Description
Case Study for Overt Anger in Response to Victimization: Attribution Style and Organizational Norms as Moderators, Victimisation (or victimization) is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. Research that studies the process, rates, incidence, and prevalence of victimisation falls under the body of victimology.
Case Study for Overt Anger in Response to Victimization: Attribution Style and Organizational Norms as Moderators
Prior theory and research suggests a positive relation between perceived victimization and overt anger. The authors proposed and tested a theoretical extension of this link by investigating possible moderating effects of individual and contextual variables. A sample of 158 employees of a municipality was used to test hypotheses that the relationship between perceived victimiza- tion and overt anger is moderated by hostile attributional style and perceptions of organizational norms. The results showed that the relation between perceptions of direct victimization and overt anger was stronger when the employee had a more rather than less hostile attributional style and when the employee perceived the organizational norms as more rather than less oppositional.
Anger has been conceptualized as a "hot" emotion, aroused by inferences of responsibility in others and often leading a person to take direct or indirect action against the anger-provoking source (Averill, 1983; Frijda, 1986; Weiner, 1995). Anger occupies a central role in contemporary theory and research on how people respond to injustice (Bies, Tripp, & Kramer, 1997; Mikula, Scherer, & Athenstaedt, 1998), resolve con?icts (Allred, 1999), and cope with broken promises (Morrison & Robinson, 1997). In the workplace, anger is cited as triggers of destructive behaviors like workplace violence (Neuman & Baron, 1998) and as a cause of psychosomatic ailments like anxiety, depression, job stress, heart disease, and high blood pressure (Begley, 1994). The events people regard as anger producing in daily life often revolve around their social exchanges with others (Bies, 1999; Mikula et al., 1998). In particular, when these exchanges involve some kind of perceived mistreatment, the recipient of such treatment frequently becomes angry. Theorists have long recognized that people are deeply concerned about
Karl Aquino, Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware; Scott Douglas, Department of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Montana; Mark J. Martinko, Department of Management, School of Business Administration, Florida State University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karl Aquino, Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. E-mail: [email protected]
their status within social groups because the way they are treated by members of their group indicates their status (Bies, 1999; Darwin, 1872; Goffman, 1967; Steele, 1988). This observation suggests that being mistreated by a coworker can be particularly anger provoking because such acts threaten an employee's standing as a member of a well-defined social group who deserves to be treated with dignity, consideration, and respect (Bies, 1999; Cahn, 1949; Lind &Tyler, 1988). Unfortunately, the experience of being mistreated by one or more coworkers is surprisingly common in organizations (e.g., Aquino, Grover, Bradfield, & Allen, 1999; Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Hjelt-Back, ¨ 1994; Neuman & Baron, 1998). Aquino and his colleagues (Aquino et al., 1999) have used the term workplace victimization to describe such experiences. We adopt this term in our study to refer to an employee's perception of having been the target of harmful actions emanating from one or more coworkers. The concept of workplace victimization falls within the broad family of constructs that have been introduced into the organizational psychology literature to describe harmful interpersonal behaviors at work. But there are some differences among them that should be noted. One difference between victimization and constructs like workplace incivility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999), workplace aggression, or workplace deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995) is that the latter three generally refer to the actions of perpetrators rather than the experiences of targets. There are other constructs, however, that do focus on targets. Among these are workplace harassment
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(Bjorkqvist et al., 1994), bullying (Einarsen, 2000), ¨ and social undermining (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002). We argue that workplace victimization subsumes these constructs and is similar, but not identical to, how researchers have defined workplace harassment and bullying. For example, Bjorkqvist et al. ¨ (1994, pp. 173-174) defined harassment as "Repeated activities, with aim of bringing mental (but sometimes also physical) pain, directed toward one or more individuals who, for one reason or another, are not able to defend themselves" [italics added]. Einarsen (2000) adopted a similar view of bullying by suggesting that to be a victim of bullying the person must find it difficult to defend him- or herself in the actual situation. One important distinction between our definition of victimization and the definitions of workplace harassment and bullying presented above is that ours does not assume the target is unable to defend him- or herself. Indeed, there may be certain behavioral strategies like ingratiation or showing social deference that an employee may use to reduce his or her risk of being victimized even if he or she occupies a relatively powerless position within the organization. Our definition of victimization is somewhat similar to Duffy et al.'s (2002, p. 332) definition of social undermining as "behavior intended to hinder, over time, the ability to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relationships, work-related success, and favorable reputation." However, whereas social undermining assumes a specific goal by the perpetrator, people can be victimized for reasons other than a desire to hinder their success or tarnish their reputation. Again, we view social undermining as a subclass of the more general construct of victimization. Anger often follows the experience of mistreatment, so we expect anger to be predicted by victimization. Although not all employees experience this anger with the same frequency or intensity, nor will they all express anger overtly, some certainly will. This study investigates some of the conditions that may lead employees to expressions of overt anger among employees who perceive themselves as having been victimized by coworkers' harmful actions. Drawing on well-established theory and empirical research on anger-producing events (e.g., Averill, 1983; Mikula et al., 1998), we expect victimization to be positively related to overt anger. However, our study goes beyond this simple prediction by investigating two variables—attribution style and perceptions of organizational norms—as possible moderators of this relation. We explicitly examine overt anger because this
form of anger is more likely to be destructive to both people and organizations (Neuman & Baron, 1998). Expressions of anger can also signal a breach in interpersonal relations or a violation of an employee's standards of fairness or justice (Morrison & Robinson, 1997) and can adversely affect workplace functioning by escalating con?ict (Bies et al., 1997). Internalized or suppressed anger, while perhaps personally debilitating, may not have the same consequences for workplace relationships because this type of anger may not be manifested externally. For this reason we focus on the overt anger because this form of anger is more observable and should therefore provide more information about a situation that may require managerial attention.
Theoretical Background
It is well known that some people tend to express anger toward other people or objects in the environment (Averill, 1983; Tarvis, 1982), whereas others tend to direct it inwardly or even replace it with more positive emotions (Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). One reason for these differences is that not everyone experiences anger with the same frequency or intensity (Berkowitz, 1983). When anger is experienced more intensely, we also expect the likelihood that it will be expressed overtly to increase. Evidence supporting this conjecture is provided by Skarlicki, Folger, and Tesluk's (1999) finding that people who are high in negative affectivity exhibit higher levels of organizational retaliatory behavior in response to perceived injustice than those who are low on this trait. We extend Skarlicki et al.'s (1999) work by examining another individual difference variable as a possible moderator of the relation between an unpleasant event and overt anger that is based on the process of cognitive appraisal. Theorists generally agree that people are more likely to experience anger when they assign responsibility to a harm-doer (Allred, 1999; Averill, 1983; Bies et al., 1997; Weiner, 1995). This proposition is the basis for cognitive appraisal theories of aggression that posit that the likelihood of individuals becoming angry and responding aggressively to negative outcomes largely depends on their attributions for the causes of these outcomes (Allred, Mallozzi, Matsui, & Raia, 1997; Martinko & Zellars, 1998). Attributional style is a concept that refers to how people make causal appraisals in the context of social interaction. We test the cognitive appraisal prediction by examining whether individual differences in attri-
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bution style moderate the relation between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger.
more rather than less hostile attribution style. The following hypothesis tests this reasoning: Hypothesis 1: The relationship between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger is stronger for employees who exhibit a more hostile attribution style compared with employees who exhibit a less hostile attribution style. Attribution style is a relatively stable individual difference variable (Anderson et al., 1988; Henry & Campbell, 1995) that can strengthen the relation between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger. In the following section, we turn our attention to individual perceptions of an organizational factor: the normative context in which perceived victimization occurs.
