Procedural Justice and Conflict Management at School

Conflict occurs when parties have opposing goals and perceive each other as obstacles to achieving them (Putnam and Poole 1981). Conflict researchers often evaluate conflict management responses by employing a dual‐concern model (Thomas 1978; Rahim and Bonoma 1983; Pruitt 2005; Rahim 1987, 1979) that combines two independent concerns — concern for self and concern for the other party — to create five distinct conflict management styles. A person who reports high concern for himself or herself and low concern for others will fall into the dominating (competitive) category. At the other end, those who fall into the obliging category report low concern for themselves and high concern for others. Having moderate concern for both oneself and others are characteristics of those in the compromising category. High concern for both is characteristic of those in the integrating category. Finally, those who report low concern for both the interests of themselves and others fall into the avoiding category (Rahim 1987).

Ali Kazemi (2007) characterized three orientations correlated with moderate to high levels of concern for the other person — compromising, integrating, and obliging — as collaborative, because they indicate a desire to satisfy the other party's needs. Collaboration can improve parties' relationship and increase the likelihood that they will cooperate in the future (Schmidt and Kochan 2002; Bush and Folger 1994), so it is important to understand how collaboration is enhanced.

In this study, we sought to gain a better understanding about conflict between students and their teachers. We developed and tested a mediation model in which perceived procedural justice (PPJ) predicts students' conflict management styles. We also tested whether this association is mediated by students' attitudes toward traits associated with PPJ, specifically teacher legitimacy and students' loyalty toward, and commitment and identification with, their schools and classes.

Perceived justice concerns the ways that individuals perceive decision‐making fairness in their groups, institutions, and society (Tyler and Blader 1997). Distributive justice refers to the extent that the decided outcomes are perceived to be fair, while procedural justice refers to the fairness of the decision‐making process through which outcomes are achieved (Thibaut and Walker 2010; Lind and Tyler 1988). When people are asked about their experiences of injustice they tend to focus on procedural rather than distributive aspects and on the communication processes involved in the decisions (Tyler and Blader 2000). Leaders' communication of decision processes — and more generally the quality of their communication with their subordinates and the history of their former decisions — typically affect subordinates' perceptions of procedural justice.

Researchers have identified four elements (Thibaut and Walker 2010; Lind and Tyler 1988; Tyler 1987; Tyler and Lind 1996) of PPJ:

• neutrality is the extent to which the decision maker is perceived to be impartial and objective;

• trust is the extent to which the decision maker is perceived to acknowledge and care for the individual's interests;

• standing is the extent to which the decision maker is perceived to respect the individual and her views and rights; and

• voice is the opportunity that the decision maker provides the individual to communicate his or her views and preferences during decision making.

Perceived procedural justice is related to how individuals determine their status within their groups and is often related to their sense of self‐worth. Following social identity theory (SIT) (Tajfel and Turner 2008), relational models such as group value model (Lind and Tyler 1988) and relational model of authority (Tyler and Lind 1996) stress the psychological importance of the individual's status within the group. Groups can reinforce people's values and world views and offer emotional support as well as material benefits (Festinger 1954). Within those groups, people may strive for a high status because doing so validates their self‐worth and self‐identity (Turner 2008). Elements of perceived procedural justice — for example, perceiving that one will be treated fairly, will have processes explained clearly, and will be listened to by those in power — make people feel that they are being accorded the rights of full membership in the group and that membership in the group is worthwhile (Tyler and Lind 1996; Tyler 1989; Terwel et al. 1979).

The perception that procedures are just and the feelings that procedural justice nurtures enhance the legitimacy of the decision makers: individuals are more inclined to trust them and to accept their judgments and rules (Tyler 1989). The feeling that one has personal worth and value within the group in turn enhances the individual's feelings of loyalty (Tyler and Blader 1997) and commitment toward (Folger and Konovsky 1989; Tyler 1987, 1989), and identification with (Tyler and Blader 1997, 2003), the group. Enhancing the leader's (e.g., teacher's) legitimacy in the eyes of the group members (e.g., students), as well as the members' loyalty and commitment toward and identification with the group, often improves collaboration between and among the leader and group members (Tyler and Blader 1997, 2000; De Cremer and Tyler 2007).

