When bosses are abusive, how employees interpret their motives makes a difference: study
A new UBC Sauder School of Business study shows that depending on how employees understand their boss' motivation, employees can feel anger or guilt, and consequently, react differently to abusive supervision.
Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was a famously harsh corporate leader, one who pushed his employees to extremes to achieve the company's lofty aims.
But while many aspiring leaders still believe that the "tough love" approach is effective, a new study from UBC Sauder shows that, even when abusive leadership is meant to push employees to new heights, it can land them in deep lows in the long term.
Abusive supervision -- which includes behaviours like yelling at employees, giving them the silent treatment, or putting them down in front of their coworkers -- has long been linked with psychological distress, increased turnover and decreased performance.
But a key question hadn't been properly examined: do employees respond differently when their supervisor's abuse is motivated by different reasons?
For the study, titled The Whiplash Effect: The (Moderating) Role of Attributed Motives in Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Abusive Supervision, researchers conducted three studies on three continents.
For the first, which involved 1,000 soldiers and officers in the Chinese military, subordinates filled out surveys about the supervision they experienced, the emotions they felt, and how they responded.
The second was a laboratory experiment that involved 156 students and employees at a large American university. There, participants were given different roles as subordinates in a consulting firm, and were subjected to different forms of supervision -- some abusive and some non-abusive -- and were given hints about their supervisors' motivations.
They were also given the opportunity to participate in deviant behaviours against the supervisor, or engage in more positive "organizational citizenship behaviours," or OCBs (helpful actions that go beyond an employee's contract, such as assisting a co-worker with a project, or participating in workplace charity drives).
A third study had 325 employees and supervisors at a Swedish luxury car company fill out daily surveys for three weeks -- for the subordinates, about the abusive supervision they experienced and the emotions they felt, and for the supervisors, about the OCBs and deviant behaviours they observed.
Across all three studies, the researchers found that when employees think their supervisors' abusive actions are motivated by a desire to inflict harm, they are more likely to feel angry.
When subordinates believe their leaders are prodding employees to improve performance, however, they are more likely to feel guilt.
"When you feel like your supervisor is pushing you really hard, it's abusive, and you feel angry. But when they want to motivate you and improve your performance, employees have a strong feeling of guilt," explains UBC Sauder Assistant Professor Lingtao Yu (he, him, his), who named the study after the Oscar-winning film Whiplash, which follows an abusive band teacher and a student he's pushing to extremes.
"They think, 'Maybe there is a gap between what I do and what they expect. Maybe there's room for me to improve.'"
Those different emotions, in turn, lead to different behaviours. Employees who feel their bosses are "out to get them" are more likely to engage in devious or destructive behaviours and less likely to engage in more positive organizational citizenship behaviours, or OCBs.
Those who feel their leaders are pushing them to do better are less likely to act deviously and more drawn to positive corporate behaviours.
"People feel there's something they've done, or that they haven't done enough, so it's not entirely attributed to the other person. They may take some responsibility," explains Professor Yu, who coauthored the study with University of Minnesota Professor Michelle Duffy.
"So, guilt will actually trigger more prosocial behaviors, because the employee wants to do something to rebuild the relationship with the supervisor."
The findings are especially important given that, according to previous research, a third of U.S. employees are estimated to experience abusive supervision, and 45 percent of Europeans can recall an instance when they were either the target of supervisory abuse or observed it.
The study also found people's feelings of guilt don't last, so Professor Yu emphasizes that while the results-driven form of abusive supervision can sometimes have short-term benefits, in the long run it simply doesn't pay -- especially since abusive leadership can cost companies millions in lawsuits, health expenses, and productivity loss.
"Even if you have good intentions, you still want to be more mindful about your leadership behaviour -- and there are many other tools you can use to stimulate your employees' performance," he says. "Abusive leadership should not be the one you choose."
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A new UBC Sauder School of Business study shows that depending on how employees understand their boss' motivation, employees can feel anger or guilt, and consequently, react differently to abusive supervision.
Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was a famously harsh corporate leader, one who pushed his employees to extremes to achieve the company's lofty aims.
But while many aspiring leaders still believe that the "tough love" approach is effective, a new study from UBC Sauder shows that, even when abusive leadership is meant to push employees to new heights, it can land them in deep lows in the long term.
Abusive supervision -- which includes behaviours like yelling at employees, giving them the silent treatment, or putting them down in front of their coworkers -- has long been linked with psychological distress, increased turnover and decreased performance.
But a key question hadn't been properly examined: do employees respond differently when their supervisor's abuse is motivated by different reasons?
For the study, titled The Whiplash Effect: The (Moderating) Role of Attributed Motives in Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Abusive Supervision, researchers conducted three studies on three continents.
For the first, which involved 1,000 soldiers and officers in the Chinese military, subordinates filled out surveys about the supervision they experienced, the emotions they felt, and how they responded.
The second was a laboratory experiment that involved 156 students and employees at a large American university. There, participants were given different roles as subordinates in a consulting firm, and were subjected to different forms of supervision -- some abusive and some non-abusive -- and were given hints about their supervisors' motivations.
They were also given the opportunity to participate in deviant behaviours against the supervisor, or engage in more positive "organizational citizenship behaviours," or OCBs (helpful actions that go beyond an employee's contract, such as assisting a co-worker with a project, or participating in workplace charity drives).
A third study had 325 employees and supervisors at a Swedish luxury car company fill out daily surveys for three weeks -- for the subordinates, about the abusive supervision they experienced and the emotions they felt, and for the supervisors, about the OCBs and deviant behaviours they observed.
Across all three studies, the researchers found that when employees think their supervisors' abusive actions are motivated by a desire to inflict harm, they are more likely to feel angry.