Attribution Style
Attribution style has been described as the degree to which people exhibit tendencies to attribute outcomes to similar causal dimensions over time and context (Anderson, Jennings, & Arnoult, 1988). The role of attribution style in the process leading from perceived harm to some behavioral response has received increased conceptual attention in the management literature (e.g., Martinko & Zellars, 1998; Neuman & Baron, 1998), but empirical research on its effects in organizations is limited. Weiner's (1995) work on judgments of responsibility suggests individuals' attributions for negative events may lead to aggression. He argued that individuals are more likely to react aggressively to negative events when they attribute the causes of these events to external (i.e., some cause beyond themselves), intentional, and controllable factors. Drawing from Weiner's work and the work of other attribution theorists (e.g., Anderson et al., 1988), Martinko and Zellars (1998) proposed that employees who tend to attribute negative work outcomes to causes that are external to themselves, and who also perceive these outcomes as being stable, intentional, and controllable, are more likely to experience anger and to express that anger outwardly than employees who do not exhibit these attributional tendencies. Martinko and Zellars referred to individuals' tendencies to attribute negative outcomes to factors that are external, stable, controllable, and intentional as re?ecting the degree to which they exhibit a hostile attribution style. The results of several studies support the view that a hostile attributional style affects people's reactions to being mistreated. Dodge and Coie (1987) found that aggression was related to individuals' heightened tendency to attribute hostile intent to the actions of others, even when these actions were ambiguous. Douglas and Martinko (2001) found that hostile attribution style accounted for a significant amount of variance in self-reported aggressive behavior. Finally, organizational studies of attributions in general indicate that organizational leaders react more negatively and punitively toward subordinates when they attribute poor subordinate performance to subordinate characteristics (Klaas & Wheeler, 1990). On the basis of these studies, we hypothesize that employees reporting high levels of victimization are more likely to display overt expressions of anger if they have a
Perceptions of Organizational Norms
The effect of individual environmental perceptions on employee behavior is a theme that runs through both the social learning and social cognition literatures. Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) presumes that environments that reward or model particular behaviors, formally or informally, encourage the performance of such behaviors. The social cognition literature suggests that how people think about and make sense of their environment is more predictive of their behavior than the actual environment itself (Fiske, 1995). Moreover, although individuals' information-processing abilities are generally accurate enough for everyday purposes, they construct particular perceptions based on social information that is often biased by their past experiences, traits, stereotypes, and cultural orientations (Fiske, 1993). Together, these literatures suggest that employee perceptions of their organizational environment affect their responses to aversive events more so than the objective features of that environment. There are many aspects of the organizational environment that might moderate the relation between perceived victimization and overt anger. No study can examine every factor, so we chose to focus on a feature of the social environment that prior research and theory suggests might be a significant moderator of this relation. The feature we examined was normative expectations regarding appropriate work behavior. Drawing from the organizational culture literature (Schein, 1985), we theorize that certain types of normative expectations characterize different work environments and that employee perceptions of these
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expectations can in?uence how they respond to an ger-producing events. Note that we are not focusing on the construct of organizational culture per se, but rather on a specific feature of culture that the employee perceives as operating within his or her work environment. Organizational researchers have identified several dimensions of norms that presumably affect employee attitudes and behavior in organizations. One dimension that may be particularly relevant for understanding overt expressions of anger is what Cooke and Szumal (1987) referred to as norms re?ecting an oppositional culture. Organizations that can be described as having an oppositional culture reward employees for being negative and confrontational (Cooke & Szumal, 1987). Consequently, the norms that define this type of culture can promote, and perhaps even encourage, interpersonal con?ict (Cooke & Szumal, 1987). This observation suggests that people who perceive the norms of their workplace as being highly confrontational are more likely to express their anger overtly in reaction to provocative events because they will believe that these behaviors have positive utility, or at least that they are not associated with negative utility. This hypothesis is supported by studies showing that people are more likely to display intense responses (e.g., overt expressions of anger) to interpersonal con?ict when they perceive that such behavior is rewarded or encouraged (Feshbach, 1964) and is consistent with the tenets of social learning theory. There are also studies suggesting that highly confrontational environments affect the relationship between aversive treatment and anger. In this case, the psychological mechanism that in?uences the relation between perceived victimization and anger is based on the notion that emotional reactions to some events can be transferred to others. Zillman and his colleagues (Zillman, 1988; Zillman, Katcher, & Milvasky, 1972) showed that in environments that produce heightened emotional stimulation, the excitement resulting from one event might be partially transferred to a second event completely unrelated to the first. We propose that this type of emotional transference seems likely to occur when an employee perceives that he or she works in an oppositional environment. One result of excitation transfer is that the intensity of the response to the second, and potentially unrelated, aversive event increases (Zillman, 1988). As we argued earlier, the more intense the anger response to an aversive event, the greater the chances that the employee will express this anger overtly as a way of providing psychological or emotional release. We now theorize that excitation transfer may be a
second mechanism that accounts for why overt expressions of anger are likely to occur more frequently in response to perceived victimization when employees believe that they work in a more oppositional environment. On the basis of the arguments presented above, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 2: The relationship between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger is stronger when the employee perceives that organizational norms promote a more rather than a less oppositional environment.
Method Procedure
Two surveys were distributed to 222 employees of a small city located in the Northeast United States. The first survey was completed 5 to 8 days before the second survey and was administered in the participants' workplace. This survey included measures of the participants' attributional styles, perceptions of oppositional norms, and measures of the control variables. Prior to participating in the first survey, employees were asked to attend a meeting with an investigator who brie?y described the study's purpose. The surveys were then administered to the employees, and no members of upper management were present during the administration to lower level personnel. Completed surveys were placed in a box, and one of the investigators remained in the room throughout the administration. The second survey included the measures of perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger. During this on-site administration, the investigator again described the study. The investigator emphasized that the second survey was an assessment of workplace behaviors and not a continuation of the first survey. As in the first administration, the investigator remained in the room and removed the contents of the box after all the participants had completed the survey. The design of the study required matching the participants' responses to the two administrations, hence they were asked to provide their mother's maiden name and their date of birth on both surveys.
Sample
One hundred fifty-eight employees provided complete information on all study variables. The responses from 64 employees were not usable because they (a) failed to participate in both administrations, (b) failed to provide the same identifying information during both administrations, (c) failed to complete both questionnaires, or (d) were not employed by the municipality for at least 6 months. One hundred and three employees were in nonmanagement positions, 33 were line managers, 14 were middle managers, and 8 were in senior management positions. One hundred and twenty-two respondents were men and 36 were women. Their average age was 35 years.
