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Exploring supervisors’ two‐faced response to their past abusive behavior
- glutamate 6y agoAnyone with full text access?
- erikpukinskis 6y agohttps://sci-hub.se/downloads/2020-09-26/cb/10.1111@peps.12424.pdf https://sci-hub.se/downloads/2020-09-26/cb/10.1111@peps.1242...
- _Microft 6y agoYou might appeal to Alexandra, patron saint of the paywalled scientist?
- djohnston 6y agoShe is an under-appreciated pioneer for human knowledge.
- andi999 6y agoIt would be really great if there were something like a hub for science. Wondering how one would call it if it were to exist.
- clankyclanker 6y agoIt would act like some sort of telescope that would allow one to view academic papers. I assume it would be called "Science Hubble." </humor>
- pmiller2 6y agoIn all seriousness, I think Saint Isidore, patron saint of the internet would be more appropriate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Seville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Seville
- djohnston 6y ago"He also invented the period (full stop), comma, and colon.[4]" Wow.
- Veen 6y agohttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-hub.st/doi/10.1111/peps.12424 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-hub.st/doi/10.1111/peps....
- jan_Inkepa 6y agoThat only has the front page for me?
- glutamate 6y agoThank you, that works.
- Kenji 6y agoThank Alexandra Elbakyan for free access to information whose collection was largely publicly funded. A true warrior for justice. https://sci-hub.se//https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/peps.12424 https://sci-hub.se//https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1...
- studius 6y ago"First, we provide insights regarding how supervisors respond to their own abusive behaviors, which allows organizations to better address its consequences. By exploring how abusive behavior impacts the supervisor him/herself, we help to identify potential “blind spots” in how abuse can promote (or inhibit) other behaviors. Specifically, we find that symbolized moral identity is a key characteristic that prompts abusive episodes to impact image concerns and subsequent impression management behaviors. Thus, organizations might consider offering ethics trainings to help supervisors monitor their symbolized moral identity when it comes to mistreating subordinates. Such trainings have been shown to impact individuals’ other forms of moral perceptions (Reynolds, 2008). Similarly, other scholars have advocated for employees to develop their self-monitoring and political skills being that they are critical when it comes to favorable impression management tactics (Bolino et al., 2016), suggesting a valuable focus on symbolized moral identity. In this way, these trainings may help supervisors become more aware of the impacts of their behavior for their image which, as indicated by our findings, may lead to some degree of reparatory behavior – albeit inauthentic reparatory behaviors. Second, our findings have implications for the selection of organizational supervisors. That is, organizations that place greater emphasis on authenticity regarding leadership or organizational climate (George et al., 2007) would benefit from our findings, particularly when it comes to supervisor selection. Specifically, we find that supervisors who endorse less of a symbolized moral identity are less likely to have image concerns and thus less prone to engage in impression management tactics that may be perceived as inauthentic following abusive episodes (Eastman, 1994). Thus, it behooves organizations that want to develop highly authentic supervisors or organizational climates to seek to hire supervisors that are lower (or at least not higher) on symbolized moral identity. Third, prior research indicates that engaging in daily impression management tactics comes with a personal cost to the actor. Specifically, impression management tactics have been linked to greater subsequent daily cognitive depletion, exhaustion, anxiety, work-family conflict, and sleep (Klotz et al., 2018; Wagner et al., 2014), while potentially being deceptive to the supervisor themselves (Conger, 1990). Supervisors who engage in abusive episodes not only experience greater daily image concerns, but in attempting to resolve those concerns with daily impression management tactics, are likely to generate greater personal exhaustion, anxiety, and work-to-family hardships (Wagner et al., 2014). While it would be most beneficial for organizations to integrate training initiatives that aid supervisors to develop better interpersonal and leadership skills as a means of curtailing abusive episodes in the first place (Tepper, 2000), it would also be advantageous for organizations to provide support for leaders that have engaged in abusive episodes to more effectively cope with the image concerns they experience as a result of mistreating their employees. Further, providing training to supervisors on the implications of their behavior—moral or image— may prove to be a fruitful path forward for practitioners. Recent research has highlighted the value of self-reflection for supervisors (Lanaj et al., 2019) as a means of fostering improved behaviors; encouraging such reflection may help supervisors to more genuinely respond to their past behavior, rather than engage in surface-level, image-focused behaviors. Finally, Eastman (1994) indicates that impression management tactics are received unfavorably when perceived as insincere or there are ulterior motives for the behaviors (see also Harris et al., 2007; Leary, 1996). Our study shows that prior-day abusive episodes precede next-day ingratiation, exemplification, and self-promotion behaviors. Given the temporal proximity of abusive and impression management behaviors, third-parties (e.g., subordinates, the focal supervisor’s direct supervisor) may view next-day impression management behaviors as insincere or owing to ulterior motives of the supervisor trying to repair his/her damaged image as a result of his/her prior day abusive behaviors. Indeed, our emphasis on within-person variation on such impression management behaviors underscores this point; within-person variation on impression management behaviors, by deviating from the supervisor’s typical impression management behaviors, may warrant additional attributions of insincerity. This lack of attributed sincerity can undermine the effectiveness of the impression management tactics (Eastman, 1994; Leary, 1996) or erode the supervisor’s relationships with others (Kim et al., 2018). Thus, supervisors who engage in any form of abusive episodes would benefit by being cognizant that their impression management approaches intended to repair their image concerns may be interpersonally costly. In other words, impression management behaviors should be employed with caution given the potential downsides of those behaviors (Bolino et al., 2016). Instead, managers may find value in employing more genuine forms of reparative behaviors, rather than impression management behaviors, following episodes of abusive behavior."
