Search

In this paper we explore the antecedents and consequences of employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) through the lens of moral decoupling—a moral reasoning process whereby individuals separate their perceptions of morality from their perceptions of performance. First, we argue that employees increase their engagement in UPBs when they (1) see their supervisors doing the same and (2) believe that their supervisors endorse moral decoupling. Second, we argue that employees’ UPBs are only positively related to supervisors’ evaluations of their job performance when supervisors themselves report that they morally decouple. We test these hypotheses in a field sample of supervisor–employee dyads and two experimental studies. This combination of studies highlights the complex link between ethics and perceptions of performance within organizations.

In this paper we examine how leaders' perceptions of the instrumental benefits of abusive supervision shape their tendencies to abuse their employees. We posit that leaders who believe abuse has a positive impact on employee performance will engage in more abusive supervision than their peers, with downstream implications for employees' counterproductive work behaviors. Furthermore, we position leader empathic concern as a boundary condition, whereby empathic concern mitigates the effects of leaders' perceptions of abusive supervision's instrumentality. Data from two studies employing both experimental and field survey designs offer convergent support for our hypotheses. Overall, our findings challenge the prevailing view that abusive supervision is primarily motivated by a desire to aggress, instead demonstrating that leaders sometimes abuse their employees in the pursuit of more pro-organizational goals.

In this article we employ a trait activation framework to examine how unfairness perceptions influence narcissistic leaders' self-interested behavior, and the downstream implications of these effects for employees' pro-social and voice behaviors. Specifically, we propose that narcissistic leaders are particularly likely to engage in self-interested behavior when they perceive that their organizations treat them unfairly, and that this self-interested behavior in turn decreases followers' pro-social behavior and voice. Data from a multisource, time-lagged survey of 211 team leaders and 1,205 subordinates provided support for the hypothesized model. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

In rapidly developing nations such as China, air pollution is a growing concern. Nonetheless, theory and data on the impact of air pollution on employee behavior are essentially nonexistent. In this paper we employ a diary methodology to examine the within-individual effects of air pollution appraisals on employees’ daily self-control resources and behavior. Multilevel data collected across two weeks from 155 employees located in urban China indicate that appraisals of air pollution severity deplete employees’ self-control resources. This depletion in turn mediates the effects of air pollution appraisals on employee behavior, resulting in decreased organizational citizenship behavior and increased counterproductive work behavior. In support of the depletion perspective, the effects of air pollution appraisals are moderated by employees’ trait self-control, and hold even after controlling for employees’ daily negative affectivity and objective levels of air pollution. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

People may express a variety of emotions after committing a transgression. Through 6 empirical studies and a meta-analysis, we investigate how the perceived authenticity of such emotional displays and resulting levels of trust are shaped by the transgressor's power. Past findings suggest that individuals with power tend to be more authentic because they have more freedom to act on the basis of their own personal inclinations. Yet, our findings reveal that (a) a transgressor's display of emotion is perceived to be less authentic when that party's power is high rather than low; (b) this perception of emotional authenticity, in turn, directly influences (and mediates) the level of trust in that party; and (c) perceivers ultimately exert less effort when asked to make a case for leniency toward high rather than low-power transgressors. This tendency to discount the emotional authenticity of the powerful was found to arise from power increasing the transgressor's perceived level of emotional control and strategic motivation, rather than a host of alternative mechanisms. These results were also found across different types of emotions (sadness, anger, fear, happiness, and neutral), expressive modalities, operationalizations of the transgression, and participant populations. Altogether, our findings demonstrate that besides the wealth of benefits power can afford, it also comes with a notable downside. The findings, furthermore, extend past research on perceived emotional authenticity, which has focused on how and when specific emotions are expressed, by revealing how this perception can depend on considerations that have nothing to do with the expression itself. (PsycINFO Database Record

Gratitude is a valuable emotion with an array of functional outcomes. Nonetheless, research on gratitude in organizations is limited. In this article we develop a multilevel model of gratitude composed of episodic gratitude at the event level, persistent gratitude at the individual level, and collective gratitude at the organizational level. We then consider the types of human resource initiatives that organizations can develop to cultivate employee gratitude and the contingencies of gratitude’s emergence at the individual and organizational levels of analysis. Finally, we elucidate the benefits of gratitude for organizations and their employees. The result is a deeper understanding of how gratitude unfolds in organizations and the role that organizations themselves can play in influencing emotions at multiple levels in the workplace.