When subordinates believe their leaders are prodding employees to improve performance, however, they are more likely to feel guilt.
"When you feel like your supervisor is pushing you really hard, it's abusive, and you feel angry. But when they want to motivate you and improve your performance, employees have a strong feeling of guilt," explains UBC Sauder Assistant Professor Lingtao Yu (he, him, his), who named the study after the Oscar-winning film Whiplash, which follows an abusive band teacher and a student he's pushing to extremes.
"They think, 'Maybe there is a gap between what I do and what they expect. Maybe there's room for me to improve.'"
Those different emotions, in turn, lead to different behaviours. Employees who feel their bosses are "out to get them" are more likely to engage in devious or destructive behaviours and less likely to engage in more positive organizational citizenship behaviours, or OCBs.
Those who feel their leaders are pushing them to do better are less likely to act deviously and more drawn to positive corporate behaviours.
"People feel there's something they've done, or that they haven't done enough, so it's not entirely attributed to the other person. They may take some responsibility," explains Professor Yu, who coauthored the study with University of Minnesota Professor Michelle Duffy.
"So, guilt will actually trigger more prosocial behaviors, because the employee wants to do something to rebuild the relationship with the supervisor."
The findings are especially important given that, according to previous research, a third of U.S. employees are estimated to experience abusive supervision, and 45 percent of Europeans can recall an instance when they were either the target of supervisory abuse or observed it.
The study also found people's feelings of guilt don't last, so Professor Yu emphasizes that while the results-driven form of abusive supervision can sometimes have short-term benefits, in the long run it simply doesn't pay -- especially since abusive leadership can cost companies millions in lawsuits, health expenses, and productivity loss.
"Even if you have good intentions, you still want to be more mindful about your leadership behaviour -- and there are many other tools you can use to stimulate your employees' performance," he says. "Abusive leadership should not be the one you choose."
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The outsized impacts of rudeness in the workplace
New study finds rudeness can boost negative emotions, narrowing workers' perceptions and incurring biases in judgment
Rude behavior is a common form of insensitive and disrespectful conduct that harms employees' performance in the workplace. In a new study, researchers examined the impact of rude behavior on how individuals make critical decisions. The study found that in certain situations, these behaviors can have deadly consequences.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the University of Florida (UF), the University of Maryland, Envision Physician Services, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
The researchers looked at the effect of rudeness on workers' tendency to engage in a judgment bias called anchoring, which is the tendency to rely too heavily or fixate on one piece of information when making a decision.
"While small insults and other forms of rude behavior might seem relatively harmless compared to more serious forms of aggression, our findings suggest that they can have serious consequences," says Binyamin Cooper, a Postdoctoral Fellow at CMU's Tepper School of Business and a member of the Collaboration and Conflict Research Lab, who led the study. "Our work demonstrates how dangerous these seemingly minor behaviors can be, whether they are experienced directly or even if people just observer incidental rudeness.
"Let's say that a doctor walks into a patient's room for the first time, and a family member says 'I think he's having a heart attack,'" says Cooper. "Our findings suggest that if on the way to see the patient, the doctor witnessed a rude event between two other people, he or she would be significantly more likely to settle on a diagnosis of a heart attack, even if that is incorrect."
Cooper and his colleagues tested the effects of rudeness on anchoring in four studies across different settings--from medical simulations to negotiations and general judgment tasks. In one study, anesthesiology residents participated in a simulation on life-sized anatomical human models. The simulation was set up to suggest that a patient could have an allergic reaction to one of his medications, which served as the anchor. Before the simulation started, half the residents witnessed a senior doctor enter the room and yell at their instructor for missing a meeting, while the other half witnessed a neutral interaction.
When the patient's condition began to deteriorate later in the simulation, the residents who were exposed to the rude interaction were more likely to diagnose allergic shock, when in reality the patient was bleeding internally, and the diagnosis affected how they administered care. The study also showed that the reason rudeness was so harmful was that it is related to increased high arousal of negative emotions (such as irritability and distress), which predicted the tendency to engage in anchoring.
The practical implications of the study's findings are many, the authors note. For example, physicians exposed to rudeness may incorrectly treat patients for ailments they do not have, while being unaware of their incorrect diagnosis or the reasons underlying it. "Making the wrong decision at a critical moment means that people end up spending too much time going down the wrong path," explains Cooper. "If there's not enough time to realize the error and make up for it, this could be deadly."
In demonstrating that encounters with rudeness cause anchoring, the authors call on managers and organizations to take steps to reduce rudeness among employees, particularly in high-stakes situations where consequences of judgment errors associated with anchoring can be catastrophic. The authors also identified steps organizations can take to mitigate the effects of rudeness.
For example, organizations can train employees to use two skills--perspective taking and information elaboration--to better equip them to deal with the pernicious effects of exposure to rudeness. Because exposure to rude behavior makes people more likely to narrow their perspectives on their own personal experience, having employees imagine themselves viewing the same problem from another's point of view distances them from the strong feelings that they would overwise experience, according to the authors.
Another option is to practice information elaboration by having employees practice identifying the task at hand, and then taking a few moments to stop and think what information they need to help them make a decision.
"These active steps may seem small, but our work shows that organizations can use them to mitigate the harmful consequences associated with rudeness, which can make a big difference," suggests Cooper. "And they can be used in fields other than medicine, including negotiations, legal sentencing, financial forecasting, social exchange relationships, and pricing decisions."
The authors acknowledge several limitations to their study. First, they focused on anchoring as one of the most common decisions-making biases, but it remains to be seen if the effect of rudeness affects other decision-making biases. Second, except for perspective taking and information elaboration, their study did not examine empathy, experience, or other dispositional and contextual factors that may influence the relationship between rudeness and negative emotions.
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