Jennifer A. Griffith

The Influence of Anger on Ethical Decision Making: Comparison of a Primary and Secondary Appraisal

Higher order cognitive processes, including ethical decision making (EDM), are influenced by the experiencing of discrete emotions. Recent research highlights the negative influence one such emotion, anger, has on EDM and its underlying processes. The mechanism, however, by which anger disrupts the EDM has not been investigated. The current study sought to discover whether cognitive appraisals of an emotion-evoking event are the driving mechanisms behind the influence of anger on EDM. One primary (goal obstacle) and one secondary (certainty) appraisal of anger were examined. Study results suggest that appraisals of certainty are the driving mechanism behind the negative relationship between anger and EDM. Certainty appraisals led to less application of EDM-promoting strategies and more unethical social motives. Findings further highlight the value of investigating appraisals of emotional events, given their cognitive nature, for their potential effects on cognitive operations, such as EDM. Future directions and implications are discussed.

Online Ideology: A Comparison of Website Communication and Media Use

This study examined and compared the websites of ideological groups from a communications and media use perspective. Thirty-six websites with message boards categorized as either violent ideological, nonviolent ideological, or nonviolent nonideological were content coded for several distinguishing characteristics. The results indicated that group type was predicted by the type of information presented, the difficulty of becoming a member, and the amount of freedom members had on discussion boards. These findings suggest that characteristics of violent ideological group websites can be used to distinguish them from websites of both nonviolent ideological and nonideological groups. This study also provides a demonstration of a research methodology that can be used to naturally observe ideological groups via an online setting.

Leader–Follower Interpersonal Emotion Management Managing Stress by Person-Focused and Emotion-Focused Emotion Management

Compliance with demands to express certain emotions at certain times is difficult for most employees to achieve without also experiencing adverse effects such as stress. Emotion researchers typically study “demands” in the form of organizational display rules. However, most emotional “demands” come from leaders who are uniquely positioned to help subordinates manage negative emotions and express positive ones. While this is often implied in the literature, research projects on leader-facilitated emotion management are scarce. Using Cóté’s social interaction model as a theoretical foundation, we examine leader-facilitated emotion management in a simulated workplace setting. Interpersonal, as opposed to intrapersonal, emotion management is a multifaceted process, whose success depends on emotion-focused action and socioaffective needs being met. Our hypotheses rested on this premise, and we sought to find the most effective combination of two common emotion-focused emotion management strategies (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) with a person-focused emotion management strategy (i.e., leader empathy) for helping participants to minimize stress from an affective event. We compared these relationships across a simulated crisis situation and under normal circumstances. Our results highlight the fundamental differences between interpersonal and intrapersonal emotion management. Suppression was found to be an effective strategy for lowering employee stress after an emotional event and expression of an active, negative emotion (i.e., anger) as long as the leader also displayed empathy. Under times of crisis, the empathy-suppression combination appeared to be especially effective. Implications are discussed.

Political tactics as affective events: Implications for individual perception and attitude

Leaders use a wide spectrum of political tactics to achieve objectives, both personal and organizational. Grounded in Affective Events Theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), the current study conceptualized political tactics employed by leaders as work events with an affective component that can be perceived and responded to positively and negatively. Affective responses are dependent upon the perceived legitimacy of the tactic (sanctioned vs. unsanctioned), which are considered in light of follower expectations and attributions. The extent to which political tactics benefit the leader or organization was also examined. Participants were involved in a low-fidelity simulation that required reading a series of emails containing information regarding political tactics employed by their immediate manager and the outcome of these actions. Participants then indicated their level of affect on both positive and negative scales, their perceptions of leader effectiveness, and perceptions of organizational justice. Results suggest that leaders who employ sanctioned tactics have more positive followers, who see them as more effective and who perceive greater organizational justice than leaders who employ nonsanctioned tactics.

Predicting Scientific Creativity: The Role of Adversity, Collaborations, and Work Strategies.

