The Impact of Personality and Team Context on the Relationship Between Workplace Injustice and Counterproductive Work Behavior

This study ascertains whether the impact of workplace injustice on counterproductive work behavior is moderated by personality and team context. A sample of 131 public-service employees completed a questionnaire that assessed the extent to which they receive distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Furthermore, team commitment, coworker satisfaction, and Big Five personality traits were assessed. Finally, respondents estimated the frequency with which they and their colleagues engage in counterproductive behaviors. Procedural, distributive, and interactional injustice all provoked counterproductive behaviors. The effect of justice on these destructive acts diminished when team commitment was elevated, coworker satisfaction was limited, agreeableness was pronounced, and neuroticism was reduced. The findings confirm that vulnerability amplifies the impact of injustice, but interdependence can diminish this effect.     

Structural linguistic injustice

This paper develops a concept of structural linguistic injustice. By employing the so-called structural-injustice approach, it argues that individuals' seemingly harmless language attitudes and language choices might enable serious harms on a collective level, constituting what one could call a structural linguistic injustice. Section 1 introduces the linguistic-justice debate. By doing so, it establishes linguistic diversity as the context in which phenomena such as individuals' language attitudes, language choice, and language loss occur. Moreover, the paper illustrates why employing the structural-injustice approach might be beneficial for the linguistic-justice debate. Section 2 conceptualizes individuals' (certain types of) language attitudes and language choice as (objectionable) social structures. Section 3 provides a concept of structural linguistic injustice. Section 4 suggests one possible remedy for structural linguistic injustice. Section 5 concludes the paper.     

Identification During Imposed Change: The Roles of Personal Values,Type of Change,and Anxiety

Using a person‐situation perspective, we explain what happens to individuals' identification with a collective in the context of a change. We propose that given the anxiety that often emerges during change, individuals' personal values (conservation and openness to change) interact with type of change (imposed vs. voluntary) in predicting identification following change. In a pilot, longitudinal field study (N = 61, 67% female) of an imposed university campus relocation, we measured employees' values and identification with the university before and several months after the relocation. In two lab experiments (Study 1: N = 104, 91.3% female; Study 2: N = 113, 75.2% female), we manipulated a change to be either imposed or voluntary and compared the relationships between values and identification across types of change. In Study 2, we also measured anxiety from the change. When change was imposed (all three studies), but not when voluntary (Studies 1 and 2), individuals' conservation was positively, and openness negatively, related to individuals' post‐change identification. The effects emerged only for individuals who experienced change‐related anxiety (Study 2). Our findings demonstrate that individuals' identification with a changing collective depends on the amount of anxiety change elicits and on the particular combination of their values and type of change.     

The role of social identity in the explanation of collective action: An intergroup perspective on the Yellow Vests movement

Social psychologists have developed influential theoretical models to understand intergroup conflicts, radicalism, and collective action. November 2018 saw the emergence of a new powerful movement in France named the Yellow Vests. Born on social media, the movement has sustained an unprecedented period of intense protests and violent clashes with the police, challenging the French government. As such, this movement offers an ideal context to examine the real-world relevance of current social-psychological theorizing. Using a social identity and self-categorization perspective, two correlational studies (three samples, N = 1,849) tested the role of self-categorization as a group member, or social identity, in accounting for individual participation in normative and nonnormative collective action. Using different operationalizations of identification, both studies confirm a powerful role of identification as a Yellow Vest and provided evidence that the effect of social media use on collective action is fully mediated by self-categorization as a Yellow Vest. An alternative model suggesting that social media use mediated the relation between social identity and collective action was not supported by the data.     

When extraordinary injustice leads to ordinary response: How perpetrator power and size of an injustice event affect bystander efficacy and collective action

Although bystanders can play an integral role in the process of social change, relatively few studies have examined the factors that influence bystander collective action. The present research explores the effect of perpetrator power on bystander efficacy and collective action, as well as the moderating role of impact of the injustice event. Across two experiments, bystanders perceived that collective action would be less effective and were less willing to engage in collective action when a high‐power perpetrator engaged in injustice, compared with a low‐power perpetrator. These effects were moderated by impact of the injustice event, such that the effects of power were especially present under conditions of large impact (many victims), compared with small impact (fewer victims). Whereas the effect of the interaction of perpetrator power and impact on bystander efficacy was explained by perceptions of normativity of the injustice event, the effect of the interaction on bystander collective action was explained by bystander efficacy. Implications for bystander collective action and social change are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Retaliating against Customer Interpersonal Injustice in a Singaporean Context: Moderating Roles of Self‐Efficacy and Social Support

Few studies have examined the relationship between customer injustice and employees' retaliatory counterproductive behaviors toward customers, and those that have done so have been conducted in a Western setting. We extend these studies by examining the relationship in a Singaporean context where retaliatory behaviors by employees might be culturally constrained. While the previously established positive relationship between customer injustice and counterproductive behaviors was not replicated using peer‐reported data from employees across two hotels in Singapore, we found that individuals' self‐efficacy and perceived social support moderated it. Specifically, the injustice‐to‐counterproductive behaviors relationship was positive for individuals with high self‐efficacy, and for those who perceived high levels of supervisor social support. The findings offer insights into when Singaporean employees and, potentially, employees from other Confucian Asian societies will retaliate against customer injustice, and provide practical implications of how managers can help employees cope with customer injustice.     