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AQUINO, DOUGLAS, AND MARTINKO stable, controllable, and intentional. Examples of the scenarios include the participants receiving a poor performance evaluation, failing to receive a desired promotion, and receiving almost no raise compared with others in their department. Higher scores indicate individuals with more hostile attribution styles ( .88). Oppositional norms. We measured this construct using the 10-item Oppositional Culture subscale from the Organizational Culture Inventory (Cooke & Lafferty, 1989). This scale measures the extent to which employees perceive the norms of their organization as promoting confrontation and negativism. For example, the participants are asked to indicate on a 5-point Likert scale (1 not at all, 5 very great) the extent that organizational members are expected to engage in behaviors that include "Refusing to accept criticism" and "Being hard to impress" ( .68). Control variables. We controlled for four variables that might be associated with expressions of anger but that were not of direct interest. First, we controlled for gender (female 0, male 1) because studies indicate that males are more likely to express their anger toward others than are females (Berkowitz, 1993; Geen, 1995). Second, we controlled for age because older people may be able to exert greater cognitive control over their expressions of anger (Geen, 1990). Third, we controlled for hierarchical status because it has been suggested that higher status employees may be in?uenced by normative role expectations that discourage behavioral expressions of anger (Aquino, Tripp, &Bies, 2001). We measured hierarchical status by asking employees to indicate whether they were employed in a nonmanagement, line management, middle management, or senior/executive management position. Line management was described as supervising nonmanagement personnel, and middle management was described as managing managers. The responses were coded such that higher values indicated higher status (1 nonmanagement, 4 senior/ executive management). Finally, we controlled for individual differences in the propensity to experience a range of negative emotions in everyday life by measuring the trait variable negative affectivity (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). We measured this construct with 10 items from the Positive Affectivity-Negative Affectivity Scale (Watson et al., 1988). The scale consists of 10 words describing negative emotions (e.g., afraid, upset, hostile). We wanted to
Measures
Overt anger. We measured this construct using the eight-item Anger-Out subscale from the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (Speilberger, 1996). This scale measures how often people express their anger outwardly. We adapted the eight items so they were specific to the participants' workplace. Responses were indicated on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 almost never to 4 almost always ( .81). Perceived victimization. We used eight items from a study by Aquino et al. (1999). For each item, participants were asked to report the number of times that one or more coworkers displayed the behavior toward them within the past 6 months. Responses were on a 5-point Likert scale (1 never, 2 1-3 times, 3 4 - 6 times, 4 7-9 times, and 5 10 or more times). We wanted participants to report only those behaviors that they perceived as being harmful, because behaviors that are not perceived as harmful are unlikely to elicit anger. Consequently, we modified Aquino et al.'s original stem question by instructing participants to "Report only those times where you experienced emotional or physical discomfort as a result of their behavior." Aquino et al. (1999) reported that the eight items loaded on two factors, which they referred to as direct and indirect victimization. We performed a principal-components analysis using an oblimin rotation to see if a similar factor structure emerged in our sample. An examination of the eigenvalues, scree plot, and factor loadings indicated that seven of the items loaded on two factors as anticipated. However, one of the items, "said bad things about you to your coworkers," loaded on both factors. When we eliminated this item, the results clearly supported the two-factor structure (see Table 1). Items loading on the same factor were combined to form indirect victimization ( .69) and direct victimization ( .72) scales. Attribution style. We measured attribution style using a 32-item scale adapted from the Organizational Attributional Style Questionnaire (OASQ) described by Campbell and Martinko (1998). The OASQ consists of 7-point Likert-type items that measure the extent that individuals exhibit a tendency to attribute negative organizational outcomes to various attributional dimensions. These include the tendency to attribute such outcomes to causes that are external,
Table 1 Loadings for Direct and Indirect Victimization Items
Item Direct victimization 1. Made an ethnic, racial, or offensive slur toward you. 2. Swore at you. 3. Made an obscene comment or gesture in front of you. 4. Threatened you with physical harm. Indirect victimization 1. Sabotaged your work. 2. Did something to make you look bad. 3. Lied to get you in trouble. % of variance explained Factor 1 .61 .89 .90 .49 .21 .15 .13 .40 Factor 2 .32 .11 .15 .16 .86 .74 .69 .21
VICTIMIZATION AND OVERT ANGER measure trait rather than state or mood negative affectivity, so we asked respondents to indicate the degree to which they experience each emotion in general. Responses were indicated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 not at all to 5 a lot ( .81). .81 9
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Results
Table 2 shows the means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations for all study variables. We tested our hypotheses in two separate models using hierarchical regression. In each model, the controls were entered in Step 1, the main effects in Step 2, and the two-way interactions between the two categories of perceived victimization and the two hypothesized moderators in Step 3. All of the variables forming the two-way interactions were centered to minimize mul- ticollinearity among the interaction terms and their individual components (Aiken & West, 1991). The results for the test of Hypothesis 1 are shown in Table 3. The table shows that the main effects accounted for a significant amount of variance in overt expressions of anger beyond that accounted for by the controls variables ( R2 .34, p .001). Among the individual victimization predictors, direct victimization was significantly related to overt expressions of anger ( .36, p .001), but indirect victimization was not. The interactions between attribution style and the two forms of victimization accounted for a significant amount of additional vari- ance in the criterion ( R2 .05, p .01), providing initial support for Hypothesis 1. Inspection of the individual regression weights revealed that whereas the interaction involving attribution style and direct victimization was significant ( .24, p .01), the interaction between attribution style and indirect victimization was not significant. We explored the form of the significant interaction between attribution style and direct victimization following procedures recommended by Cohen and Co- hen (1983) and Aiken and West (1991). We calcu- lated the simple slope of overt expressions of anger on direct victimization and its related standard error at three levels (i.e., mean, one standard deviation above the mean, and one standard deviation below the mean) of attribution style. We then conducted t tests on the values of the simple slopes divided by their standard errors. The results of this analysis, shown in Table 4 and plotted in Figure 1, indicate that the relation between overt expressions of anger and direct victimization was stronger among employees with more hostile attribution styles than among employees with less hostile attribution styles. This result supports Hypothesis 1.
— .12 .01 .72 .35** .35** .16* .38** .03 .08 .11 Anger Direct victimization Indirect victimization Attribution style Hierarchical status Oppositional norms Age Gender Negative affect 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Note. N * p .05. 158. Scale reliabilities are shown in italics along the diagonal. ** p .01. 13.17 7.58 4.35 3.84 1.54 28.96 3.64 0.77 16.85 4.17 4.12 1.98 1.02 0.86 6.70 1.02 0.42 5.23 .81 .52** .17* .37** .13 .42** .15 .05 .14 .69 .25** .16* .19* .06 .06 .08 .88 .28** .36** .09 .08 .10 .68 .06 .19* .14 .09 — .01 .06 .12 7
Table 2 Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations
Variable
M
SD
1
2
3
4
5
6
— .07
8
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Table 3 Hierarchical Regression Analysis (Standardized Betas) for Attribution Style Interaction
Variable Controls Age Gender Negative affect Hierarchical status Main effects Direct victimization Indirect victimization Attribution style Oppositional norms Two-way interactions Direct Victimization Attribution Style Indirect Victimization Attribution Style R2 R2 F df *p .05. ** p .01. *** p .001. Step 1: Controls .13 .01 .13 .10 Step 2: Main effects .14* .03 .06 .00 .40*** .06 .15* .22**
Perceived Victimization
Step 3: Two-way interactions .14* .02 .08 .03 .36*** .09 .15* .16* .24** .02
.04 2.06 4, 153
.38 .34*** 11.22*** 8, 149
.43 .05** 10.86*** 10, 147
The results of the second model that includes interactions among the two forms of perceived victimization and oppositional norms are presented in Table 5. The results show that the interactions between perceptions of oppositional environment and the two forms of victimization account for a significant amount of additional variance ( R2 .05, p .01), providing initial support for Hypothesis 2. Inspection of the individual regression weights shows that only the interaction between oppositional norms and direct victimization was significant ( .25, p .01). We probed the significant interaction using the previously described procedures. The results (see Table 6 and Figure 2) indicate that the relationship between overt expressions of anger and direct victimization was stronger for employees who
perceived the organization's norms as being more oppositional than among employees who perceived the organization's norms as less oppositional. This finding supports Hypothesis 2. In sum, both interaction hypotheses were supported for perceptions of direct victimization, but none were supported for perceptions of indirect victimization.
Discussion
This study contributes to a growing literature on workplace emotions by examining a relatively unstudied question: What individual and perceptual factors affect whether an employee expresses anger overtly in response to interpersonal mistreatment?
Table 4 Standard Errors and t Tests for Simple Slopes of Two-Way Interaction Including Direct Victimization and Hostile Attribution Styles (i.e., Second Predictor)
Attribution style (second predictor) High Mean Low
a
Simple slope of overt anger on direct victimization .58 .37 .16
SE .27 .21 .13
t(154) 2.12* 1.76 1.23 0).
Intercepta 10.79 10.18 9.58
Predicted value for overt anger when direct victimization is at its centered mean (i.e., M * p .05.
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Figure 1. Relation between overt anger and direct victimization among employees with different levels of hostile attribution styles.
The results partially support our hypothesis that attribution style and perceptions of organizational norms moderate the relation between perceived victimization and overt anger.
