Within the justice literature, process fairness has been shown to have more of an effect on a wide variety of beliefs and behaviors in the face of greater personal uncertainty. Within the self-handicapping literature, it has been suggested that individuals who experience greater personal uncertainty are more likely to engage in self-handicapping. In attempting to integrate these two literatures, the present research examined high process fairness as a possible antidote to self-handicapping, especially under conditions of greater personal uncertainty. As predicted, in two methodologically different studies we found that personal uncertainty moderated the relationship between process fairness and self-handicapping, such that the tendency for higher process fairness to reduce self-handicapping was stronger when personal uncertainty was relatively high. Implications for the self-handicapping and justice literatures are discussed, as are limitations and practical implications.