- skim_milk 6y agoCool to see a study like this, but of course it's not meant to be a ground-breaking new discovery. It's well-studied that abusive, grandiose people are people with intense anxiety that are very difficult to heal because of their grandiosity (see narcissists) There are so many studies on this topic all trying to find the right words hoping to finally convince us: anxious/grandiose people will never change inside (without years-long therapy), they will only change their tactics once they've been found out. So if this happens in a work environment fire them immediately once discovered, or leave your company if you can't fire them - you will not find a way to fix these people or learn how to cope with them yourself just do it. Rewrote the first paragraph since it sucked.
- enkid 6y agoI've never seen these studies claiming anxious people tend to be immoral in their behaviors at work. Do you have a link? My personal intuition is that "grandiose" and "anxious" people are quite distinct groups with very distinct behaviors.
- ownagefool 6y agoThere's probably an overlap, i.e. your dickhead boss probably has a bunch of reasons being immoral is the greater good, lesser evil, or ends justifies the means. Of course, some people seem to just be dicks with nary a care in the world, but in my experience, most openly anxious folks are nice. They tend to be too anxious not to be. Personally, I guess I'm an anxious person _sometimes_ ( can panic attack but tend to forget about it if I don't think about it ) and it doesn't make me act dishonest or an asshole. Not even saying I've never been an asshole, but stabbing someone in the back just isn't my style and goes against my working class Scottish stoic upbringing. As does being openly anxious, it's not something I tell folks.
- skim_milk 6y ago>anxious people tend to be immoral in their behaviors at work I'm not claiming that >My personal intuition is that "grandiose" and "anxious" people are quite distinct groups with very distinct behaviors This is correct. But I was trying to refer to the link between grandiosity and depression when anxiety is the underlying cause (which I really didn't need to bring up in the original comment, don't know why I wrote that). I mainly had this book in mind when I was typing my comment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_(psychologist)#The_Drama_of_the_Gifted_Child_(Das_Drama_des_begabten_Kindes,_1979) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_(psychologist)#Th... which was I guess the first book to link grandiosity and depression if you want to look into that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hitekker 6y ago"Faking nice" over "making nice" is pretty common in online communities too. 1) A person-turned-abuser sees an opportunity to abuse an undeserving bystander. 2) The abuser takes it, using polite-sounding, civil language as a smokescreen. 3) Some commenters will point out the malice in the abuser's tone. 4) The abuser furiously spams the thread, claiming clear & good intentions. The abuser may even pretend to apologize to the abused. 5) Months later, the abuser only remembers "both sides were wrong" or the abused "kind of deserved it" The relevant quote is "Propriety is the least of all laws, but the most obeyed." If a person offends the group's vague sense of manners, that person risks being condemned and ostracized. But if a person can cloak their action under a thin veneer of respectability (propriety), they can do quite a bit, even harm a fellow human being, without being detected.
- waterhouse 6y agoQuite possible. Though, playing devil's advocate, I wonder if requiring propriety still manages to filter out the majority of bad actors. I certainly see a decent number of commenters who are clearly rude and not making an effort to cover it, whose comments wouldn't pass muster even if they weren't rude, and getting modded away. (There's also some amount of rudeness that looks reasonable to the political tribe being rude, which generally remains in place; it's hard to establish objective-seeming norms around this so I'll set that aside.) Lastly, I can think of only one recognizable commenter who I'm pretty sure was acting like a deliberate troll on a few occasions: starting out with what I'm pretty sure he knew was a straw man argument, and then using his rhetorical skill to just mess with the people arguing back, rather than making a coherent point.
- eplanit 6y ago"moral cleansing theory and impression management and construction theory" ?? I'm more worried about these than a jerk boss.
- tokai 6y agoCould you elaborate? You're more worried about three academic theories/frameworks existing than having a jerk of a boss?
