Recent advancements in the area of workplace mistreatment have begun to challenge our view of who is affected by this phenomenon. Whereas it was initially assumed that mistreatment affected a small subset of employees who were directly targeted by negative treatment, empirical work has documented that employees who observe or become aware of others being mistreated are also adversely affected. However, the extant literature examining vicarious mistreatment has developed in silos centered around individual mistreatment constructs and individual outcome domains, and there is currently little integration among these bodies of work. As such, this paper draws on a systematic review of empirical studies examining vicarious mistreatment to summarize its antecedents and outcomes. The review further enumerates the mechanisms that transmit the effects of vicarious mistreatment to third-party outcomes and the moderating variables that may mitigate or amplify the impact of vicarious mistreatment. The culmination of this review is the development of a dual process model of vicarious mistreatment that integrates prior theoretical perspectives into an overarching framework to guide subsequent research. The authors then conclude by providing a road map for future theoretical and empirical work on vicarious mistreatment. Included within the future research agenda is a constructive critique of current research designs and methodological approaches that may undermine the field’s understanding of how vicarious mistreatment operates.
Organizations, researchers, and policymakers rely on estimates of the prevalence of workplace mistreatment in numerous ways, including assessing the need for legal or organizational intervention. However, despite the importance of having accurate prevalence rate estimates, there has not been a systematic attempt to estimate the proportion of employees who encounter mistreatment. This study thus sought to meta-analytically estimate the prevalence of a comprehensive set of forms of workplace mistreatment. In doing so, we reconcile the substantial variability in prevalence rates reported across studies by exploring factors that may influence prevalence rates. Results showed an average of 34% of employees experienced mistreatment and 44% of employees witnessed mistreatment. Estimates ranged from 16% to 75% for specific forms of experienced mistreatment and 20% to 79% for witnessed mistreatment. Prevalence rates also varied as a function of measurement characteristics. We next used our meta-analytic prevalence rate estimates to infer the financial cost of mistreatment due to increased sickness absences and productivity loss. The estimated cost ranged from $691.70 billion to $1.97 trillion annually. Finally, results suggest that prevalence rates are lowest in countries where greater legal protections are offered to workers, illustrating the utility of legal efforts in mitigating mistreatment. Recommendations for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers are discussed.
Ideal-point processes assume that individuals engage in introspective comparisons when responding to self-reported typical traits such as personality, affect, and attitudes. Although this type of response process is fundamentally a within-person phenomenon, past research has relied on between-person data using item response theory (IRT) model comparisons to draw inferences about the appropriateness of ideal-point response processes. However, between-person data may not necessarily be indicative of within-person processes. Across 2 studies, the authors used a paired comparison paradigm to examine whether within-person responses conform to an ideal-point response process (vs. a dominance response process). The authors found that an ideal-point response process more accurately describes within-person responses to personality, attitude, and affect constructs compared to a dominance response process. They additionally found that verbal ability and conscientiousness moderate both ideal and dominance response processes; individuals high on conscientiousness or high on verbal ability are more likely to engage in more precise introspective comparisons. (PsycINFO Database Record
The COVID-19 pandemic threatened our physical health, alongside our mental and social wellbeing. Social distancing requirements, which are necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, increased social isolation by limiting social interactions that are an essential part of human wellbeing. In this study, we examined the stress caused by COVID-19 early on in the pandemic through the lens of sociability among a large sample of preservice educators (N = 2,183). We found that individuals who have higher sociability (including deriving joy from social interactions and using social support to manage emotions) experienced greater COVID-19 stress. This study also contributed to prior literature which has sought to relate pandemic-related stress to demographic group differences. We found no significant relationship between demographic membership (gender, race, and sexual orientation) and COVID-19 stress. This study is among the first, however, to demonstrate that vulnerability to pandemic stress varies as a function of sociability. Implications of these findings and ways people can better cope with pandemic isolation are discussed.
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