The current research included 7 studies testing a model of interpersonal processes when people disclose to their close relationship partners ("confidants") about their conflicts involving adversaries outside the dyad. The model posits that confidants who feel close to disclosers tend to adopt goals to be responsive to disclosers during these interactions, which motivates them to validate disclosers' negativity toward their adversaries. Disclosers interpret this validation of negativity as responsive, which motivates them to continue confiding in these confidants, but also respond to this behavior with more negative moral evaluations of their adversaries, reduced willingness to forgive their adversaries, and reduced commitment to maintaining a relationship with their adversaries. Results of 3 cross-sectional studies, 3 experiments, and a behavioral observation study support this model. This research suggests potential drawbacks of partner responsiveness during discussions of conflicts, and suggests processes through which people reward, draw closer to, and depend on partners who validate negativity and, consequently, undermine conflict resolution with others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Summary Past research suggests that interactional justice plays a pivotal role in facilitating high-quality leader–member exchange (LMX), with downstream implications for employee performance. However, the broader context in which these effects unfold has received scarce attention. Drawing from deontic justice and social exchange theories, we suggest that interactional justice differentiation is an important contextual moderator of the link between interactional justice and LMX. Specifically, we argue that high interactional justice differentiation attenuates the link between interactional justice and LMX, in turn influencing the effects of interactional justice on employee task and creative performance. Results from two studies employing both experimental and multisource, multilevel survey designs provide convergent support for the hypothesized model. We conclude by highlighting several key theoretical and practical implications of our findings. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this study, we examined how leaders' customer interactions influence their tendency to abuse their followers. Specifically, we drew from ego-depletion theory to suggest that surface acting during customer interactions depletes leaders of their self-control resources, resulting in elevated levels of abusive supervision. Furthermore, we hypothesized that the effect of surface acting on abusive supervision is moderated by leaders' trait self-control, such that leaders with high trait self-control will be less affected by the depleting effects of surface acting than their peers. Results from a multiwave, multisource leader-follower dyad study in the service and sales industries provided support for our hypotheses. This research contributes to several literatures, particularly to an emerging area of study--the antecedents of leaders' abusive behaviors.

We examined properties of culture-level personality traits in ratings of targets (N = 5,109) aged 12 to 17 in 24 cultures. Aggregate scores were generalizable across gender, age, and relationship groups and showed convergence with culture-level scores from previous studies of self-reports and observer ratings of adults, but they were unrelated to national character stereotypes. Trait profiles also showed cross-study agreement within most cultures, eight of which had not previously been studied. Multidimensional scaling showed that Western and non-Western cultures clustered along a dimension related to Extraversion. A culture-level factor analysis replicated earlier findings of a broad Extraversion factor, but generally resembled the factor structure found in individuals. Continued analysis of aggregate personality scores is warranted.

Conditioning methodologies associated with the psychology of learning are suggested as a new strategy to investigate behavior of the assassin bug Rhodnius prolixus, which is the main vector of Chagas disease in Venezuela. Chagas disease is the fourth leading cause of death in Latin America, as it causes severe chronic illness and approximately 43,000 deaths per year. To illustrate this strategy, two preliminary experiments are reported. In the first, Pavlovian conditioning was examined by pairing an olfactory conditioned stimulus with a temperature unconditioned stimulus. A temperature of 42°C elicits a complex behavioral sequence in R. prolixus consisting of proboscis extension and crawling. Over the course of 12 training trials, this behavioral sequence was not elicited by an olfactory conditioned stimulus. In the second experiment, a latent inhibition paradigm was used to pre-expose R. prolixus to an olfactory conditioned stimulus before pairing the odor with temperature. Over the course of training, an effect of pre-exposure was found. Suggestions for research are discussed and potential conditioned and unconditioned stimuli identified.