Cyber incivility and spillover effects: A proposed mediation model

Background Incivility is pervasive in the workplace, affecting upwards of 96% of employees across their work lives, with approximately 50% of employees indicating they experience incivility regularly, on a weekly basis. Recent research indicates that given the massive shift to virtual work, the incidence and impact of cyber incivility associated with work is an increasing issue. Although the individual and organizational effects of cyber incivility on work outcomes are well researched, less is known about how this low-intensity, deviant behavior affects the target of cyber incivility in other domains, such as the home domain. The present study will examine the association of cyber incivility on target angry and withdrawn behaviors at home, through the spillover mechanism of affective rumination via affective events theory. It is hypothesized that daily experienced cyber incivility will be positively associated with both angry behavior (H1) and withdrawal behavior (H2) at home. Additionally, work-related affective rumination is hypothesized to mediate the relationship between daily experienced cyber incivility and both aggression (H3a) and withdrawal (H3b) at home. Proposed Method Approximately 100 participants who work full-time will be enrolled in the study via Prolific Academic, an online participant crowdsourcing site. To date, the sample size consists of 63 participants who have completed 10-day daily surveys. Participants will be pre-screened to ensure they are 18 or older, work full-time, and interact with coworkers and supervisors daily. Proposed Analyses Hypotheses H1-H3b will be assessed using multilevel path analysis because of the hierarchical nature of the data (daily observations will be nested within individuals). Daily variables (level 1) will be person-mean centered, while between-person variables (e.g., aggregate means of constructs of interest, demographics, and trait characteristics) will be grand-mean centered and controlled for at the between-person level (level 2). Because mediation is hypothesized, indirect effects will be examined using bootstrapped estimates and confidence interval coverage. Expected Results & Implications Results from this study are expected to provide support for the episodic occurrence of work-related cyber incivility and its effects on at-home behavior, providing support for spillover effects between work and home. This is significant because work-related cyber incivility is on the rise with the shift to virtual work and is an understudied phenomenon. Understanding how experienced work-related cyber incivility impacts employees at home behavior will allow for the development of targeted interventions

Exploring psychological detachment, work-related rumination and role-centrality in working from home

Background The change in environment and commute from work to home help to signal psychological detachment, defined by physically and mentally disengaging from work-related thoughts (Smit, 2016). The combination of modern communication technology and a global pandemic has pushed many employees into working from home regularly, eliminating these signals for psychological detachment. Using effort-recovery theory (Meijman & Mulder, 1998), which suggests that investment of mental resources to deal with work-related demands leads to depletion, we hypothesize that work-related rumination will be associated with the inability to psychologically detach from work (Martin & Tesser, 1996). In addition, role centrality is hypothesized to moderate the relationship between work-related rumination and psychological detachment. Greater work-role centrality should make it harder to psychologically detach while at home, as individuals with greater work-role centrality place more emphasis on their work roles (Thoits, 1992; Krause, 1994). Furthermore, research suggests that women experience higher levels of work interference with family than men, even when job demands are equivalent (Mcelwain et al., 2005), therefore we will examine whether gender differences exist in these relationships. See Figure 1 for the proposed theoretical model. Method Participants will include 167 tenure-track and tenured academics employed by U.S. higher education institutions who completed a survey between April-May 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instructors and contingent faculty were unable to participate due to disparities in performance appraisal and promotion for rank. A Qualtrics link was sent to department heads from multiple universities and shared amongst their social networks. The survey consisted work and personal demographics, as well measures assessing role centrality (Paullay et al., 1994); psychological detachment (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007); and work-related affective rumination (Cropley et al., 2008). Proposed Analyses Data will need to be cleaned and coded before using SPSS and M+ for statistical analysis. Analysis will include stepwise regression, nested model comparison to examine gender differences, and descriptive statistics such as correlation analysis to understand the sample. Preliminary Discussion We expect to see a negative association between psychological detachment and work-related rumination. Role centrality is expected to moderate the relationship between work-related rumination and psychological detachment such that those whose role centrality is focused on work will experience less psychological detachment. We also expect gender differences in these relationships because of the gender discrepancies in the division of household responsibilities. Our study will aid in understanding how this evolving work-family conflict affects well-being and the ability to psychologically detach from work responsibilities, as well as the gender differences involved in these relationships

A PROCESS MODEL OF WORKPLACE CYBER INCIVILITY SPILLOVER

Cyber incivility is a pervasive problem, affecting individuals not only while at work but also at home. It has been found to spillover to the home domain in the form of aggression and withdrawal, affecting the target and their partner, but the mechanism behind this association has not been examined. This study examines work-related affective rumination as a spillover mechanism between experienced cyber incivility and aggressive and withdrawn behaviors at home. I hypothesized that daily experienced cyber incivility will be positively associated with both aggressive behavior and withdrawn behavior at home, and work-related affective rumination will mediate this relationship. Using data collected from 56 participants via baseline and 10-day daily diary survey, I found significant within-person associations between cyber incivility and aggressive and withdrawn behavior. Additionally, it was observed that on days when individuals experienced cyber incivility, affective rumination acted as a partial mediator, meaning that the increase in rumination was associated with a subsequent increase in the spillover of aggression and withdrawn behavior into the home. Implications for research and practice are discussed