An abundance of organizational research supports the significance of PPJ. Studies have reported a positive correlation between favorable perceptions of procedural justice and employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment, helpful organizational citizenship behavior, management legitimacy, and employees' trust in employers (e.g., Skarlicki and Folger 1999; Colquitt 2001; Colquitt et al. 2001; Brockner et al. 2007; van Dijke, De Cremer, and Mayer 1989). Perceived procedural justice, combined with trust in managers, helped to reduce employee turnover and enhanced motivation and productivity (Hubbell and Chory‐Assad 2005; Bal et al. 2011).

Conversely, low levels of PPJ were associated with employee withdrawal (absence and turnover) and misconduct and revenge (Colquitt et al. 2001; Jones 2009). In studies of organizational change, positive PPJ is associated with increasing employee willingness to accept unpopular workplace changes (Konovsky and Cropanzano 1991; Greenberg 1994; Kernan and Hanges 2002; Rubin 2003). Several studies have shown that PPJ helps to alleviate even the objectively negative experience of dismissal (Brockner et al. 1990, 1994; Konovsky and Folger 1991).

Although the literature suggests that PPJ increases the likelihood that employees will accept decisions that might otherwise create conflict, there has been little research directly examining PPJ's impact on conflict management strategies, and most of it has been conducted in work settings. Perceived procedural justice has been associated with enhancing collaborative strategies (problem solving, compromise, and obliging) during employee–superior conflict (Rahim, Magner, and Shapiro 2001). Kazemi (2007) found that enhancing employees' sense that they had a “voice” and were being listened to made them more likely to oblige their superiors during conflict. Research on the responses of employees facing a downsized organization found that PPJ was positively associated with integrating and obliging behaviors and with a reduction in dominating behaviors (Mishra and Spreitzer 1998; Spreitzer and Mishra 1994).

These findings strongly suggest that PPJ can have an impact on conflict management. In this study, we sought to more fully test the associations between PPJ and conflict management styles and to examine more closely how (e.g., by what mechanisms) PPJ affects conflict management orientations. We also sought to extend the research on PPJ and conflict management to a new population and a new setting — adolescents in school.

By definition, schools impose rules on their students, which can lead to conflict. We proposed that students' perceptions of procedural justice would contribute to their responses to conflict by improving their attitudes toward their teachers and their classes, specifically by enhancing their teachers' legitimacy and their own loyalty and commitment to and identification with their classes and schools.

Studies show generally that supportive and collaborative teacher behavior contributes to students' commitment to the class and deference to rules, while the lack thereof is associated with negative and defensive student behaviors (Connell and Wellborn 1991; Ryan, Stiller, and Lynch 2007; Wentzel 2012; Freese 1999; Sava 2012). In several studies, PPJ was positively associated with whether students perceived teachers as legitimate and with their degree of respect for school rules (Tyler 1989; Gouveia‐Pereira et al. 2003; Paulsel, Chory‐Assad, and Dunleavy 2010). In another study, greater teacher legitimacy was negatively associated with student misconduct (e.g., lateness and rudeness) (Smetana and Bitz 1997). The presence of procedural justice elements was also directly associated with students' behaviors: lower aggression and vindictiveness, and higher frankness and collaboration (Chory‐Assad 2002; Chory‐Assad and Paulsel 2004; Gregory and Ripski 2008; Gregory and Weinstein 2008; Gregory and Thompson 2010). Perceived procedural justice has also been found to affect family conflicts: parents' procedural justice decreased deviant behavior and family conflict (Fondacaro and Heller 1990; Fondacaro, Dunkle, and Pathak 1998; Stuart et al. 2000).

These studies suggest that PPJ can affect students' conflict management orientations and strategies. They also indicate that teacher legitimacy might have a mediating role on PPJ's contributions, that is, PPJ promotes teacher legitimacy, which affects students' conflict management approaches. Applying relational models (Lind and Tyler 1988; Tyler and Lind 1996), we also suggest that when students experience the four elements of procedural justice (neutrality, trust, standing, and voice), they perceive them as evidence that their status in the class and the school is secure. In previous research (Simons‐Morton et al. 1994; Osterman 2008), a stronger sense of belonging was positively correlated with having stronger motivation, better academic performance, greater commitment toward one's school, and more pro‐social feelings and behaviors toward teachers and peers. Both the perception that the school applies rules fairly (a variable indicative of PPJ) and a feeling of commitment to class and school predicted lower levels of school delinquency (e.g., violence, vandalism, and drug abuse) (Cernkovich and Giordano 1992; Jenkins 1997), while a sense of alienation and not belonging was associated with aggressiveness, social withdrawal, lower academic performance, and dropping out of school (Osterman 2008).