- tertius 6y agoOne affects society of successful. The other only affects a small amount of people.
- throwawaysea 6y agoI haven’t heard these terms before and I am paywalled from the actual study, but my first reaction is to view them with suspicion since the level of academic rigor in these fields seems very low in general. And yes they do end up having an impact on all of society when their conclusions are popularized and amplified by activists ultimately. So the caution is warranted.
- studius 6y agoSummary: * Figure out a good way not to hire a 2-faced asshole, because it ain't easy to fix. * Making someone change their normal behavior may deplete their energy in the short-term, and they'll come off as fake. So, if you're after that, go full on Pygmalion, and give it some time to set in; some crap two-week HR course won't cut it. * Be yourself. It's less work and you'll come off as more real.
- arcticbull 6y agoBe yourself is terrible advice! Be yourself unless you’re a dick, in which case seriously consider being someone else.
- warent 6y agoI'm not 100% certain but I think often times people who are the biggest assholes are usually that way precisely because they're afraid of being themselves
- refulgentis 6y agoAs someone who was occasionally afflicted by this for a while...yes, 1000x yes. My outcomes in complicated situations building over long time spans has completely changed the last year or two because now I choose to be an _incremental_ asshole. i.e. I speak up much earlier than I used to, when I thought it'd be 'mean', preventing things from deviating so far from my comfort zone that eventually I need to address everything I was uncomfortable with, all at once.
- tertius 6y agoYes, don't let people step on you from day 1. Boundaries. It's hard, you just want it to be a small infraction and then everything will be fine in the future. That's rare. At least it is in my experience.
- roenxi 6y agoFairly simple example, but assuming a little bit of nature in the nature vs. nurture argument there are probably a fair number of men out there who get a real kick out of being violent. I encourage them not to 'be yourself' except in some very specific circumstances. A much better strategy than 'be yourself' is 'try to understand why other people think you are wrong'. That is a strategy that can improve over time. 'Be yourself' literally locks in whatever mistakes a person is already making. Not going to judge anyone who goes with 'be yourself' but let the record show it is a bad way to approach life unless a body is very lucky in who their self is.
- aaron695 6y agoWhy is this upvoted, is HN literally a slot machine? It's garbage. A 3 weeks, self evaluated survey for amazon vouchers for ~100 people? It's a great student thesis, but it's not science. The journal article reads like it's actually written to be confusing. Why do we think that's acceptable? What is the game here, people don't like supervisors so you write an article that make them look bad, so the media creates spam around you, they get clicks from the masses and you make money while everyone gets dumber. Out of interest does anyone have a link to the actual questionnaire used? So we can actually evaluate the claim.
- db48x 6y agoThere is a large random component, and also a large popularity component.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- motoboi 6y agoThis seems to be part of the debate about Timnit Gebru exit from Google.
- aaron695 6y agoAnd Timnit Gebru would be the evil supervisor I assume? Timnit Gebru is a bad person, but this article is a strange segway. "Moral cleansing" is a made up term with no meaning for instance. It's used to confuse people, these industries have evolved similarly to how GPT-3 has evolved. You short circuit peoples brains so they can't evaluate what's being said.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoWell, 'moral cleansing' is really just jargon. Not an indicator of a healthy research environment, but I had no trouble googling it. My interpretation was that Timmit Gebru was the kind of person publishing papers like these.
- 6y ago
- 29athrowaway 6y agoPeople are often jerks because it "works". It gets them what they want. Your job as the jerk supervisor is let them know that being a jerk will not get them way they want. It will tarnish their reputation, diminish their credibility and eventually get them isolated, demoted or fired. Promoting a jerk is equivalent to detonating a nuclear bomb in your company. It tells everyone that the way to get promoted is being toxic, therefore everyone will become toxic. It will also make ethical people give up on your company and leave.
- novia 6y agoFrom TFRP: > Specifically, impression management tactics have been linked to greater subsequent daily cognitive depletion, exhaustion, anxiety, work-family conflict, and sleep (Klotz et al., 2018; Wagner et al., 2014), while potentially being deceptive to the supervisor themselves (Conger, 1990). Supervisors who engage in abusive episodes not only experience greater daily image concerns, but in attempting to resolve those concerns with daily impression management tactics, are likely to generate greater personal exhaustion, anxiety, and work-to-family hardships (Wagner et al., 2014). While it would be most beneficial for organizations to integrate training initiatives that aid supervisors to develop better interpersonal and leadership skills as a means of curtailing abusive episodes in the first place (Tepper, 2000), * it would also be advantageous for organizations to provide support for leaders that have engaged in abusive episodes to more effectively cope with the image concerns they experience as a result of mistreating their employees. * Emphasis mine. This is the one sentence in the research paper that made me scratch my head.