Implications

In this paper we have outlined a novel theoretical model for

business ethics suggesting that deontic justice—our con-

cern with other people’s just treatment—arises from a set

of psychological processes which, to speak loosely, are

‘hard wired’ into our brains (Tancredi 2005). This also

suggests that justice—or its absence—could impact

employees on a more fundamental level than is often rec-

ognized. As alluded to earlier, workers who feel that they

have been unjustly treated experience poorer health

(Cropanzano and Wright 2011) and are likely to seek

revenge even when doing so is personally costly (Fehr and

Gächter 2000). This is not surprising, given the robust

processing and salience of fairness-related information.

A related insight for deontic justice theory is that,

while human beings are concerned with their self-interest,

they are also concerned with their moral principles (Fol-

ger 2001, 2011). The research evidence we have reviewed

here supports these contentions. Justice, as well as ethics

more generally, is a central concern in human existence

(Cropanzano et al. 2007). For this reason, justice matters

beyond particular individuals. Third parties often care

about how others are treated even when they are not

directly impacted (Skarlicki and Kulik 2005). Given this,

the pernicious effects of injustice are likely to be spread

rapidly through an organization, as some employees

746 R. S. Cropanzano et al.

123



become displeased with the treatment and experiences of

their coworkers (Skarlicki et al. 2015). Indeed, justice in

its deontic form appears to be relevant beyond focal

employee-manager interactions: It may push employees to

exhibit negative behaviors and attitudes toward the

organization if they witness their peers encountering

moral adversity (Skarlicki et al. 1998). Hence, proactive

organizations should account for deontic justice as a part

of the organization’s overall culture, rather than through a

piecemeal series of one-on-one interventions (Monin et al.

2013). To achieve this goal, organizations could begin by

designing management systems that conform to justice

rules (Fortin and Fellenz 2008), such as providing voice

and respectful interpersonal treatment (Cugueró-Escofet

and Rosanas 2013). In this way, valuable behaviors, such

as organizational citizenship or whistleblowing will be

more likely to occur (Umphress et al. 2010).

As explained throughout, incorporating neuroscience

evidence into accounts of organizational justice strongly

suggests that ethical decisions are often influenced by intu-

ition and affect, as well as by moral reasoning (e.g., Greene

2013). This observation has a somewhat different emphasis

than most traditional accounts of business ethics, which

focus on moral reasoning as opposed to more intuitive and

affective processes (cf. Salvador and Folger 2009). The

present model suggests that these two views of business

ethics should be re-balanced, because incorporating an

organizational neuroscience perspective reveals that implicit

empathic processes play a significant role in shaping the

observed behaviors in response to the unfair treatment of

others (Becker et al. 2011). For example, Masten et al.

(2011) showed that witnessing social mistreatment of others

required both forms of empathy to produce action. What is

more, the present model explains that empathy should be

considered as a dual construct rather than a single concept,

showing relevance of our model, not just for ethical think-

ing, but also to organizational research at large. Previous

research has sometimes considered empathy as either one

type (e.g., affective sharing) or another (e.g., cognitive

understanding). Supported by neuroscience research, we

maintain that this ‘either/or’ approach should be replaced

with ‘this and that.’ That is, there are two types of empathy

and both are important.

Thus, from a practical perspective, our conceptualiza-

tion may explain why training and other interventions to

influence organizational justice, which are often based on

rational ‘cold’ approaches, sometimes produce disap-

pointing results (Ludwig and Longenecker 1993). Among

other possibilities, our present model suggests that ethical

conduct at work could be enhanced by training people in

empathy (Pecukonis 1990). For instance, among health

care professionals, there have been promising findings with

these types of programs (e.g., LaMonica et al. 1976; Riess

et al. 2012), and we would recommend that they be con-

sidered more broadly. It also reinforces the value of com-

passionate organizational culture (Barsade and O’Neill

2014; Karakas and Sarigollu 2013).

Along these lines, neuroscience research itself provides

practical information on how deontic justice can be ‘ma-

nipulated’ in our brain. For one, Knoch et al. (2006)

employed Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a

non-invasive method used to inhibit small regions of the

brain by low-frequency stimulation (O’Shea and Walsh

2007) while subjects were playing the Ultimatum Game.

They found that one third of the participants whose right

dorsolateral PFC was inhibited, accepted all the offers,

even those clearly unfair. Similarly, the ‘manipulation’ of

socio-moral behavior has been explored with neuro-phar-

macological approaches, like those involving intranasal

administration of oxytocin (Kosfeld et al. 2005). Oxytocin-

treated subjects increased trust while performing a trust

game (i.e., they assigned more money to the trustees) if

compared to the control group. While the application of

these approaches has not yet been employed in the work-

place, their potential use will necessarily require a priori

and shared ethical guidelines ensuring real benefits for

workers.

Finally, we readily recognize that each of the different

neuroscience methods we have mentioned in our paper will

hold specific informative power in future testing of our

model. For one, if neuro-pharmacological approaches may

promote empathy and fairness, fMRI will be able to further

inform on the neural substrates activated during justice-

related experimental tasks or games. Yet, we hope that the

cross-disciplinary nature of our framework will not only

promote novel investigations on the highlighted brain

regions of interest, but will also encourage the integration

of this neuroscience information with more traditional

business research methods as a means to comprehensively

advance future research on deontic justice.