Various studies support the idea that PPJ matters to adolescents and that it seems to affect their attitudes toward their teachers and their schools, as well as their general levels of cooperation. We see a need, however, for a more comprehensive model that accounts for the mechanisms through which PPJ contributes to students' conflict management approaches. In this study, we tested such a model.

The literature reveals multiple salient relationships:

• the relationship of PPJ, or aspects of it (e.g., a sense of fairness or attentive communication), to subordinates' (e.g., students') collaborative behavior;

• the relationship of PPJ, or aspects of it, to subordinates' sense of commitment and identification with and loyalty toward their organization/group (school/class) and their perception of their leader's (e.g., teacher's) legitimacy; and

• the relationship of subordinates' attitudes (commitment, loyalty, etc.) to their behavior (collaborative versus dominating) and their misconduct.

These three relationships suggest that PPJ's contributions to conflict management are mediated by subordinates' attitudes, but that has not previously been tested. Additionally, many of these variables have been tested separately, rather than as elements of a comprehensive model of PPJ, student attitudes, and conflict management strategies. Finally, some of these associated variables were not tested among adolescents.

In this study, we tested the impact of teachers' procedural justice behaviors and attitudes, as perceived by their students, on students' attitudes and conflict management behaviors. Specifically, we tested a mediation model (see Figure One) in which perceived procedural justice elements (neutrality, trust, standing, and voice) predicted conflict management behaviors (integrating, compromising, obliging, avoiding, and dominating), and these predictions are mediated by teacher legitimacy, and student's loyalty, commitment, and identification.

We expected that the perception of procedural justice elements would positively predict students' use of collaborative strategies (integrating, compromising, and obliging) and negatively predict their use of noncollaborative strategies (dominating and avoiding). We further hypothesized that these predictions would be mediated by levels of teacher legitimacy and student loyalty, commitment, and identification with class and school.

To test our proposed mediation model, we conducted a questionnaire‐based correlational study of school students. According to the requirements of mediation testing (see Baron and Kenny 1986), we tested four hypotheses:

Two hundred and fifty‐six high school students (92 male and 164 female, comprising four twelfth‐grade classes, seven eleventh‐grade classes, and two tenth‐grade classes) from three Israeli Jewish high schools participated in the study. At the time of the study, participants had been attending their high schools for between two and four years. We sampled students from college preparatory and vocational programs and from different grades and classes (as detailed above) to enhance the generalizability of the study.

The study was conducted by one of the authors, in students' classrooms, with a teacher present. The researcher told students that their responses were completely anonymous and that they were free to end their participation in the study at any time. To avoid a lengthy class disruption and minimize students' loss of attention, participants responded to the study questionnaires (see below) over two separate class sessions. First, they completed the PPJ questionnaires as well as a demographic questionnaire. Then approximately a week later, they completed questionnaires about their attitudes (legitimacy, loyalty, commitment, and identification) and conflict management behaviors.

To match each student's first and second session data, participants were asked to write a personal identification number (the last four digits of their cell or home telephone numbers and the first letter of their last names). Initially, 309 students participated, but 53 were dismissed from data processing because they failed to supply matching identifying strings.

These questionnaires measured students' perception of the four elements of PPJ. (We instructed students to consider all their teachers when answering the questions, although the questions were phrased in the singular):

• neutrality (ten items), for example, “My teacher treats all students equally”;

• trust (nine items), for example, “Students' personal best interest matters to my teacher”;

• standing (six items), for example, “Even when he or she is angry, my teacher treats students respectfully”; and

• voice (six items), for example, “Before making a decision, it's important to my teacher to hear students' opinion.”

The statements were based on items from previous studies (Tyler 1989; Tyler and Blader 1997) but were rewritten to apply specifically to student–teacher relationships; for example, the statement, “The commission would try to treat you fairly” (Tyler 1989) became “The teacher would try to treat you fairly.”

Students were instructed to rate their agreement with each statement on a 6‐point Likert scale (1 = “absolutely untrue” to 6 = “absolutely true”). We pretested the reliability of the statements using sixty‐three participants with the following results: neutrality, Cronbach's alpha (α) = 0.82; trust, α = 0.88; standing, α = 0.78; and voice, α = 0.73. The reliabilities for the main study were neutrality, α = 0.78; trust, α = 0.87; standing, α = 0.73; and voice, α = 0.77. These reliabilities indicate that respondents' answers to the questions in each questionnaire were highly related, suggesting that the questionnaire's items measured a unified factor.

