Investigating curvilinear relationships of explicit and implicit aggression with workplace outcomes |
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Authors: | H Kristl Davison James M LeBreton Susan M Stewart Mark N Bing |
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Institution: | 1. Walker College of Business, Appalachian State University , Boone, NC, USA davisonhk@appstate.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2892-7169;3. Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA, USA;4. Department of Management and Marketing, College of Business and Technology, Western Illinois University , Moline, IL, USA;5. Department of Management, The University of Mississippi , MS, USA |
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Abstract: | ABSTRACT Although previous research has demonstrated the value of integrating explicit and implicit measures of aggression for predicting workplace outcomes, such investigations only examined linear and interactive effects. Here we examine nonlinear (i.e., curvilinear) effects of explicit and implicit aggression, which revealed subtleties in the manifestation of aggression. We found significant curvilinear effects of explicit aggression on peer-reported deviance (property deviance, production deviance, and personal aggression). In each case, deviance was lowest when explicit aggression was low, and increased as explicit aggression increased. However, production and property deviance decreased at elevated levels of explicit aggression. In contrast, for disciplinary actions, explicit and implicit aggression interacted, but there was also a curvilinear effect of implicit aggression. This pattern led to discipline being highest when explicit and implicit aggression were very incongruent, but being quite low when they were congruent. The results show that examining nonlinear effects with respect to explicit and implicit aggression can reveal unexpected relationships when predicting peer-reported criteria or organizational personnel data. Propositions for future research on the relationship of personality to workplace outcomes are presented deriving from the trait activation model, and implications for workplace interventions are discussed. |
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Keywords: | Curvilinear effects aggression personality workplace deviance trait activation |
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