Limitations and Further Research Avenues

We should remark that in this work we have sought to

advance current theory on deontic justice by proposing an

interdisciplinary framework, rather than suggesting

replacement of existing accounts of organizational justice

exclusively with neuroscience research. Indeed, despite the

promises of neuroscience to advance organizational justice

research, we must point out a number of related limitations

and cautions. Neuroscience research in these areas is still in

its relative infancy (Zhan et al. 2013). As such, business

ethics scholars need to be wary of placing too much weight

on any single study or on a unique methodological

approach. Several methodological avenues will likely

contribute to advance the understanding of the neural

Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience 747

123



substrates and psychological processes involved in deontic

justice. For instance, Electroencephalography (EEG) has

the potential to add ecological validity to deontic justice

research. For one, Stikic et al. (2013) have already assessed

engagement and leadership at both the individual and team

levels in a social responsibility scenario.

Other research has also shown that EEG investigations

can inform decision-making strategies (Jacobs et al. 2006)

and help to disentangle affective and cognitive processes

(Knyazev and Slobodskaya 2003; Pfurtscheller and Da

Silva 1999). Moreover, coherence analysis—a measure of

the degree to which EEG signals at two distinct scalp

locations are linearly related to one another—is often

associated with studies on individual traits (Harmon-Jones

et al. 2010), thus suggesting promising avenues to appre-

ciate individual differences in deontic justice.

Overall, the employment of interdisciplinary approaches

will provide a viable opportunity for researchers to move

the field forward. In parallel, we also recommend that

organizational neuroscience should attempt to offer further

meta-analytical evidence and ensure reproducibility of

existing findings. Only then will nuanced theoretical

business propositions and ecologically comprehensive

paradigms match a multidisciplinary effort to further refine

theoretical frameworks, such as the one presented here.

In concluding, our model suggests that there are at least

two broad paradigms for future research. The first of these

concerns issues regarding individual differences. It is a

point of everyday experience to recognize that some people

care more about morality than others (Shao et al. 2008).

Our review suggests that these differences can be reflected

in neural differences among people (Baron-Cohen 2011;

Kiehl 2006). Moreover, as deontic justice is heavily mod-

erated by both cognitive and affective constructs, individ-

uals’ impairments in any link of this chain will reduce

deontic justice in predictable ways. However, neuroscience

evidence suggests that situational context and conditions

are also important. For example, the cognitive empathy

system may ‘fail’ due to strong out-group attributions

(Haney et al. 1973), the framing of an ethical problem

(Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011), or the type of violation

(Greene et al. 2001). Future theoretical and empirical

extensions of our model shall explicitly take these cues

into account. In this regard, our present framework will

serve as a helpful opening roadmap.

Finally, while future research may yield novel findings

in this area, we suggest that organizations should always

attend closely to the work environment, designing it so that

organizational justice, as a whole, is not inadvertently

restrained by structural or procedural flaws. In this regard,

our model might also help inform future interventions. For

example, as much of the information that influences ethical

behavior is also processed outside of workers’ cognitive

awareness (i.e., affective empathy), organizations should

build cues into the environment that reinforce empathy

while avoiding signals that unfair behavior is accept-

able (Bazerman and Tenbrunsel 2011).

Conclusions

Our moral lapses (Batson 2006; Batson et al. 1997) and

self-deceptions (Batson et al. 1999) notwithstanding, deontic

justice suggests that justice is important for its own sake,

even when it does not directly serve our self-interest. This

appears to involve at least three psychological mechanisms:

Cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and our ability to

evaluate and apply moral rules. As seen, these processes are

associated with neural systems working together to form and

direct an internalized sense of deontic justice.

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123


	Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience
	Abstract
	Organizational Justice
	Overview of the Three Motives for Justice
	Deontic Justice and the Question of ‘How?’

	Deontic Justice and Organizational Neuroscience: An Overview
	Overview of the Present Model
	Closing Thought and Looking Ahead

	Recognizing and Applying Justice Rules
	Development of Moral Norms
	Moral Norms and Neuroscience
	The Trolley Problem, the Prefrontal Cortex, and Two Types of Moral Violations
	Additional Brain Regions Involved and Justice Rules
	Conclusions and Research Needs

	Closing Thoughts on Justice Rules

	Deontic Justice as an Empathic Process
	Empathy: Some General Remarks
	Cognitive Empathy: Understanding the Victim’s Psychological Experience
	Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ)
	Posteromedial Cortex (PMC)
	Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)
	Cingulate Cortex or Cingulum 
	A Complex Outlook

	Affective Empathy: Sharing the Victim’s Psychological Experience
	Anterior Insula
	Amygdala
	Somatosensory Cortices
	Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG)

	Cognitive and Affective Empathy Working Together
	Conclusions and Research Needs


	Empathy’s Direct Effects on Behavior: Too Much of a Good Thing?
	Empathy and the Potential for Preferential Treatment
	Empathy-Induced Preferential Treatment and Justice

	Discussion
	Theoretical and Practical Implications
	Limitations and Further Research Avenues

	Conclusions
	References