For each student, we computed a mean score for responses for each of the four elements — the higher the score, the stronger was the student's perception of neutrality, trust. etc. Because these four scores were fairly highly correlated among themselves, indicating a strong association between the questionnaires (Pearson's correlation [r] = 0.56 to r = 0.71) and because PPJ has been formerly researched as one construct (Tyler, Degoey, and Smith 2003; Tyler 1989), we also computed a general mean score of PPJ for each student.

These questionnaires measured the following attitudes:

• teacher legitimacy (eleven items), for example, “When my teachers make a decision they know what they are doing”;

• student loyalty to class and school (seven items), for example, “If I could choose all over again, I would still choose my school”;

• student commitment to class and school (eight items), for example, “It's important to me to participate in school activities”; and

• student identification with class and school (nine items), for example, “When my class does well I feel like it's also my personal success.”

These questions also were based on statements from Tom Tyler's studies (Tyler, Degoey, and Smith 2003; Tyler 1989) but were rewritten to apply specifically to student–teacher or student–school relationships (e.g., the item “I feel like ‘part of the family’ where I work” became “I feel like ‘part of the family’ at school”).

For this questionnaire, students were also asked to rate the statements on a 6‐point Likert scale (1 = “absolutely untrue” to 6 = “absolutely true”). Our pretest (sixty‐three participants) yielded the following reliabilities: legitimacy, α = 0.72; loyalty, α = 0.91; commitment, α = 0.84; and identification, α = 0.81. The reliabilities for the present study were legitimacy, α = 0.87; loyalty, α = 0.85; commitment, α = 0.84; and identification, α = 0.84. These reliabilities indicate that respondents' answers to the questions in each questionnaire were highly related, suggesting that the questionnaire's items measure a unified factor. For this questionnaire, we also computed a mean score for each student for each of the attitudes.

We used the Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI; Thomas and Kilmann 1976) to measure conflict management behaviors but rewrote some of the items to apply specifically to student–teacher conflict (e.g., the words “the other party” were replaced by “my teacher”). The five behaviors measured were as follows:

• dominating (e.g., “I usually contend with my teacher to pursue my goal.”);

• avoiding (e.g., “I sometimes avoid taking positions that would create controversy with my teacher.”);

• obliging (e.g.,“If it makes my teacher happy I might let her maintain her way.”);

• compromising (e.g.,“I suggest solutions that both I and my teacher can accept”); and

• integrating (e.g.,“I am nearly always concerned with satisfying both our wishes.”).

The questionnaire comprised thirty pairs of items. In each pair, two of the five strategies are represented, and the respondent must choose between them. The total score for each of the five strategies ranges from 0 to 12 (a score of 12 means that this strategy was always chosen over the other four). This forced choice, compared to other conflict management measures that allow respondents to independently score the strategies (such as the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory‐II) (Rahim 1987), is designed to better capture respondents' true preferences and reduce social desirability effects (Womack 1998).¹

Respondents were asked to report their genders, grade levels, and how long they had been attending their current schools. To obtain general impressions of participants' own perceptions of their social involvement, academic performance, and involvement in conflicts, we added the following 6‐point Likert scale statements (1 = “absolutely untrue” to 6 = “absolutely true”): “I am socially popular in my class”; “I do well academically”; “In the last year, I was involved in disputes or disagreements with other students in school”; “In the last year, I was involved in disputes or disagreements with teachers in school.”

Because we sampled students from many different classes and three different schools (as noted above, our purpose was to enhance generalizability), class and school were potential higher level factors in the statistical analyses. To test whether they affected conflict management behaviors, we computed intraclass correlations (Griffin and Gonzales 1995) for that variable.² Because we found no statistically significant differences between and among the different schools and different grade levels/classes in conflict behaviors, we conducted all subsequent statistical analyses for the entire sample, regardless of school or class.

To test Hypothesis One, that PPJ would positively correlate to integrating, compromising, and obliging behaviors and negatively correlate to avoiding and dominating behaviors, we computed Pearson correlations between PPJ elements and conflict management behaviors (see Table One).

To test Hypothesis Two, that PPJ would be positively associated with attitudes of legitimacy, loyalty, commitment, and identification, we computed Pearson correlations between PPJ elements and these variables (see Table One).

As can be seen in Table One, of the collaborative behaviors (integrating, compromising, and obliging), compromising was, as we hypothesized, positively correlated with the general mean variable of PPJ and with three of its elements (neutrality, trust, and standing), and obliging was positively correlated with trust. Contrary to Hypothesis One, however, integrating was not positively correlated to PPJ.