Collective guilt,moral outrage,and support for helping the poor: A matter of system versus in‐group responsibility framing

We examined how the framing of responsibility for reducing socio‐economic inequality affects individuals' emotional reactions towards the poor and the willingness to engage in prosocial actions. Attribution of responsibility to either the system (government and institutions), the less deprived in‐group, or the disadvantaged out‐group (poor) was measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Study 2). Consistent with our hypotheses, moral outrage was higher than collective guilt when system responsibility for inequalities was put forth, but collective guilt arose to reach the level of moral outrage when in‐group responsibility was emphasized. Moreover, distinguishing between collective guilt for action and for inaction, we found guilt for inaction more difficult and thus less likely to arise, unless responsibility was put on the in‐group. Collective emotions were also found to be negatively linked to system justification motivation illustrating the palliative function of legitimization processes. Finally, moral outrage predicted the willingness to act upon socio‐economic inequalities both when the system's and in‐group's responsibility was emphasized, whereas collective guilt for action (but not for inaction) predicted support for prosocial actions only when the in‐group's responsibility was engaged. These findings suggest that the specific group‐based emotions in response to poverty depend on whether the system or the in‐group is held responsible and differentially predict individuals' commitment to act.     

The Power of Political Déjà Vu: When Collective Action Becomes an Effort to Change the Future by Preventing the Return of the Past

This article examines the conditions under which political déjà vu (PDV), a perceived analogy between past and present societal-level traumatic events, can mobilize people to support system-changing collective action. We propose that individuals' perceptions of PDV can evolve both social identification with a group that sustains the victimized and disidentification with the perceived perpetrators. We further suggest that disidentification and identification can form two distinct psychological paths to collective action through the sequential effects of moral outrage and collective efficacy beliefs. We tested these ideas in a cross-sectional field study (N = 272) in the context of antigovernment protests over a missing activist in Argentina, a country with a legacy of enforced disappearances. The findings demonstrated that perceiving two events from different times as similar simultaneously predicted identifying as a supporter of the victimized and disidentifying with the perceived wrongdoer. Disidentification was found to predict collective action intentions through the sequential effect of collective efficacy beliefs and moral outrage, whereas the indirect effect of social identification was nonsignificant. Results provide an intriguing example of the effects of perceived PDV in social mobilization and extend our understanding of disidentification as a powerful predictor of collective action.     

Employable,committed, and thus well-performing: a matter of interdependent forward-looking social exchange

This study probes the relationship between perceived external employability (i.e., the individual’s perception of available jobs on the external labour market) and affective commitment and performance within the framework of social exchange. An innovative feature is that we advance perceived external employability as a commodity of interdependent forward-looking exchange: employees who perceive themselves as externally employable anticipate successful exchange, which drives further responses, both relational (i.e., affective organizational commitment) and behavioural (i.e., performance). Strong features of this study are that we include (a) both the organization and the workgroup as foci of affective commitment, and (b) task, helping, and counterproductive behaviour as indicators of performance. Results from cross-lagged, structural equation modelling (SEM) analyses on two-wave survey data (N = 458 Belgian employees) largely align with our idea: perceived external employability has a positive cross-lagged effect on affective organizational and workgroup commitment. The two foci of commitment in turn have a cross-lagged effect on performance, positive in the case of helping behaviour and negative in the case of counterproductive behaviour. No significant cross-lagged effects were found in relation to task behaviour. We discuss these results in the light of Social Exchange Theory and potential routes for future research.     