Theoretical Implications
The moderating effects of attribution style complement the findings of earlier studies showing that indi-
Table 5 Hierarchical Regression Analysis (Standardized Betas) for Oppositional Norms Interaction
Variable Controls Age Gender Negative affect Hierarchical status Main effects Direct victimization Indirect victimization Attribution style Oppositional norms Two-way interactions Direct Victimization Oppositional Norms Indirect Victimization Oppositional Norms R2 R2 F df *p .05. ** p .01. *** p .001. Step 1: Controls .13 .01 .13 .10 Step 2: Main effects .14* .03 .06 .00 .40*** .06 .15* .22**
Perceived Victimization
Step 3: Two-way interactions .17* .03 .06 .02 .31*** .12 .11 .16* .25** .07
.04 2.06 4, 153
.38 .34*** 11.22*** 8, 149
.43 .05** 10.94*** 10, 147
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Table 6 Results of Standard Errors and t Tests for Simple Slopes of Two-Way Interaction Including Direct Victimization and Oppositional Norms (i.e., Second Predictor)
Oppositional norms (second predictor) High Mean Low
a
Simple slope of overt anger on direct victimization .51 .31 .11
SE .24 .21 .10
t(154) 2.13* 1.48 1.10
Intercepta 11.10 10.04 9.70
Predicted value for overt anger when direct victimization is at its centered mean (i.e., M 0). * p .05.
vidual differences affect how people respond to aversive events. These studies examined traits such as negative affectivity (Skarlicki et al., 1999), self-control (Megargee, 1966), and agreeableness (Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, & Hair, 1996). In contrast, our study focuses on individual differences in how people interpret their social environments through a cognitive appraisal process. Consistent with cognitive appraisal theories of aggression (e.g., Martinko & Zellars, 1998; Weiner, 1995), we found that the relation between perceived victimization and overt anger was stronger for
employees who make more hostile attributions for others' behavior compared with those who make less hostile attributions. However, our data do not allow us to determine whether these overt expressions of anger were directed toward the perceived source of the victimization or some other target. This result does not necessarily undermine our theory. Although cognitive appraisal theories suggest that anger and aggression are typically directed against the perceived source of harm, they do not preclude the possibility that these acts might be directed elsewhere.
Figure 2. Relation between overt anger and direct victimization among employees with different levels of oppositional norms.
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A notable finding with regard to attribution style is that it only moderated the relation between direct victimization and overt anger. One explanation for this result is that the behaviors associated with indirect victimization may be more ambiguous or of lesser severity than the behaviors associated with direct victimization. Arguably, the perpetrator and cause of an indirect harm may be harder to identify and so the victimized employee may be less decisive in making hostile attributions of malevolent intent. In the absence of strong attributions, the tendency to express anger toward the perceived harm-doer or some other target may be diminished. It is also possible that because indirect harm may be judged as less severe, employees may not be sufficiently motivated to engage in attributional processes that may be in?uenced by a hostile attribution style. Weiner (1995) has argued that individuals will engage in attributional processes to the extent events are important to them, otherwise they will use some other means, like heuristics, to assign causality. On the basis of this argument, it may be that because direct victimization is experienced as more severe than indirect victimization, responses to the former will be more strongly in?uenced by attributional style. A third possibility is that because indirect harm may be judged as less severe, it is less likely to generate the same level of offense-related anger as direct harm. When anger is less intense the person may not experience a strong need to express or vent these emotions. Yet another explanation for our failure to find any moderating effect of attribution style on the relationship between indirect victimization and overt anger is that attribution style may directly in?uence how frequently people perceive themselves to have been victimized. This explanation suggests that direct and indirect victimization mediate the relation between attribution style and overt expressions of anger. This same theoretical model might explain why we found no support for the moderating in?uence of employees' perceptions of oppositional norms on the relation between indirect victimization and expressions of anger. On the one hand, the positive correlations among indirect victimization, attribution style, and perceptions of oppositional norms provide initial support for this interpretation. On the other hand, this theoretical explanation is rendered suspect by the fact that there was no direct relationship between indirect victimization and overt anger. Consequently, the combination of greater ambiguity in assessing who is responsible for harm, as well as the lower severity of harm, seems to provide a better explanation for why
perceptions of indirect victimization were less strongly related to expressions of anger and were also not part of higher order interactions involving the other predictors. Our findings regarding the moderating role of attribution style support prior theory and research on how cognitive processes affect a range of responses to perceived harm-doing. For example, Bies et al.'s (1997) theory of revenge hypothesizes that people who tend to make highly personalistic attributions for the behavior of others are more likely to seek revenge when another party has harmed them. Bradfield and Aquino (1999) argued and showed empirically that the attribution of blame following a harmful act not only affects the contemplation of revenge, as Bies et al. theorized, but it also affects the contemplation of forgiveness. Finally, other research indicates that the attributions people make about others' behavior plays an important role in their judgments of trustworthiness (Kramer, 1994). In sum, there is considerable evidence that individual differences in attribution style can help explain a variety of reactions to workplace harm, suggesting that the construct warrants further attention in other contexts and in conjunction with other variables. Our results regarding the moderating role of oppositional norms support social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) because they show how normative expectations can shape people's reactions to negative events. They are also consistent with Zillman's (1988) argument that environments producing heightened emotional stimulation can lead to an excitation transfer such that the emotions produced by one event can be transferred to a second, unrelated event. Although other studies have shown that perceptions of organizational environment are associated with negative work attitudes and certain types of antisocial workplace behaviors (Cherrington & Cherrington, 1985), our study extends previous research by identifying a perception of a specific dimension of organizational environments— oppositional style— that accentuates the relationship between the experience of mistreatment and an anger-driven behavioral response. Our findings therefore offer a more precise understanding of how specific features of the perceived organizational environment might be linked to a particular behavioral outcome. The findings regarding perceptions of organizational environments have practical implications for managers. The legal and social costs associated with expressions of anger in the workplace can be substantial. Organizations judged negligent in a single case of workplace aggression, which is com-
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monly associated with workplace anger, can end up paying large settlements and may become tar- gets of social reproof (Chappell & DiMartino, 1999). To date, there has been limited discussion in the workplace anger literature on the practical importance of creating and maintaining organizational environments that discourage victimization. This neglect might be due to the practical difficulties associated with changing, developing, and maintaining strong organizational environments in general. Nonetheless, given that perceptions of organizational environments can in?uence dysfunctional employee behavior and that these behaviors often have serious organizational consequences, perceptions of organizational environment should be given more weight when offering practical recommendations to managers. Personnel managers can play an important role in this regard by developing selection, reward, and disciplinary strategies that discourage workplace victimization.
Limitations
Like all studies, our study has limitations that deserve comment. The most serious is the crosssectional nature of the design. Because we did not collect data over time, we cannot make definitive statements about causal direction. It may be that expressions of anger lead to retaliation in the form of victimization rather than the other way around. Further, we did not tie expressions of anger to specific instances of victimization, and so we cannot rule out other potential causes for these expressions. For these reasons, we are cautious about making causal statements in our hypotheses and conclusions. What we are able to conclude from the data, though, is that they do provide some support for a theoretically derived pattern of relations whose form suggests a link between being victimized and expressing anger. Another limitation is the self-report nature of the data. Self-reports of the behavioral expression of anger and perceived victimization may be susceptible to demand characteristics. This could stimulate impression management behaviors (Gardner& Martinko, 1988). Replications using alternative types of data (e.g., organizational records) or control measures (e.g., social desirability, self-monitoring) should be conducted to ameliorate this concern. Yet it should be noted that people are surprisingly willing to report having engaged in deviant, even illegal, behavior (Bennett & Robinson, 2000). Thus, it is not obvious that our data suffer from this form of response bias.
We partially controlled for common methods variance by collecting our data in two separate administrations (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). However, we collected the victimization and anger data at the same time. This may have in?ated the observed relation between victimization and anger, perhaps making it more difficult to detect the moderating in?uences we hypothesized. Consequently, the fact that we were still able to detect higher order effects for one category of victimization could be seen as providing fairly compelling evidence for the moderating effects of attribution styles and perceptions of organizational norms. We also note that because common method bias is a linear confound, the presence of significant interactions increases the likelihood that the observed relations were a function of the constructs being studied rather than a methodological artifact (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). Finally, given that our sample was drawn from a single organization, there may be some question about the generalizability of our results to other settings. Obviously, only additional research can more definitively assess the generality of our findings.
Conclusions
In sum, our study supports a direct relationship between perceived victimization and behavioral expressions of anger that corroborates prior theory and research. It also provided some support for hypothesized moderating effects for hostile attribution style and perceptions of oppositional environment that have not been tested in past studies. Taken together, we conclude that in spite of the abovementioned limitations, our findings are largely consistent with our general theory of how the experience of being victimized relates to overt anger.
