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

Oyet, Mercy C. (2018) Interpersonal mistreatment in the workplace: implications for target's identities, emotions and behaviour. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

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

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