As for noncollaborative behaviors, dominating was negatively correlated with PPJ and all its elements, as we had hypothesized, but contrary to our hypothesis, the avoiding behavior was positively correlated with standing and otherwise uncorrelated with PPJ or its elements. Our hypothesis was based on the fact that both dominating and avoiding behaviors are classified as noncollaborative (Kazemi 2007), but they clearly correlated differently with PPJ elements. We further tested the correlation between dominating and avoiding, and it was negative and strong (r = 0.62).

Our results fully supported Hypothesis Two. Perceived procedural justice and all its elements correlated positively to students' perceptions of teacher legitimacy, and to students' loyalty and commitment to, and identification with, their classes and schools, but the correlation with teacher legitimacy was particularly strong.³

These correlations indicate that the more likely a student is to perceive that his or her teacher engages in procedural justice, the more likely that student will be to respond to conflict with his or her teacher by compromising, and — to a lesser extent — by obliging and avoiding; conversely, the less likely the student will be to respond to such situations by dominating. Furthermore, the greater the student's perception of procedural justice, the more likely he or she is to perceive the teacher as legitimate and, to a lesser extent, the more likely he or she is to feel loyalty and commitment toward and identification with his or her class and school.

To test Hypothesis Three, that teacher legitimacy and student's feelings of loyalty, commitment, and identification would positively correlate to collaborative approaches to conflict and negatively correlate to avoiding and dominating approaches, we computed Pearson correlations between these variables, presented in Table Two (below).

Our hypotheses here were partially supported. As we hypothesized, these attitudes correlated to collaborative behaviors: students' perceptions of teacher legitimacy correlated positively with compromising and obliging, and students' loyalty, commitment, and identification correlated positively with integrating behaviors. Also, as we hypothesized, perceptions of teacher legitimacy correlated negatively with dominating behaviors. But contrary to our hypothesis, avoiding behavior correlated positively with legitimacy, again suggesting that these two behavioral tendencies — although both are associated with low concern for the other person in the conflict — should not be classed together, at least not among adolescents. Finally, we did find, as we hypothesized, that students' sense of identification with their class and school correlated negatively with avoiding behaviors.

The results indicate that students who feel that their teacher's authority is legitimate are more likely to compromise, oblige, and avoid, and less likely to dominate when they experience conflict with him or her. Students who feel loyalty and commitment toward, and identification with, their class and school are more likely to take a collaborative approach during conflict with their teachers and less likely to seek to avoid conflict.

We measured and controlled for the effects of a few background variables (gender, class, popularity, academic performance, and previous experience of conflict) that could be expected to have some impact on our results.

To test for the effects of grade level and gender, we conducted analyses of variance (one‐way multivariate analyses of variance [MANOVAs]). We found no differences according to grade level. We did, however, find gender differences in students' attitudes.⁴ Specifically, girls reported higher levels of commitment to and identification with their classes and schools.⁵

To test for the associations of popularity, academic performance, and previous involvement in conflict with the research variables we computed Pearson correlations, presented in Table Three.

As can be seen in Table Three, PPJ, teacher legitimacy, and student identification and commitment are correlated negatively to involvement in student–teacher conflict. Legitimacy and identification also correlated negatively to involvement in student–student conflict. Involvement in conflict, in turn, correlated positively to dominating behaviors and negatively to obliging and avoiding behaviors.

Academic performance correlated consistently and positively to PPJ, teacher legitimacy, student identification, loyalty and commitment, and integrating behaviors; for example, students who reported they performed well academically were more likely to perceive teacher legitimacy and feel loyalty toward their classmates and school, etc. Academic performance correlated negatively to obliging and avoiding; students who reported they performed well academically were less likely to engage in these behaviors when in conflict with their teacher.

Popularity correlated positively to identification, loyalty, and commitment. It also correlated positively to dominating behaviors and negatively to obliging and avoiding behaviors.

Correlations suggest effects that are measured independently although in fact they might overlap. Thus, our next step was to conduct regression analyses to examine the comparative impacts of different variables on conflict management behaviors. The regressions also indicate mediating variables.

Because of the high correlations among the different PPJ elements and among identification, loyalty, and commitment, we included only the mean scores for PPJ and for what we subsequently called “pro‐social attitudes” in these regression analyses.