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doc_752524328.docx
Case Study for Overt Anger in Response to Victimization: Attribution Style and Organizational Norms as Moderators, Victimisation (or victimization) is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. Research that studies the process, rates, incidence, and prevalence of victimisation falls under the body of victimology.
Case Study for Overt Anger in Response to Victimization: Attribution Style and Organizational Norms as Moderators
Prior theory and research suggests a positive relation between perceived victimization and overt anger. The authors proposed and tested a theoretical extension of this link by investigating possible moderating effects of individual and contextual variables. A sample of 158 employees of a municipality was used to test hypotheses that the relationship between perceived victimiza- tion and overt anger is moderated by hostile attributional style and perceptions of organizational norms. The results showed that the relation between perceptions of direct victimization and overt anger was stronger when the employee had a more rather than less hostile attributional style and when the employee perceived the organizational norms as more rather than less oppositional.
Anger has been conceptualized as a "hot" emotion, aroused by inferences of responsibility in others and often leading a person to take direct or indirect action against the anger-provoking source (Averill, 1983; Frijda, 1986; Weiner, 1995). Anger occupies a central role in contemporary theory and research on how people respond to injustice (Bies, Tripp, & Kramer, 1997; Mikula, Scherer, & Athenstaedt, 1998), resolve con?icts (Allred, 1999), and cope with broken promises (Morrison & Robinson, 1997). In the workplace, anger is cited as triggers of destructive behaviors like workplace violence (Neuman & Baron, 1998) and as a cause of psychosomatic ailments like anxiety, depression, job stress, heart disease, and high blood pressure (Begley, 1994). The events people regard as anger producing in daily life often revolve around their social exchanges with others (Bies, 1999; Mikula et al., 1998). In particular, when these exchanges involve some kind of perceived mistreatment, the recipient of such treatment frequently becomes angry. Theorists have long recognized that people are deeply concerned about
Karl Aquino, Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware; Scott Douglas, Department of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Montana; Mark J. Martinko, Department of Management, School of Business Administration, Florida State University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karl Aquino, Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. E-mail: [email protected]
their status within social groups because the way they are treated by members of their group indicates their status (Bies, 1999; Darwin, 1872; Goffman, 1967; Steele, 1988). This observation suggests that being mistreated by a coworker can be particularly anger provoking because such acts threaten an employee's standing as a member of a well-defined social group who deserves to be treated with dignity, consideration, and respect (Bies, 1999; Cahn, 1949; Lind &Tyler, 1988). Unfortunately, the experience of being mistreated by one or more coworkers is surprisingly common in organizations (e.g., Aquino, Grover, Bradfield, & Allen, 1999; Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Hjelt-Back, ¨ 1994; Neuman & Baron, 1998). Aquino and his colleagues (Aquino et al., 1999) have used the term workplace victimization to describe such experiences. We adopt this term in our study to refer to an employee's perception of having been the target of harmful actions emanating from one or more coworkers. The concept of workplace victimization falls within the broad family of constructs that have been introduced into the organizational psychology literature to describe harmful interpersonal behaviors at work. But there are some differences among them that should be noted. One difference between victimization and constructs like workplace incivility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999), workplace aggression, or workplace deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995) is that the latter three generally refer to the actions of perpetrators rather than the experiences of targets. There are other constructs, however, that do focus on targets. Among these are workplace harassment
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(Bjorkqvist et al., 1994), bullying (Einarsen, 2000), ¨ and social undermining (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002). We argue that workplace victimization subsumes these constructs and is similar, but not identical to, how researchers have defined workplace harassment and bullying. For example, Bjorkqvist et al. ¨ (1994, pp. 173-174) defined harassment as "Repeated activities, with aim of bringing mental (but sometimes also physical) pain, directed toward one or more individuals who, for one reason or another, are not able to defend themselves" [italics added]. Einarsen (2000) adopted a similar view of bullying by suggesting that to be a victim of bullying the person must find it difficult to defend him- or herself in the actual situation. One important distinction between our definition of victimization and the definitions of workplace harassment and bullying presented above is that ours does not assume the target is unable to defend him- or herself. Indeed, there may be certain behavioral strategies like ingratiation or showing social deference that an employee may use to reduce his or her risk of being victimized even if he or she occupies a relatively powerless position within the organization. Our definition of victimization is somewhat similar to Duffy et al.'s (2002, p. 332) definition of social undermining as "behavior intended to hinder, over time, the ability to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relationships, work-related success, and favorable reputation." However, whereas social undermining assumes a specific goal by the perpetrator, people can be victimized for reasons other than a desire to hinder their success or tarnish their reputation. Again, we view social undermining as a subclass of the more general construct of victimization. Anger often follows the experience of mistreatment, so we expect anger to be predicted by victimization. Although not all employees experience this anger with the same frequency or intensity, nor will they all express anger overtly, some certainly will. This study investigates some of the conditions that may lead employees to expressions of overt anger among employees who perceive themselves as having been victimized by coworkers' harmful actions. Drawing on well-established theory and empirical research on anger-producing events (e.g., Averill, 1983; Mikula et al., 1998), we expect victimization to be positively related to overt anger. However, our study goes beyond this simple prediction by investigating two variables—attribution style and perceptions of organizational norms—as possible moderators of this relation. We explicitly examine overt anger because this
form of anger is more likely to be destructive to both people and organizations (Neuman & Baron, 1998). Expressions of anger can also signal a breach in interpersonal relations or a violation of an employee's standards of fairness or justice (Morrison & Robinson, 1997) and can adversely affect workplace functioning by escalating con?ict (Bies et al., 1997). Internalized or suppressed anger, while perhaps personally debilitating, may not have the same consequences for workplace relationships because this type of anger may not be manifested externally. For this reason we focus on the overt anger because this form of anger is more observable and should therefore provide more information about a situation that may require managerial attention.
Theoretical Background
It is well known that some people tend to express anger toward other people or objects in the environment (Averill, 1983; Tarvis, 1982), whereas others tend to direct it inwardly or even replace it with more positive emotions (Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). One reason for these differences is that not everyone experiences anger with the same frequency or intensity (Berkowitz, 1983). When anger is experienced more intensely, we also expect the likelihood that it will be expressed overtly to increase. Evidence supporting this conjecture is provided by Skarlicki, Folger, and Tesluk's (1999) finding that people who are high in negative affectivity exhibit higher levels of organizational retaliatory behavior in response to perceived injustice than those who are low on this trait. We extend Skarlicki et al.'s (1999) work by examining another individual difference variable as a possible moderator of the relation between an unpleasant event and overt anger that is based on the process of cognitive appraisal. Theorists generally agree that people are more likely to experience anger when they assign responsibility to a harm-doer (Allred, 1999; Averill, 1983; Bies et al., 1997; Weiner, 1995). This proposition is the basis for cognitive appraisal theories of aggression that posit that the likelihood of individuals becoming angry and responding aggressively to negative outcomes largely depends on their attributions for the causes of these outcomes (Allred, Mallozzi, Matsui, & Raia, 1997; Martinko & Zellars, 1998). Attributional style is a concept that refers to how people make causal appraisals in the context of social interaction. We test the cognitive appraisal prediction by examining whether individual differences in attri-
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bution style moderate the relation between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger.
more rather than less hostile attribution style. The following hypothesis tests this reasoning: Hypothesis 1: The relationship between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger is stronger for employees who exhibit a more hostile attribution style compared with employees who exhibit a less hostile attribution style. Attribution style is a relatively stable individual difference variable (Anderson et al., 1988; Henry & Campbell, 1995) that can strengthen the relation between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger. In the following section, we turn our attention to individual perceptions of an organizational factor: the normative context in which perceived victimization occurs.
