Long-term consequences of supervisor hostility

Temple University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

Supervisors often control the allocation of outcomes (e.g., compensation, promotion opportunities) that are important and valuable to employees. Because of these power dynamics, supervisors who are hostile toward their employees elicit strong negative reactions that ultimately harm employees and cost U.S. organizations billions of dollars in reduced productivity. To date, researchers have focused only on the short-term consequences of supervisor hostility and have neglected to consider the idea that psychological trauma that often comes along with interpersonal mistreatment can remain with its victims for years into the future. Studying this phenomenon over a longer time horizon also raises the possibility that some employees ultimately grow from this experience, just as some trauma victims experience growth after great devastation. This project explores the cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral differences exhibited by employees who have been the target of supervisor hostility in the past. Project results may provide guidance to practitioners interested in helping abused employees recover from long-term harm. Further, by demonstrating that an organization that bears no direct responsibility for the original abuse nonetheless bears some of the costs, we hope to inspire a collective sense of responsibility for changing the cultures, climates, and structures of work that enable supervisor hostility. Moreover, based on the idea that minorities and those without structural power are often targeted by hostile supervisors, we hope that our research will contribute to its reduction and ultimately help level the playing field in terms of minority employment opportunities. Finally, our research may contribute to public policy regarding the type of work environments desired and tolerated by society. We hope the results will contribute to conversations that change management practice for the benefit of employees’ well-being. Using a multi-method approach, employing surveys (both self- and other-reports), a battery of laboratory tasks (e.g., Taylor Aggression Paradigm, trust games, emotional Stroop), physiological measures, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tasks, we test our ideas and overall conceptual model with matched samples of 100 employees who have been exposed to supervisor hostility in the past and 100 employees who have not. The project aims to contribute to research by: (1) providing a model of the long-term consequences of supervisor hostility, grounded in social psychology, human cognition, and neuroscience theory and research, (2) extending research on supervisor hostility from the short-term to the long-term, providing an important first examination of the phenomenon and fostering multiple avenues for future research on this topic, and (3) illuminating potential positive consequences of supervisor hostility. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.