There is little doubt that career experiences contribute to scientific achievement; however this relationship has yet to be thoroughly investigated in terms the effects on scientific creativity. In this study, a historiometric approach was used to examine 3 areas of adult career experiences common to scientific achievement. In doing so, prior theoretical work was used to identify career experiences relevant to scientific achievement, and 3 theoretical models were proposed to account for these experiences—adversity, collaborations, and work strategies. Biographies of eminent scientists were then content coded and analyzed. The results indicated that the adversity model did not predict scientific creativity. However, the work strategies model and, to some degree, the collaborations model showed some promise in understanding the development of creative potential in scientists. The nature of the significant relationships among the model components and scientific creativity are discussed in addition to their implications for the development of the creative potential of scientists.

Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?: The Influence of Leader Style, Distance, and Leader–Follower Mental Model Congruence on Creative Performance:

Leaders have been classified as having charismatic, ideological, or pragmatic (CIP) leadership styles, each characterized by distinct patterns in cognition and interaction. Although each CIP style has been shown to facilitate certain aspects of the creative process for followers, questions remain regarding the impact of leadership style on overall follower creative performance. One factor likely to influence this relationship is leader distance, composed of the physical distance, perceived social distance, and perceived task interaction among leaders and followers. Past research has also emphasized the role of leaders’ mental models as they relate to follower performance. Less understood, however, is how the mental models of followers may affect this process. Using the CIP model of leadership, this study explores leader distance and leader–follower mental model congruence on follower creative performance. Results indicated that while leadership style does not directly influence follower creativity, it interacts with leader distance to shape creative outcomes. Results further indicated that while general mental model congruence is not predictive, alignment on specific mental model dimensions contributes to enhanced creative performance among followers. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Reactions to ideological websites

Ideological groups use websites to exert influence on individuals beliefs, values, and social identities. This often involves, using negative emotional appeals and credibility tactics to influence website users emotional responses, attitudes, and intentions. However, we know little about the joint effects of affective appeals and credibility, especially when pre-existing ideological attitudes are taken into account. This study manipulated emotional appeals and credibility, while accounting for users pre-existing attitudes and examined their direct and join influences on users emotional responses, attitudes, and intentions. A number of findings, including a 3-way interaction for message derogation, demonstrated the power of emotional appeals and how they can influence a website visitors emotions. As expected, preexisting attitudes were also found to be important when attempting to understand how viewers are influenced by ideological websites. This study manipulated emotional appeals and credibility on an ideological website.Users pre-existing attitudes were taken into account.The influences on users emotional responses, attitudes and intentions was examined.Credibility had an effect when it was paired with the other IVs.Emotional appeals provoke emotionally consistent responses in website viewers.

Let’s Look at This Another Way: How Supervisors Can Help Subordinates Manage the Threat of Relationship Conflict:

Despite decades of scholarly and practitioner attention on conflict management, few studies have addressed the important role that supervisors play in managing relationship conflict (RC). The current research addresses this gap by investigating the use of supervisory interpersonal emotion management in helping subordinates manage perceptions of RC. Examining RC through a threat framework, we propose that when individuals perceive RC in their workgroup, they are less likely to identify with their group and more likely to withdraw from the group in ways that affect critical team processes, both of which have performance implications. Furthermore, we propose that supervisors can mitigate the consequences of perceiving RC by encouraging subordinates to reappraise past negative events that contribute to such perceptions. Using a field sample of 917 employees, we tested and found support for these predictions. This research primarily has implications for conflict theory, RC management theory, and RC management practices.

Automating Motivation: A Workplace Analysis of Service Technicians and the Motivational Impact of Automated Assistance

Like every industrial sector, the service sector will likely experience a digital transformation. The blending of technology with the service sector will have an enormous effect on business processes and the service staff. Despite expected changes and the relevance of well-performing service staff, research on the effects of smart service devices on the worker motivation and service excellence is missing. This paper outlines research-in-progress whose aim is to outline the consequences on worker motivation caused by an increase of assistance through smart service devices. Our starting point is the analysis of the current workplace of maintenance technicians. Further work will test causal relationships between automated assistance and motivation as a function of work design.