Attribution Style
Attribution style has been described as the degree to which people exhibit tendencies to attribute outcomes to similar causal dimensions over time and context (Anderson, Jennings, & Arnoult, 1988). The role of attribution style in the process leading from perceived harm to some behavioral response has received increased conceptual attention in the management literature (e.g., Martinko & Zellars, 1998; Neuman & Baron, 1998), but empirical research on its effects in organizations is limited. Weiner's (1995) work on judgments of responsibility suggests individuals' attributions for negative events may lead to aggression. He argued that individuals are more likely to react aggressively to negative events when they attribute the causes of these events to external (i.e., some cause beyond themselves), intentional, and controllable factors. Drawing from Weiner's work and the work of other attribution theorists (e.g., Anderson et al., 1988), Martinko and Zellars (1998) proposed that employees who tend to attribute negative work outcomes to causes that are external to themselves, and who also perceive these outcomes as being stable, intentional, and controllable, are more likely to experience anger and to express that anger outwardly than employees who do not exhibit these attributional tendencies. Martinko and Zellars referred to individuals' tendencies to attribute negative outcomes to factors that are external, stable, controllable, and intentional as re?ecting the degree to which they exhibit a hostile attribution style. The results of several studies support the view that a hostile attributional style affects people's reactions to being mistreated. Dodge and Coie (1987) found that aggression was related to individuals' heightened tendency to attribute hostile intent to the actions of others, even when these actions were ambiguous. Douglas and Martinko (2001) found that hostile attribution style accounted for a significant amount of variance in self-reported aggressive behavior. Finally, organizational studies of attributions in general indicate that organizational leaders react more negatively and punitively toward subordinates when they attribute poor subordinate performance to subordinate characteristics (Klaas & Wheeler, 1990). On the basis of these studies, we hypothesize that employees reporting high levels of victimization are more likely to display overt expressions of anger if they have a
Perceptions of Organizational Norms
The effect of individual environmental perceptions on employee behavior is a theme that runs through both the social learning and social cognition literatures. Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) presumes that environments that reward or model particular behaviors, formally or informally, encourage the performance of such behaviors. The social cognition literature suggests that how people think about and make sense of their environment is more predictive of their behavior than the actual environment itself (Fiske, 1995). Moreover, although individuals' information-processing abilities are generally accurate enough for everyday purposes, they construct particular perceptions based on social information that is often biased by their past experiences, traits, stereotypes, and cultural orientations (Fiske, 1993). Together, these literatures suggest that employee perceptions of their organizational environment affect their responses to aversive events more so than the objective features of that environment. There are many aspects of the organizational environment that might moderate the relation between perceived victimization and overt anger. No study can examine every factor, so we chose to focus on a feature of the social environment that prior research and theory suggests might be a significant moderator of this relation. The feature we examined was normative expectations regarding appropriate work behavior. Drawing from the organizational culture literature (Schein, 1985), we theorize that certain types of normative expectations characterize different work environments and that employee perceptions of these
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expectations can in?uence how they respond to an ger-producing events. Note that we are not focusing on the construct of organizational culture per se, but rather on a specific feature of culture that the employee perceives as operating within his or her work environment. Organizational researchers have identified several dimensions of norms that presumably affect employee attitudes and behavior in organizations. One dimension that may be particularly relevant for understanding overt expressions of anger is what Cooke and Szumal (1987) referred to as norms re?ecting an oppositional culture. Organizations that can be described as having an oppositional culture reward employees for being negative and confrontational (Cooke & Szumal, 1987). Consequently, the norms that define this type of culture can promote, and perhaps even encourage, interpersonal con?ict (Cooke & Szumal, 1987). This observation suggests that people who perceive the norms of their workplace as being highly confrontational are more likely to express their anger overtly in reaction to provocative events because they will believe that these behaviors have positive utility, or at least that they are not associated with negative utility. This hypothesis is supported by studies showing that people are more likely to display intense responses (e.g., overt expressions of anger) to interpersonal con?ict when they perceive that such behavior is rewarded or encouraged (Feshbach, 1964) and is consistent with the tenets of social learning theory. There are also studies suggesting that highly confrontational environments affect the relationship between aversive treatment and anger. In this case, the psychological mechanism that in?uences the relation between perceived victimization and anger is based on the notion that emotional reactions to some events can be transferred to others. Zillman and his colleagues (Zillman, 1988; Zillman, Katcher, & Milvasky, 1972) showed that in environments that produce heightened emotional stimulation, the excitement resulting from one event might be partially transferred to a second event completely unrelated to the first. We propose that this type of emotional transference seems likely to occur when an employee perceives that he or she works in an oppositional environment. One result of excitation transfer is that the intensity of the response to the second, and potentially unrelated, aversive event increases (Zillman, 1988). As we argued earlier, the more intense the anger response to an aversive event, the greater the chances that the employee will express this anger overtly as a way of providing psychological or emotional release. We now theorize that excitation transfer may be a
second mechanism that accounts for why overt expressions of anger are likely to occur more frequently in response to perceived victimization when employees believe that they work in a more oppositional environment. On the basis of the arguments presented above, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 2: The relationship between perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger is stronger when the employee perceives that organizational norms promote a more rather than a less oppositional environment.
Method Procedure
Two surveys were distributed to 222 employees of a small city located in the Northeast United States. The first survey was completed 5 to 8 days before the second survey and was administered in the participants' workplace. This survey included measures of the participants' attributional styles, perceptions of oppositional norms, and measures of the control variables. Prior to participating in the first survey, employees were asked to attend a meeting with an investigator who brie?y described the study's purpose. The surveys were then administered to the employees, and no members of upper management were present during the administration to lower level personnel. Completed surveys were placed in a box, and one of the investigators remained in the room throughout the administration. The second survey included the measures of perceived victimization and overt expressions of anger. During this on-site administration, the investigator again described the study. The investigator emphasized that the second survey was an assessment of workplace behaviors and not a continuation of the first survey. As in the first administration, the investigator remained in the room and removed the contents of the box after all the participants had completed the survey. The design of the study required matching the participants' responses to the two administrations, hence they were asked to provide their mother's maiden name and their date of birth on both surveys.
Sample
One hundred fifty-eight employees provided complete information on all study variables. The responses from 64 employees were not usable because they (a) failed to participate in both administrations, (b) failed to provide the same identifying information during both administrations, (c) failed to complete both questionnaires, or (d) were not employed by the municipality for at least 6 months. One hundred and three employees were in nonmanagement positions, 33 were line managers, 14 were middle managers, and 8 were in senior management positions. One hundred and twenty-two respondents were men and 36 were women. Their average age was 35 years.