Moral outrage and pragmatism: Explanations for collective action

Two explanations for collective behavior were contrasted. The first, exemplified by relative deprivation theory, stresses the importance of feelings of moral outrage and perceived economic injustice. The second focuses on more pragmatic considerations, such as the availability of resources for mobilization. The present study examines these explanations for collective behavior in a laboratory setting. Subjects were members of a disadvantaged group. In a 3 × 2 factorial design two independent variables were manipulated. The magnitude of pay inequality between the disadvantaged group and a more advantaged group was manipulated to be large, moderate, or small. Mobilization resources available to the disadvantaged group were manipulated to be either present or absent. In accord with predictions based on relative deprivation theory, as the magnitude of the inequality increased, stronger feelings of deprivation were expressed. However, contrary to relative deprivation theory, larger magnitudes of inequality and stronger feelings of deprivation were not associated with greater willingness to engage in legitimate or illegitimate forms of collective behavior. Instead, as predicted by some critics of relative deprivation theory, willinginess to engage in illegitimate forms of collective behavior was affected only by a gragmatic consideration: the presence or absence of mobilization resources.     

Editorial: Challenging injustice: Understanding upstanding,civic action,and bystander intervention to promote justice

Throughout history, individuals and communities have come together to challenge injustice in the local community and across the globe. In recent years, we have seen communities rally together to advocate for changes in policy and practice to address injustices faced by marginalized and disenfranchised groups of people. For instance, communities have taken action through the Movement for Black Lives in the United States, the women's uprising in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, and the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. These challenges to social injustices are not only led by adults. Rather, youth engage in civic action to amplify the voices of those who are marginalized, isolated, or victimized and frequently organize to protest injustice and foster collective action through social media or other technology. These challenges to injustice often arise from community-led efforts, rooted in the unique contexts and histories of the local community. This special issue considers challenging injustice broadly to include bystander intervention in instances of bullying, harassment, or aggression, political and civic engagement, anti-racist or anti-oppression activism, and resistance to injustice in institutions and communities. Three overarching themes are featured in this special issue: (1) work examining bullying experiences and factors that motivate bystander intervention in response to bullying; (2) scholarship exploring identity, socialization, and critical action and (3) research focused on collective action and challenging inequalities.     

Inspired to donate: How donors' social class impacts charitable donations

Previous research has found that donors' social class affects their own charitable giving. This research explores the effect of donors' social class on others' donation behavior. Specifically, we propose that individuals feel more inspired to engage in prosocial behavior after learning about low-social-class donors (vs. high-social-class donors) perform the giving behavior. A series of five studies, combining online and experimental data, provide converging support for this proposition and its underlying mechanism of inspiration. Furthermore, we show that the effect of donors' social class on individuals' donation behavior is attenuated when the donation currency is goods (instead of money). The article concludes with implications for the marketing of charities and prosocial behaviors.     

Relation of Economic Depression to Delinquency,Crime, and Drunkenness in Massachusetts

Abstract

Two experiments using the same paradigm were conducted to examine when members of a disadvantaged group will accept their situation, take individual action, or engage in collective action. In both experiments, Canadian undergraduate subjects received feedback that they had been unsuccessful in their attempt to gain entrance into a high status group. Experiment 1 involved a justice manipulation in which the main hypothesis was that collective action would be associated with procedural injustice, whereas distributive injustice would lead to individualistic action. The main hypothesis of Experiment 2 was that collective action would be instigated by those who are extremely close to gaining entry to the high status group. Although only partial support was obtained for the hypotheses, it was possible to specify conditions that discriminate between individual and collective action.     

The Other Side of Injustice: When Unfair Procedures Increase Group-Serving Behavior

ABSTRACT— Greater group identification and higher levels of procedural justice typically work together to encourage group members to engage in group-serving cooperative behavior. However, when people who already identify with a group receive information indicating that the group is procedurally unjust, their motivation to engage in group-serving behavior may increase. This article reports two studies in which college students' identification with their university was measured and information about the procedural justice of the university was manipulated. Study 1 used an explicit measure of group identification and a deliberative measure of group-serving behavior. Study 2 used an implicit measure of group identification and both deliberative and spontaneous measures of group-serving behavior. The findings of both studies support the hypothesis that among people who are highly identified with a group, learning about the group's injustice leads to short-term increases in group-serving behavior.     

“Yesterday Redeemed and Tomorrow Made More Beautiful”: Historical Injustice and Possible Collective Selves

This research examines the ways in which talk about reparations for historical injustice demonstrates individuals' ambitions for future collective identities. Interviews with White Tulsans (n = 25) illustrate how discursive temporal constructions justify support for or opposition to reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. It is argued that White Tulsans strategically employed these constructions to either transform or maintain collective identities. These findings bring a discursive approach to theories of collective continuity (Sani, Bowe, & Herrera, 2008) and possible selves (Cinnirella, 1998; Markus & Nurius, 1986; McAdams, 2006; Vignoles, 2008). From this perspective, reckoning with the past is as much about who we can be tomorrow as it is guilt for who we were yesterday.     

