When lending an ear turns into mistreatment: An episodic examination of leader mistreatment in response to venting at work

Abstract

Venting—an emotion‐focused form of coping involving the discharge of negative feelings to others—is common in organizational settings. Venting may benefit the self via the release of negative emotion, or by acting as a catalyst for changes to problematic work situations. Nonetheless, venting might have unintended consequences via its influence on those who are the recipients of venting from others. In light of this idea, we provide a theoretical explanation for how leaders in particular are affected by venting receipt at work. Drawing from the transactional model of stress, we theorize that venting tends to be appraised as a threat, which triggers negative emotion that, in turn, potentiates deviant action tendencies (i.e., interpersonal mistreatment). Yet, our theory suggests that not all leaders necessarily experience venting in the same way. Specifically, leaders with higher need for cognition are less influenced by surface‐level cues associated with others’ emotional expressions and find challenging interpersonal situations to be less aversive, thereby attenuating the deleterious effects of receipt of venting. In an experience sampling study of 112 managers across 10 consecutive workdays, we find support for our theoretical model. Altogether, our findings provide insight into the costs incurred when leaders lend an ear to those who vent, which can result in negative downstream consequences.

Does CWB repair negative affective states, or generate them? Examining the moderating role of trait empathy.

“…Hypothesis 1 was supported in Study 1. This was expected, as this relationship generally replicates previous findings (e.g., Koopman et al, 2020; Lim et al, 2018; Matta et al, 2014; Rosen et al, 2020). Further expected was that agreeableness did not moderate the relationship between CWB and subsequent NA.…”

Does psychological detachment benefit job seekers? A two study weekly investigation.

“…Nonhypothesized effects were modeled as fixed to reduce model complexity. As in recent experience sample research (e.g., Rosen et al, 2021;Yoon et al, 2021), missing data on our outcome variables as a function of our lagged effects was handled through full information maximum likelihood estimation (FIML; Newman, 2014). Following recommendations from LaHuis et al ( 2014), we calculated the percentage of within-person variance explained in each of our criteria using the following formula from Bryk and Raudenbush (1992): (σ 2 null −σ 2 predicted )/σ 2 null .…”

Admired and disgusted? Third parties’ paradoxical emotional reactions and behavioral consequences towards others’ unethical pro‐organizational behavior

“…This creates some missing data on the lagged control. Within the extant ESM literature (e.g., McGrath et al, 2017;Rosen et al, 2020), the solution to this issue is to conduct the analyses using full information maximum likelihood (FIML; Newman, 2014). This approach is widely preferred over list-wise deletion, which we would otherwise have for all the cases completed on Monday, or the day following a missed survey (Enders, 2010;Newman, 2014).…”