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AQUINO, DOUGLAS, AND MARTINKO stable, controllable, and intentional. Examples of the scenarios include the participants receiving a poor performance evaluation, failing to receive a desired promotion, and receiving almost no raise compared with others in their department. Higher scores indicate individuals with more hostile attribution styles ( .88). Oppositional norms. We measured this construct using the 10-item Oppositional Culture subscale from the Organizational Culture Inventory (Cooke & Lafferty, 1989). This scale measures the extent to which employees perceive the norms of their organization as promoting confrontation and negativism. For example, the participants are asked to indicate on a 5-point Likert scale (1 not at all, 5 very great) the extent that organizational members are expected to engage in behaviors that include "Refusing to accept criticism" and "Being hard to impress" ( .68). Control variables. We controlled for four variables that might be associated with expressions of anger but that were not of direct interest. First, we controlled for gender (female 0, male 1) because studies indicate that males are more likely to express their anger toward others than are females (Berkowitz, 1993; Geen, 1995). Second, we controlled for age because older people may be able to exert greater cognitive control over their expressions of anger (Geen, 1990). Third, we controlled for hierarchical status because it has been suggested that higher status employees may be in?uenced by normative role expectations that discourage behavioral expressions of anger (Aquino, Tripp, &Bies, 2001). We measured hierarchical status by asking employees to indicate whether they were employed in a nonmanagement, line management, middle management, or senior/executive management position. Line management was described as supervising nonmanagement personnel, and middle management was described as managing managers. The responses were coded such that higher values indicated higher status (1 nonmanagement, 4 senior/ executive management). Finally, we controlled for individual differences in the propensity to experience a range of negative emotions in everyday life by measuring the trait variable negative affectivity (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). We measured this construct with 10 items from the Positive Affectivity-Negative Affectivity Scale (Watson et al., 1988). The scale consists of 10 words describing negative emotions (e.g., afraid, upset, hostile). We wanted to
Measures
Overt anger. We measured this construct using the eight-item Anger-Out subscale from the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (Speilberger, 1996). This scale measures how often people express their anger outwardly. We adapted the eight items so they were specific to the participants' workplace. Responses were indicated on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 almost never to 4 almost always ( .81). Perceived victimization. We used eight items from a study by Aquino et al. (1999). For each item, participants were asked to report the number of times that one or more coworkers displayed the behavior toward them within the past 6 months. Responses were on a 5-point Likert scale (1 never, 2 1-3 times, 3 4 - 6 times, 4 7-9 times, and 5 10 or more times). We wanted participants to report only those behaviors that they perceived as being harmful, because behaviors that are not perceived as harmful are unlikely to elicit anger. Consequently, we modified Aquino et al.'s original stem question by instructing participants to "Report only those times where you experienced emotional or physical discomfort as a result of their behavior." Aquino et al. (1999) reported that the eight items loaded on two factors, which they referred to as direct and indirect victimization. We performed a principal-components analysis using an oblimin rotation to see if a similar factor structure emerged in our sample. An examination of the eigenvalues, scree plot, and factor loadings indicated that seven of the items loaded on two factors as anticipated. However, one of the items, "said bad things about you to your coworkers," loaded on both factors. When we eliminated this item, the results clearly supported the two-factor structure (see Table 1). Items loading on the same factor were combined to form indirect victimization ( .69) and direct victimization ( .72) scales. Attribution style. We measured attribution style using a 32-item scale adapted from the Organizational Attributional Style Questionnaire (OASQ) described by Campbell and Martinko (1998). The OASQ consists of 7-point Likert-type items that measure the extent that individuals exhibit a tendency to attribute negative organizational outcomes to various attributional dimensions. These include the tendency to attribute such outcomes to causes that are external,
Table 1 Loadings for Direct and Indirect Victimization Items
Item Direct victimization 1. Made an ethnic, racial, or offensive slur toward you. 2. Swore at you. 3. Made an obscene comment or gesture in front of you. 4. Threatened you with physical harm. Indirect victimization 1. Sabotaged your work. 2. Did something to make you look bad. 3. Lied to get you in trouble. % of variance explained Factor 1 .61 .89 .90 .49 .21 .15 .13 .40 Factor 2 .32 .11 .15 .16 .86 .74 .69 .21
VICTIMIZATION AND OVERT ANGER measure trait rather than state or mood negative affectivity, so we asked respondents to indicate the degree to which they experience each emotion in general. Responses were indicated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 not at all to 5 a lot ( .81). .81 9
157
Results
Table 2 shows the means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations for all study variables. We tested our hypotheses in two separate models using hierarchical regression. In each model, the controls were entered in Step 1, the main effects in Step 2, and the two-way interactions between the two categories of perceived victimization and the two hypothesized moderators in Step 3. All of the variables forming the two-way interactions were centered to minimize mul- ticollinearity among the interaction terms and their individual components (Aiken & West, 1991). The results for the test of Hypothesis 1 are shown in Table 3. The table shows that the main effects accounted for a significant amount of variance in overt expressions of anger beyond that accounted for by the controls variables ( R2 .34, p .001). Among the individual victimization predictors, direct victimization was significantly related to overt expressions of anger ( .36, p .001), but indirect victimization was not. The interactions between attribution style and the two forms of victimization accounted for a significant amount of additional vari- ance in the criterion ( R2 .05, p .01), providing initial support for Hypothesis 1. Inspection of the individual regression weights revealed that whereas the interaction involving attribution style and direct victimization was significant ( .24, p .01), the interaction between attribution style and indirect victimization was not significant. We explored the form of the significant interaction between attribution style and direct victimization following procedures recommended by Cohen and Co- hen (1983) and Aiken and West (1991). We calcu- lated the simple slope of overt expressions of anger on direct victimization and its related standard error at three levels (i.e., mean, one standard deviation above the mean, and one standard deviation below the mean) of attribution style. We then conducted t tests on the values of the simple slopes divided by their standard errors. The results of this analysis, shown in Table 4 and plotted in Figure 1, indicate that the relation between overt expressions of anger and direct victimization was stronger among employees with more hostile attribution styles than among employees with less hostile attribution styles. This result supports Hypothesis 1.
— .12 .01 .72 .35** .35** .16* .38** .03 .08 .11 Anger Direct victimization Indirect victimization Attribution style Hierarchical status Oppositional norms Age Gender Negative affect 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Note. N * p .05. 158. Scale reliabilities are shown in italics along the diagonal. ** p .01. 13.17 7.58 4.35 3.84 1.54 28.96 3.64 0.77 16.85 4.17 4.12 1.98 1.02 0.86 6.70 1.02 0.42 5.23 .81 .52** .17* .37** .13 .42** .15 .05 .14 .69 .25** .16* .19* .06 .06 .08 .88 .28** .36** .09 .08 .10 .68 .06 .19* .14 .09 — .01 .06 .12 7
Table 2 Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations
Variable
M
SD
1
2
3
4
5
6
— .07
8
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Table 3 Hierarchical Regression Analysis (Standardized Betas) for Attribution Style Interaction
Variable Controls Age Gender Negative affect Hierarchical status Main effects Direct victimization Indirect victimization Attribution style Oppositional norms Two-way interactions Direct Victimization Attribution Style Indirect Victimization Attribution Style R2 R2 F df *p .05. ** p .01. *** p .001. Step 1: Controls .13 .01 .13 .10 Step 2: Main effects .14* .03 .06 .00 .40*** .06 .15* .22**
Perceived Victimization
Step 3: Two-way interactions .14* .02 .08 .03 .36*** .09 .15* .16* .24** .02
.04 2.06 4, 153
.38 .34*** 11.22*** 8, 149
.43 .05** 10.86*** 10, 147
The results of the second model that includes interactions among the two forms of perceived victimization and oppositional norms are presented in Table 5. The results show that the interactions between perceptions of oppositional environment and the two forms of victimization account for a significant amount of additional variance ( R2 .05, p .01), providing initial support for Hypothesis 2. Inspection of the individual regression weights shows that only the interaction between oppositional norms and direct victimization was significant ( .25, p .01). We probed the significant interaction using the previously described procedures. The results (see Table 6 and Figure 2) indicate that the relationship between overt expressions of anger and direct victimization was stronger for employees who
perceived the organization's norms as being more oppositional than among employees who perceived the organization's norms as less oppositional. This finding supports Hypothesis 2. In sum, both interaction hypotheses were supported for perceptions of direct victimization, but none were supported for perceptions of indirect victimization.
Discussion
This study contributes to a growing literature on workplace emotions by examining a relatively unstudied question: What individual and perceptual factors affect whether an employee expresses anger overtly in response to interpersonal mistreatment?
Table 4 Standard Errors and t Tests for Simple Slopes of Two-Way Interaction Including Direct Victimization and Hostile Attribution Styles (i.e., Second Predictor)
Attribution style (second predictor) High Mean Low
a
Simple slope of overt anger on direct victimization .58 .37 .16
SE .27 .21 .13
t(154) 2.12* 1.76 1.23 0).
Intercepta 10.79 10.18 9.58
Predicted value for overt anger when direct victimization is at its centered mean (i.e., M * p .05.
VICTIMIZATION AND OVERT ANGER
159
Figure 1. Relation between overt anger and direct victimization among employees with different levels of hostile attribution styles.
The results partially support our hypothesis that attribution style and perceptions of organizational norms moderate the relation between perceived victimization and overt anger.