In the following regression analyses, the dependent variables were the conflict management behaviors. (We conducted the regressions for each behavior separately.) Under the assumption that the students' demographic and personal characteristics, as well as their perceptions of teachers' behavior, would precede and be determinative of their attitudes, which would then guide their behaviors, we entered the independent variables into the regression steps in the following order: gender, academic performance and popularity, PPJ, teacher legitimacy and student pro‐social attitudes, involvement in conflict with teachers (CT) and involvement in conflict with students, and last, interactions among the above variables.⁶

The regressions' results are presented in Table Four. The beta values in the table, somewhat like Pearson correlations, show the strength of the independent variables' contributions to the dependent variables and indicate whether the contribution is positive (e.g., increases the likelihood of that particular response) or negative.

As can be seen in Table Four, our regression analysis not only confirmed our earlier findings, but also added to them. Of particular interest are the contributions of PPJ and teacher legitimacy. Students who perceived that their teachers were procedurally just were less likely to dominate, and more likely to avoid, compromise, and oblige, but not to integrate. But PPJ's contributions became insignificant when the contributions of teacher legitimacy (always in the same direction as PPJ) were entered, suggesting mediation. Sobel tests confirmed that student's perceptions of teacher legitimacy mediated PPJ's contributions to dominating, avoiding, and obliging (Z = 3.64, p < 0.00).⁷ Students' pro‐social attitudes (loyalty, commitment, etc.) did not mediate PPJ's effect on their conflict management behaviors (note, however, that having pro‐social attitudes still correlated negatively to avoiding behaviors and positively to integrating behaviors).

In addition, previous involvement in CT correlated positively to dominating behaviors and negatively to avoiding and obliging behaviors. We also found an interaction between how previous CT and teacher legitimacy affected dominating behavior. To interpret this interaction, we divided the sample of students into a low‐conflict and high‐conflict group (Aiken and West 1991) and found that the low‐conflict group was less likely to report engaging in dominating behavior if they perceived teacher legitimacy but students in the high conflict group were not. The above results partially supported our hypotheses: students who perceived procedural justice were less likely to report engaging in dominating behaviors and more likely to report avoiding, obliging, and compromising behaviors, but they were not more likely to report engaging in integrative behaviors. Furthermore, the impact of PPJ was mediated by student's perceptions of teacher legitimacy but not by student's pro‐social attitudes. This suggests that students who perceived their teachers to be just and attentive in their decision‐making processes also perceived the latter's authority as more legitimate but did not necessarily feel more committed or loyal toward, or identified more strongly with, their classes and schools. This perception of teacher legitimacy, in turn, seems to have affected students' behavioral responses to conflict.

We begin our discussion by reviewing the study findings regarding the direct contributions of perceived procedural justice to conflict management behaviors. Students who perceived that their teachers behaved in procedurally just ways were more likely to report that they would respond to conflict by compromising, obliging, and avoiding, and would be less likely to respond by dominating. In other words, perceiving the teacher to be fair and attentive seems to reduce high‐school students' inclination to challenge the teacher when they disagree with his or her decisions (as evidenced by decreased dominating and increased avoiding) and seems to increase their inclination to collaborate with his or her decisions, either fully (obliging) or by reaching a compromise. These results support our rationale and are similar to results recently reported among young adult students (Zigarovich and Myres 1988).

Two of our findings failed to support our hypotheses. First, PPJ did not seem to increase the likelihood that students would choose integrating responses to conflict. We think that this may be because integrating responses are more cognitively challenging and require more maturity, compared with compromising. Both strategies are associated with expressing equal (moderate or high) concern for both oneself and the other person, but integrating also calls for open discussion, effort, creativity, and the ability to engage in perspective taking (Rahim 1987), skills that are more likely to develop with age (Masten and Wright 2010). The other forms of nondominating responses to conflict (avoiding conflict, obliging, and compromising) are conceptually easier to enact because they are cognitively one‐sided — they don't require comprehending the other party's viewpoint (van de Vliert and Hordijk 1992).

Furthermore, the asymmetrical power relationships between teachers and students may well discourage students from attempting integrative responses (Seidman et al. 1972), which are active by their nature (Nelson et al., under review). Research shows that low‐power players feel less confident (Overbeck, Neale, and Govan 2000), are generally more inhibited (Keltner, Gruenfeld, and Anderson 2003), and are less likely to take the lead in interactions, especially ones with competitive potential (Magee, Galinsky, and Gruenfeld 2007). Finally, because integrative solutions may take more time, the hectic schedules of both teachers and students could discourage their practice.

