Should I stay or should I go : the effects of leave context on interpersonal meta-accuracy

Advisors: Alecia M. Santuzzi.Committee members: Lisa Finkelstein; John Skowronski.As employees navigate work and home life demands, they look to organizational policies and procedures to help in this regard. However, past research on reactions to employees taking advantage of such policies as well as expected evaluations from others, is decidedly mixed. In two studies, I examined the social cognitive mechanisms and subsequent boundary conditions that determine whether coworkers have negative reactions to leaving an interpersonal task and whether the target person expects negative reactions for doing so. The results from Study 1 showed that participants anticipate they will be evaluated more positively when the reason for leaving a shared task is due to illness rather than dislike of the task. Further, participants anticipated that they would be evaluated as having less self-discipline when the leave was voluntary rather than involuntary. In Study 2, the observed mean differences from Study 1 were not replicated. Further, metaperceptions (anticipated evaluations from the partner) were unrelated to partners' evaluations of self-discipline, conscientiousness, and trustworthiness, suggesting low meta-accuracy on these traits. However a positive relationship between metaperceptions and evaluations was observed for likeability. This relationship was moderated by choice such that meta-accuracy increased when participants were told they would be leaving involuntarily vs. voluntarily.M.A. (Master of Arts