A Time for Cognitive Change: The Reappraisal of Anger, Interpersonal Injustice, and Counterproductive Work Behaviors

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2012This dissertation looks to the emotional regulation literature, specifically the cognitive change stage (i.e. reappraisal) of Gross's (1998) process model of emotional regulation, to help employees adaptively regulate their justice perceptions. Thus, the focus of this dissertation is to explore the influence of reappraisal training on anger and interpersonal justice perceptions, and subsequently, on counterproductive workplace behavior. By extending Gross's (1998) work on reappraisal to the context of organizational justice, this dissertation contributes to theory by exploring adaptive forms of employee justice regulation and by being among the first to examine reappraisal in the context of organizational justice and deviance. In this dissertation, two studies were conducted to test the effect of reappraisal training on experienced anger, interpersonal justice perceptions, and counterproductive workplace behaviors. Significant moderating effects suggest that this dissertation helps to explain how reappraisal training may influence different groups of people. Post-hoc analyses revealed encouraging results for the theoretical model. To conclude, I provide theoretical and practical limitations of the dissertation and offer directions for future research

A new voice in China

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Help yourself by helping others: The joint impact of group member organizational citizenship behaviors and group cohesiveness on group member objective task performance change

This paper examines how a group member\u27s individual-targeted citizenship behavior (OCBI) and organization-targeted citizenship behavior (OCBO) interact with a salient group-level contextual variable, group cohesiveness, to foster positive change for that group member, starting with job self-efficacy change, and followed by objective task performance change. Over a span of 6 months, we engaged in multilevel, multisource, multistage data collection and surveyed 587 members in 83 work groups. Our results indicate that a group member\u27s OCBI, in comparison with OCBO, is more positively related to his or her job self-efficacy change. Group cohesiveness was found to attenuate the relationship between a group member\u27s OCBI and job self-efficacy change, and conversely, to accentuate the relationship between a group member\u27s OCBO and job self-efficacy change. Furthermore, a group member\u27s job self-efficacy change mediated the interactive effects of the group member\u27s OCBI and group cohesiveness (as well as the group member\u27s OCBO and group cohesiveness) on his or her objective task performance change

Justice perceptions and reappraisal: A path to preserving employee resilience

Lower levels of organizational justice relative to one’s peers can negatively influence an employee’s well-being, diminish work satisfaction, and increase apathy. However, not all employees that perceive lower organizational justice respond in the same way. Using affective events theory as a theoretical framework, we draw on the organizational justice, resilience, and emotions literatures to identify a critical factor that may facilitate adaptive responses to lower organizational justice and preserve employee resilience. We propose that cognitive reappraisal, an antecedent-focused emotional regulation strategy, may attenuate the negative impact of lower organizational justice on employee resilience, and ultimately, protect other critical employee outcomes (i.e employee psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and citizenship behavior). Across two large field surveys of employees, we find support for our model

Temporal Dynamics of Uncertainty Cause Anxiety and Avoidance

Alfred Hitchcock, film director and "Master of Suspense," observed that terror is not driven by a negative event, but "only in the anticipation of it." This observation is not restricted to the movies: Anxiety builds when we anticipate uncertain negative events, and heightened reactivity during uncertain threat anticipation is a transdiagnostic marker of anxiety (Grupe & Nitschke, 2013; Holley & Fox, 2022; Hur et al., 2020; Krain et al., 2008; Simmons et al., 2008; Yassa et al., 2012). Here, we manipulate the temporal dynamics of an uncertain threat to demonstrate how the evolving expectation of threat can lead people to forgo rewards and experience fear/anxiety. Specifically, we show that increased "hazard rate," which can build during periods of uncertainty, promotes a tendency to avoid threatening contexts while increasing fear/anxiety. These results provide insight into why the anticipation of temporally uncertain threats elicits fear/anxiety, and reframe the underlying causes of related psychopathology

It\u27s Not Me, It\u27s Not You, It\u27s Us! An Empirical Examination of Relational Attributions

It has recently been suggested that attribution theory expand its locus of causality dimension beyond internal and external attributions to include relational (i.e., interpersonal) attributions (Eberly, Holley, Johnson, & Mitchell, 2011). The current investigation was designed to empirically focus on relationship dynamics, specifically where 1 member of the relationship receives negative performance-related feedback. We use quantitative and qualitative data from 7 samples (5 samples for scale validation in Study 1 and 2 for hypothesis testing in Studies 2 and 3) that provide empirical support for the existence and impact of relational attributions. Our findings identify the circumstances under which relational attributions are likely to be formed and indicate that relational attributions are related to relational improvement behaviors, particularly when employees are of the same sex as their relationship partner and perceive sufficient time and energy to engage in relational improvement efforts. A personal attribute, relational self, contrary to expectations, did not moderate the link between relational attributions and improvement behaviors. These findings make an important contribution to attribution theory by providing evidence for the criticality of relational attributions within interdependent work relationships