We also did not predict that students who perceived procedural justice would be more likely to engage in avoiding behaviors. In previous literature avoiding was classed, together with dominating, as noncollaborative (Kazemi 2007), and some scholars have argued that avoiding behavior reflects low levels of concern for others (Rahim 1987), but others have challenged that idea (Oetzel, Garcia, and Ting‐Toomey 2008; Bear 2011). Our finding that PPJ correlates to avoiding responses — as well as the strong negative correlation we found between avoiding and dominating — suggests that the two behaviors arise from different concerns. The decision to avoid conflict may also reflect the individual's lack of power — students may perceive that their lack of formal power in the school setting means they would be unable to effectively influence decision making (Jamieson and Thomas 1974).

As we predicted, students who perceived their teachers to be unjust reported that they would be more likely to take an active form of confrontation and use a dominating style. Previous studies suggest that adolescents in individualistic cultures — as Israel has become over the past decades — often perceive confrontation as a legitimate conflict strategy and a way of expressing their autonomy and unique identity (Rosenhek, Maman, and Ben‐Ari 2000; Kaushal and Kwantes 2006; Komarraju, Dollinger, and Lovell 2008; Ben‐Ari and Hirshberg 2009). That PPJ contributed to the decreased likelihood that students would engage in dominating behaviors but an increased likelihood that they would engage in avoiding behaviors suggests that, among students, avoidance might also be a response to a decision that may be unwelcome, but made by a teacher who is perceived as fair and trustworthy, and therefore the student does not feel compelled to challenge it as he or she might if he or she perceived the process was unjust.

Our results suggest that the perception of procedural justice increases the likelihood that students will choose collaborative responses, even when they do not welcome the results (Tyler and Blader 2000). Our study also examined the mechanisms through which PPJ seems to encourage collaboration during conflict. Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that PPJ's impact on conflict management approaches would be mediated by the perception of the teacher's authority as legitimate and by students' pro‐social attitudes (loyalty, commitment, and identification) toward the class and the school.

As expected, we found that PPJ positively correlated to both teacher legitimacy and pro‐social attitudes, and that teacher legitimacy, in turn, positively correlated to compromising, obliging, and avoiding behaviors and correlated negatively to dominating behavior. Moreover, our regression analysis found that teacher legitimacy mediated PPJ's relationship to conflict behaviors. Contrary to our hypotheses, our regression analyses indicated that pro‐social attitudes (loyalty, commitment, and identification) did not, in fact, contribute to the above strategies and did not mediate PPJ's contributions. They did, however, stand out as the only variable correlated to integrating behaviors. As noted above, several factors (emotional and cognitive development, power asymmetry, time pressures) may explain why this highly collaborative style is less likely to be implemented by students and less likely to be affected by their perceptions of their teachers. The positive association between pro‐social attitudes and integrative behaviors suggests that students who feel a strong sense of belonging may feel that they can resolve differences with their teachers through an open, creative discussion and may also be more adept at perceiving things from their teachers' perspectives.

We would like to also note some impacts of background variables on students' attitudes and conflict management behaviors. We found that students who reported being popular among their peers also reported feeling higher commitment and loyalty to and identification with class and school, and were more likely to be dominating and less likely to be avoiding and obliging during conflict with their teachers. This indicates that popularity is emotionally and socially reassuring, but that it also encourages students to stand up to their teachers, maybe because their popularity induces a sense of personal power (Mayeux and Cillessen 2008). This finding is in line with previous literature suggesting that adolescent popularity also has a “dark side” because it encourages more deviant behavior (e.g., Allen et al. 2005).

We also found that girls were more likely than boys to engage in integrating behaviors, suggesting that they were more likely to engage in creative, open discussion with their teachers about their disagreements and also more likely to take the latter's point of view. Because these behaviors (as we have elaborated earlier) require cognitive‐emotional maturity and creative, open discussion, the gender difference we found supports previous literature on females' superior socio‐emotional and verbal abilities (see Fisher 1999). Notably, we did not find gender effects on dominating, avoiding, obliging, or compromising, which challenges common gender stereotypes and gender‐related social expectations (Bem 1974; Eagly 1987; Amanatullah and Morris 2010), as well as past research on gender and negotiation or conflict management (Holt and DeVore 2005; Thomas, Thomas, and Schaubhut 1974; Nelson et al., under review).