Theoretical Implications
The moderating effects of attribution style complement the findings of earlier studies showing that indi-
Table 5 Hierarchical Regression Analysis (Standardized Betas) for Oppositional Norms Interaction
Variable Controls Age Gender Negative affect Hierarchical status Main effects Direct victimization Indirect victimization Attribution style Oppositional norms Two-way interactions Direct Victimization Oppositional Norms Indirect Victimization Oppositional Norms R2 R2 F df *p .05. ** p .01. *** p .001. Step 1: Controls .13 .01 .13 .10 Step 2: Main effects .14* .03 .06 .00 .40*** .06 .15* .22**
Perceived Victimization
Step 3: Two-way interactions .17* .03 .06 .02 .31*** .12 .11 .16* .25** .07
.04 2.06 4, 153
.38 .34*** 11.22*** 8, 149
.43 .05** 10.94*** 10, 147
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Table 6 Results of Standard Errors and t Tests for Simple Slopes of Two-Way Interaction Including Direct Victimization and Oppositional Norms (i.e., Second Predictor)
Oppositional norms (second predictor) High Mean Low
a
Simple slope of overt anger on direct victimization .51 .31 .11
SE .24 .21 .10
t(154) 2.13* 1.48 1.10
Intercepta 11.10 10.04 9.70
Predicted value for overt anger when direct victimization is at its centered mean (i.e., M 0). * p .05.
vidual differences affect how people respond to aversive events. These studies examined traits such as negative affectivity (Skarlicki et al., 1999), self-control (Megargee, 1966), and agreeableness (Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, & Hair, 1996). In contrast, our study focuses on individual differences in how people interpret their social environments through a cognitive appraisal process. Consistent with cognitive appraisal theories of aggression (e.g., Martinko & Zellars, 1998; Weiner, 1995), we found that the relation between perceived victimization and overt anger was stronger for
employees who make more hostile attributions for others' behavior compared with those who make less hostile attributions. However, our data do not allow us to determine whether these overt expressions of anger were directed toward the perceived source of the victimization or some other target. This result does not necessarily undermine our theory. Although cognitive appraisal theories suggest that anger and aggression are typically directed against the perceived source of harm, they do not preclude the possibility that these acts might be directed elsewhere.
Figure 2. Relation between overt anger and direct victimization among employees with different levels of oppositional norms.
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161
A notable finding with regard to attribution style is that it only moderated the relation between direct victimization and overt anger. One explanation for this result is that the behaviors associated with indirect victimization may be more ambiguous or of lesser severity than the behaviors associated with direct victimization. Arguably, the perpetrator and cause of an indirect harm may be harder to identify and so the victimized employee may be less decisive in making hostile attributions of malevolent intent. In the absence of strong attributions, the tendency to express anger toward the perceived harm-doer or some other target may be diminished. It is also possible that because indirect harm may be judged as less severe, employees may not be sufficiently motivated to engage in attributional processes that may be in?uenced by a hostile attribution style. Weiner (1995) has argued that individuals will engage in attributional processes to the extent events are important to them, otherwise they will use some other means, like heuristics, to assign causality. On the basis of this argument, it may be that because direct victimization is experienced as more severe than indirect victimization, responses to the former will be more strongly in?uenced by attributional style. A third possibility is that because indirect harm may be judged as less severe, it is less likely to generate the same level of offense-related anger as direct harm. When anger is less intense the person may not experience a strong need to express or vent these emotions. Yet another explanation for our failure to find any moderating effect of attribution style on the relationship between indirect victimization and overt anger is that attribution style may directly in?uence how frequently people perceive themselves to have been victimized. This explanation suggests that direct and indirect victimization mediate the relation between attribution style and overt expressions of anger. This same theoretical model might explain why we found no support for the moderating in?uence of employees' perceptions of oppositional norms on the relation between indirect victimization and expressions of anger. On the one hand, the positive correlations among indirect victimization, attribution style, and perceptions of oppositional norms provide initial support for this interpretation. On the other hand, this theoretical explanation is rendered suspect by the fact that there was no direct relationship between indirect victimization and overt anger. Consequently, the combination of greater ambiguity in assessing who is responsible for harm, as well as the lower severity of harm, seems to provide a better explanation for why
perceptions of indirect victimization were less strongly related to expressions of anger and were also not part of higher order interactions involving the other predictors. Our findings regarding the moderating role of attribution style support prior theory and research on how cognitive processes affect a range of responses to perceived harm-doing. For example, Bies et al.'s (1997) theory of revenge hypothesizes that people who tend to make highly personalistic attributions for the behavior of others are more likely to seek revenge when another party has harmed them. Bradfield and Aquino (1999) argued and showed empirically that the attribution of blame following a harmful act not only affects the contemplation of revenge, as Bies et al. theorized, but it also affects the contemplation of forgiveness. Finally, other research indicates that the attributions people make about others' behavior plays an important role in their judgments of trustworthiness (Kramer, 1994). In sum, there is considerable evidence that individual differences in attribution style can help explain a variety of reactions to workplace harm, suggesting that the construct warrants further attention in other contexts and in conjunction with other variables. Our results regarding the moderating role of oppositional norms support social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) because they show how normative expectations can shape people's reactions to negative events. They are also consistent with Zillman's (1988) argument that environments producing heightened emotional stimulation can lead to an excitation transfer such that the emotions produced by one event can be transferred to a second, unrelated event. Although other studies have shown that perceptions of organizational environment are associated with negative work attitudes and certain types of antisocial workplace behaviors (Cherrington & Cherrington, 1985), our study extends previous research by identifying a perception of a specific dimension of organizational environments— oppositional style— that accentuates the relationship between the experience of mistreatment and an anger-driven behavioral response. Our findings therefore offer a more precise understanding of how specific features of the perceived organizational environment might be linked to a particular behavioral outcome. The findings regarding perceptions of organizational environments have practical implications for managers. The legal and social costs associated with expressions of anger in the workplace can be substantial. Organizations judged negligent in a single case of workplace aggression, which is com-
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monly associated with workplace anger, can end up paying large settlements and may become tar- gets of social reproof (Chappell & DiMartino, 1999). To date, there has been limited discussion in the workplace anger literature on the practical importance of creating and maintaining organizational environments that discourage victimization. This neglect might be due to the practical difficulties associated with changing, developing, and maintaining strong organizational environments in general. Nonetheless, given that perceptions of organizational environments can in?uence dysfunctional employee behavior and that these behaviors often have serious organizational consequences, perceptions of organizational environment should be given more weight when offering practical recommendations to managers. Personnel managers can play an important role in this regard by developing selection, reward, and disciplinary strategies that discourage workplace victimization.
Limitations
Like all studies, our study has limitations that deserve comment. The most serious is the crosssectional nature of the design. Because we did not collect data over time, we cannot make definitive statements about causal direction. It may be that expressions of anger lead to retaliation in the form of victimization rather than the other way around. Further, we did not tie expressions of anger to specific instances of victimization, and so we cannot rule out other potential causes for these expressions. For these reasons, we are cautious about making causal statements in our hypotheses and conclusions. What we are able to conclude from the data, though, is that they do provide some support for a theoretically derived pattern of relations whose form suggests a link between being victimized and expressing anger. Another limitation is the self-report nature of the data. Self-reports of the behavioral expression of anger and perceived victimization may be susceptible to demand characteristics. This could stimulate impression management behaviors (Gardner& Martinko, 1988). Replications using alternative types of data (e.g., organizational records) or control measures (e.g., social desirability, self-monitoring) should be conducted to ameliorate this concern. Yet it should be noted that people are surprisingly willing to report having engaged in deviant, even illegal, behavior (Bennett & Robinson, 2000). Thus, it is not obvious that our data suffer from this form of response bias.
We partially controlled for common methods variance by collecting our data in two separate administrations (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). However, we collected the victimization and anger data at the same time. This may have in?ated the observed relation between victimization and anger, perhaps making it more difficult to detect the moderating in?uences we hypothesized. Consequently, the fact that we were still able to detect higher order effects for one category of victimization could be seen as providing fairly compelling evidence for the moderating effects of attribution styles and perceptions of organizational norms. We also note that because common method bias is a linear confound, the presence of significant interactions increases the likelihood that the observed relations were a function of the constructs being studied rather than a methodological artifact (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). Finally, given that our sample was drawn from a single organization, there may be some question about the generalizability of our results to other settings. Obviously, only additional research can more definitively assess the generality of our findings.
Conclusions
In sum, our study supports a direct relationship between perceived victimization and behavioral expressions of anger that corroborates prior theory and research. It also provided some support for hypothesized moderating effects for hostile attribution style and perceptions of oppositional environment that have not been tested in past studies. Taken together, we conclude that in spite of the abovementioned limitations, our findings are largely consistent with our general theory of how the experience of being victimized relates to overt anger.
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