How individuals form justice perceptions has been a fundamental question in justice research. While most justice researchers treat justice perceptions as results of deliberate cognitive process, very few studies examined the role of affect in justice perception formation. Among these studies, most of them perceive affect as outcomes of justice; others investigating the predicting role of affect in justice perceptions were far from enough, either due to lack of solid theoretical foundation or due to the limitation of methodology. Based on the Affect Infusion Model, this dissertation focused on exploring the predicting role of affect in justice perception formation and three moderating contextual factors, including personal relevance, emotional control, and group context. A pilot study and two experimental studies, with both student sample and employee sample, were conducted. Structural equation modeling, ANOVA and regression were employed to test the hypotheses.;Results showed that people in positive affective states perceived higher distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice than their counterparts in negative affective states. Moreover, personal relevance moderated the relationships between affect and distributive justice and procedural justice so that the relationships above were enhanced as personal relevance increased. It is also suggested that individuals constrained the influence of their affect on procedural justice in group context, compared to the case when they make individual judgment. Surprisingly, the moderating effect of emotional control was not found as predicted. Results, implications, limitations as well as future directions were discussed.
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