We feel, therefore we are: emotion as a basis for self-categorization and social action

Building on intergroup emotion research, we test the idea that intergroup emotion influences self-categorization. We report two studies using minimal (Study 1) and natural (Study 2) groups in which we measured participants' emotional reactions to a group-relevant event before manipulating the emotional reactions of other ingroup members and outgroup members (anger vs. happiness in Study 1; anger vs. indifference in Study 2). Results supported the hypotheses that (a) the fit between participants' own emotional reactions and the reactions of ingroup members would influence self-categorization, and (b) the specific content of emotional reactions would shape participants' willingness to engage in collective action. This willingness was greater when emotional reactions were not only shared with other group members, but were of anger (consistent with group-based action) rather than happiness or indifference (inconsistent with group-based action). Implications for the relationship between emotion and social identities are discussed.     

Vertical individualism and injustice: The self‐restorative function of revenge

In the current paper, we examine the role of vertical individualism in determining revenge behavior following an injustice. Drawing on existing theory and research, we hypothesized that victims who are more vertically individualistic will be more likely than those who are less vertically individualistic to engage in revenge following the experience of injustice as a means of restoring self‐esteem. The results from three studies—employing different methodologies and operationalizations of revenge—support our reasoning. Moreover, two of the studies provide support for the proposed self‐esteem maintenance mechanism underlying the relation between vertical individualism and revenge. Although much research in psychology and organizational justice has demonstrated that the experience of injustice can threaten one's identity, our data are the first to demonstrate that responding to injustice can restore people's self‐esteem to homeostasis. The present studies thus demonstrate that in some instances revenge may have an intrapsychic benefit for the victim, which helps to explain why some people engage in revenge despite possible negative interpersonal consequences. We discuss implications of our findings for social and organizational justice theory and for potentially mitigating revenge reactions to injustice. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual Differences in Antisocial Punishment in Public Goods Situations: The Interplay of Cortisol with Testosterone and Dominance

This research investigates which endocrinological and psychological factors are associated with individuals' tendency to engage in destructive antisocial punishment, that is, to costly punish cooperative individuals in public goods situations. In this work, we focus on the interplay of endogenous cortisol with testosterone and dominance. We applied the dual‐hormone hypothesis according to which testosterone is positively associated with destructive and dominant behavior but only in individuals with low levels of cortisol. Study 1 shows that individuals are more likely to engage in destructive antisocial punishment in a public goods game with the option to punish when their testosterone level is high, given that their level of cortisol is low, which bolsters the dual‐hormone hypothesis. In contrast, no significant interaction effect of testosterone and cortisol emerges for the punishment of uncooperative free‐riders (altruistic punishment). In a second study, we build on these findings and document that self‐reported dominance is only positively associated with antisocial punishment (but not with altruistic punishment) when cortisol is low. In sum, the results indicate the importance of taking endocrinological and psychological factors (and their interactions) into account in order to reach a comprehensive understanding of individuals' behavior in social dilemma situations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Too great to act in solidarity: The negative relationship between collective narcissism and solidarity-based collective action

Three studies examined the association between narcissistic identification with one’s advantaged in-group and engagement in solidarity-based collective action. Drawing on theory and past research, a negative effect of collective narcissism on solidarity-based collective action was expected. A two-wave longitudinal study (N = 162) found that Polish participants’ narcissistic, but not secure, national identification decreased their willingness to engage in collective action in solidarity with refugees over time. A field study (N = 258) performed during a mass protest against a proposed abortion ban showed that men’s gender-based collective narcissism was a negative predictor of solidarity-based engagement (operationalized as protest behavior and collective action intentions) and this effect was mediated by lowered empathy for women. Finally, a web-based survey (N = 1,992) revealed that heterosexual/cisgender individuals’ collective narcissism was negatively associated with collective action intentions in support of LGBT rights and that this effect was sequentially mediated by increased intergroup anxiety and decreased empathy for LGBT people. Theoretical implications of the present findings, research limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Influence of Hostile Media Perception on Willingness to Engage in Discursive Activities: An Examination of Mediating Role of Media Indignation

This study examines the mediating role of media indignation, a set of negative emotional reactions to media coverage perceived to have partisan bias, between hostile media perception (HMP) and its consequences in behavioral willingness, more specifically, willingness to engage in discursive activities. It is examined together with a cognitive pathway through individuals' inference on opinion climate. Data from a web-based survey of university students (N = 696) on three controversial issues were analyzed. Findings showed that the degree of perceived partisan bias in mainstream media coverage on an issue was positively related to the intensity of media indignation and levels of incongruity between one's own opinion and perceived majority opinion. Media indignation in turn had a significant and positive effect on willingness to engage in discursive activities across all three issues, mediating the effect of HMP on behavioral willingness, whereas self-majority opinion incongruity did not. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.