Our study highlights the important role that PPJ can play in student–teacher conflicts and in the ways that adolescents respond to these conflicts. It also suggests that teacher legitimacy is an important mediator between PPJ and its relationship to conflict behavior. In other words, teachers who create the perception of procedural justice by making decisions fairly and communicating them attentively, by listening to students, and by attending to their needs validate their own authority as legitimate, which makes students less likely to engage in dominating conflict behavior and more likely to accept teachers' decisions.

Beyond promoting the perception of legitimacy, PPJ may promote cooperative conflict behavior in several other ways. By attending to the student respectfully, the teacher may be addressing her or his emotional needs, which could diminish the impact of an unwelcome decision. Social learning theory (Bandura 1973; Brown et al. 2005) suggests that the students of a fair and attentive teacher would tend to imitate her or his behavior, which could promote more collaborative approaches to conflict.

According to attachment theory (Bowlby 1969, 1973; Bergin and Bergin 2009), an attentive caregiver or authority figure helps a child develop a sense of security (by becoming a “secure base” for him or her), and a secure individual is better able to resolve problems and differences in relationships without damaging the relationship or diminishing his or her own sense of autonomy (Allen and Land 1999). For example, a previous study showed that secure adolescents tended to be involved in fewer conflicts than their insecure peers (Ben‐Ari and Hirshberg 2009), and a study among adults showed that secure disputants used more constructive language during mediation proceedings than did insecure disputants (Nelson, Albeck‐Solomon, and Ben‐Ari 2011).

Studies have shown that high school teachers can promote a sense of security in their students, which can affect students' academic performance, emotional states, and tendencies to engage in aggressive and violent behavior (Howes and Ritchie 1999; Beishuizzen et al. 2001; Hamre and Pianta 2001; Sabol and Pianta 1994; Verschueren and Kooman 2010). The qualities of an authority figure who employs procedural justice are similar to those of a caretaker who provides a “secure base” (trustworthy, attentive, etc.). Thus, our findings may suggest that teachers who honor the principles of procedural justice may become trusted caregivers to their students, who become more securely attached to them, so that even in conflict situations they may be more inclined to seek collaborative solutions to the conflicts they experience with their teachers.

This study has some important limitations. It is correlational and thus cannot firmly establish PPJ's causal effects on conflict management behavior. Another important limitation is that the results are based on self‐assessments rather than direct observations of actual conflict behavior (Holland, Verplanken, and Van Knippenberg 2002). Individuals may not behave as they say they will. They may respond in ways that they perceive are socially desirable (Spector 1996), and adolescents, in particular, may not have developed the self‐awareness to predict how they might behave in hypothetical situations. Although an individual's self‐perception is a critical component of many conflict studies, research that looks at real conflict behavior is often necessary to establish the relationship between what we think and feel about conflict and what we actually do in conflict.

In addition, other factors that this study did not examine could be relevant to teacher–student conflict behavior. As we have suggested above, attachment and social learning may be relevant.

Other limitations concern the characteristics of our sample. Research conclusions are typically limited to the culture in which the research was carried, and the current research is no exception. We note more specifically the limitations related to age: we included adolescents in the tenth to twelfth grades. As we discussed earlier, emotional and cognitive development affects conflict management. We found no differences between our younger and older participants, but a more diverse range of ages would likely reveal developmental effects.

All the schools in this sample were public schools that adhere to governmental educational policies, where teachers are required to represent these policies and are constrained by them. Some private schools in Israel tend to be smaller in size and also foster more democratic environments. These usually create more intimate settings that encourage teachers' personal expression. It would be interesting to study the effects of PPJ in such environments, specifically, whether procedural justice would enhance collaboration and cooperation through the mechanism of increasing students' loyalty, commitment, and identification, and not only by enhancing teacher legitimacy.

Finally, this study looked at procedural justice and conflict in the classroom from the perspective of students. Developing a fuller picture of conflict between teachers and students, and what measures teachers can take to develop effective conflict management skills in their students, would also require studying the phenomena from the perspective of teachers.

Our study has some obvious implications for teaching practice. It strongly suggests that teacher education programs should include discussion of perceived procedural justice and its role in reducing conflict. It also suggests that schools should further encourage these practices in both their policy making and as part of teachers' ongoing professional development. Incorporating these principles in their teaching should help teachers bring more peace to their classrooms. Respect for procedural justice can help teachers build constructive working relationships with their students and avoid the unnecessary conflict — and successfully resolve the unavoidable conflict — that too often interfere with learning.