Recent years have witnessed an increase in scholarly and practitioner interest in the effects of toxic forms of leadership and “win or die” organizational cultures in which employees seek to maintain their own status at all costs, yet there is little research examining the interaction of this type of leadership style and organizational culture. In this survey study of working adults, we demonstrate an association between perceptions of toxic leadership and “masculinity contest cultures” (Berdahl, Cooper, Glick, Livingston, & Williams, 2018).norms, rituals, and belief systems valorizing social dominance, work above other parts of life, physical strength, and the avoidance of weakness. Independently, masculinity contest cultures were associated with higher stress, work/life conflict, intention to job search, work engagement and job meaning, while toxic leadership was associated with lower work engagement and job meaning and higher intention to job search. However, results show a slight increase in work engagement and meaningfulness among men (but not women) who viewed their workplace as a masculinity contest and who reported having a toxic leader. These surprising results provide important insights into how toxic cultures retain employees despite their largely detrimental effects on job attitudes and well‐being.

Social status is highly consequential in organizations but remains elusive for many professional women. Status characteristics theory argues that women are particularly status disadvantaged in masculine organizational cultures. These types of cultures valorize traits and abilities stereotypically associated with men, making it difficult for women in these settings to be seen as skilled and gain status. In the present study, we build and test novel theory explaining when and why masculine organizational cultures create the conditions for some women—those willing and able to skillfully navigate the espoused norms—to disproportionately gain status. We introduce and define the construct of a sexist culture of joviality, a type of masculine organizational culture representing the intersection of sexism and joviality that emerged inductively from our initial qualitative data. A sexist culture of joviality is characterized by norms promoting frequent sexist joking and teasing, along with underlying values and assumptions that support these sexist jovial behaviors. In a longitudinal mixed-methods field study, we demonstrate that participation in a sexist culture of joviality via engagement in sexist jovial norms is positively related to status for women but negatively related to status for men. In a follow-up experiment, we replicate this effect and demonstrate that differential perceptions of social skill mediate this interaction. Our findings illuminate the subtle ways sexism is perpetuated in organizations despite changing societal norms, underscoring the importance of disrupting these dynamics and revealing insights into how to do so.

38. Shakya HB, Christakis NA. Association of Facebook use with compromised well-being: a longitudinal study.

This paper seeks to find out how assumptions surrounding the moralization of reading appear in the BookTube videos of readers inspired by Rory Gilmore, the bibliophilic protagonist of the Warner Bros. comedy-drama series Gilmore Girls. In doing so, it aims to illuminate the ways in which the myth of the “moralization” of reading is used to disguise complex relations between class, privilege, and meritocracy, both within Gilmore Girls and without. Building from the scholarship of Harvey J. Graff, Deborah Brandt, Q. D. Leavis, and Janis Radway, I first analyze how literacy has come to be associated with goodness and what sort of literature is thought to be related to moral righteousness. Using this framework, I then analyze the appearance of reading in Gilmore Girls itself, concluding that beliefs surrounding the virtue of reading linger even in the fictional world of Stars Hollow. Finally, I analyze two Rory Gilmore-inspired readathon videos, arguing that by echoing Rory’s own perspectives on reading, BookTubers demonstrate that the belief that reading is an unequivocal moral good persists, even if readers themselves are not aware of it.

No abstract