Daily mistrust: A resource perspective and its implications for work and home

Abstract

Mistrust is a daily occurrence at work. Yet little is known about how perceptions of being mistrusted by coworkers may affect employees’ subsequent daily attitudes and behaviors. Indeed, the existing literature on mistrust has overwhelmingly focused on how mistrust affects the trustor (person whose trust is violated) but not the trustee (the mistrusted person). This is problematic because conservation of resources theory (COR) suggests that perceived mistrust is a negative experience likely to affect the mistrusted employees’ subsequent attitudes and behaviors both at work and at home. To investigate this possibility, we conducted an experience sampling study of employees and their significant others over 3 consecutive workweeks. Consistent with COR, day by day perceptions of mistrust increased employees’ emotional exhaustion, consequently leading to withdrawal from colleagues at work and conflict toward their significant other at home. Moreover, supporting self‐enhancement (rather than self‐verification) theory, these effects were stronger when employees perceived mistrust to be high (vs. low) in justification. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of this research.

Why and for whom does the pressure to help hurt others? Affective and cognitive mechanisms linking helping pressure to workplace deviance

“…Relatedly, although we supported several hypotheses in Study 1, our effect sizes were somewhat small (i.e., γ s = .06–.10). Although small effect sizes are somewhat common in ESM research (e.g., Baer, Matta, Kim, Welsh, & Garud, ; Lanaj et al., ; Zhou et al., ), and our variables explained meaningful incremental variance (i.e., 4–7%), it is reasonable to question the practical significance of our findings.…”

“…Indeed, Lanaj et al. () found that depleted employees enacted more passive deviant behaviors at work. Despite the low visibility of the behaviors we examined, depleted employees may still perceive potential costs associated with their enactment, and self‐regulate accordingly.…”

“…Thus, following Lanaj et al. (), perhaps depleted employees instead enact deviant behaviors that are avoidance oriented (e.g., Ferris, Yan, Lim, Chen, & Fatimah, ), or allocate resources away from helping others and toward working behind the scenes to help themselves (e.g., Gabriel et al., ).…”

“…Importantly, when sufficiently motivated, employees can mitigate the deleterious effects associated with states of cognitive depletion (e.g., Baumeister & Vohs, ). More specifically, employees have an incentive to use their remaining resources to regulate behaviors that are linked to goal accomplishment or that may be easily observable (Johnson et al., ; Lanaj, Kim, Koopman, & Matta, ). Yet, based on our prior discussion about the ambiguity and low visibility of instigated incivility, employees should place lower priority on regulating this behavior when depleted (Rosen et al., ).…”

A Theory of Ethical Accounting and Its Implications for Hypocrisy in Organizations

“…Scholars have observed that people have been raised to internalize their society's moral standards (Bandura, 1991), and that they are motivated to maintain the sense that, on the whole, they are good people (Bryan, Adams, & Monin, 2013;Mazar et al, 2008;Monin & Miller, 2001;Sherman & Cohen, 2002). Thus, violating moral principles can prove costly to the violator by threatening that sense of self-worth (Lanaj, Kim, Koopman, & Matta, 2018).…”