Interpersonal mistreatment in the workplace: implications for target's identities, emotions and behaviour

The program of research presented herein investigates some fundamental aspects of the relationship between targets’ experiences of interpersonal mistreatment, and targets’ identities. Extending ideas from Identity Theory, I propose and test a perceptual control system model of the interpersonal mistreatment-identity-outcome relationship in which I argue (i) that different acts of interpersonal mistreatment activate the different bases of targets’ identities: the person, social, and role identities, and (ii) that interpersonal mistreatment results in the non-verification – a form of identity threat – of these activated identities. Furthermore, I situate targets’ negative emotional responses both as an outcome of the perceived non-verification of targets’ identities, and a mediator of the relationship between identity non-verification and targets’ subsequent behavioral responses. I examine three behavioral responses: avoidance, retaliation, and reconciliation. Additionally, I explore how a property of targets’ identities - identity centrality - influences targets’ negative affective reactions, paying a closer look at the discrete emotions evoked by such experiences. Two different kinds of experimental techniques – a vignette study and an experiential sampling method (ESM) – were used to test the various hypothesized relationships. Findings from the present research reveal that interpersonal mistreatment activates and threatens each of the three identity bases that form targets’ self-concepts and as such, poses a variety of implications for targets’ identities, emotions and behaviors