Long-term consequences of supervisor hostility

主管通常控制对员工重要和有价值的成果（如薪酬、晋升机会）的分配。由于这些权力动态，对员工怀有敌意的主管会引发强烈的负面反应，最终伤害员工，并使美国企业在生产力下降方面损失数十亿美元。迄今为止，研究人员只关注上司敌意的短期后果，而忽略了这样一个观点：通常伴随着人际虐待而来的心理创伤，可能会在未来数年里一直困扰着受害者。从更长的时间跨度来研究这一现象，也增加了一些员工最终从这种经历中成长的可能性，就像一些创伤受害者在巨大的破坏后经历成长一样。本项目探讨了在过去成为主管敌意目标的员工所表现出的认知、情感、生理和行为差异。项目结果可能为有兴趣帮助受虐待员工从长期伤害中恢复的从业者提供指导。此外，通过证明一个对最初的虐待没有直接责任的组织尽管承担了一些成本，我们希望激发一种集体责任感，改变文化、气候和工作结构，使主管敌意。此外，基于少数族裔和那些没有结构性权力的人经常成为充满敌意的管理者的目标这一观点，我们希望我们的研究将有助于减少这种情况，并最终有助于在少数族裔就业机会方面创造公平的竞争环境。最后，我们的研究可能有助于制定有关社会所期望和容忍的工作环境类型的公共政策。我们希望这些结果将有助于对话，改变管理实践，造福员工的福祉。采用多种方法，包括调查（包括自我报告和他人报告）、一系列实验室任务（例如，泰勒攻击范式、信任游戏、情感Stroop）、生理测量和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）任务，我们用100名过去曾遭遇上司敌意的员工和100名没有遭遇上司敌意的员工的匹配样本来测试我们的想法和整体概念模型。该项目旨在通过以下方式促进研究：(1)基于社会心理学、人类认知和神经科学理论和研究，提供一个上司敌意的长期后果模型；(2)将对上司敌意的研究从短期扩展到长期，为这一现象提供重要的第一次检查，并为该主题的未来研究提供多种途径；(3)阐明上司敌意的潜在积极后果。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Supervisors often control the allocation of outcomes (e.g., compensation, promotion opportunities) that are important and valuable to employees. Because of these power dynamics, supervisors who are hostile toward their employees elicit strong negative reactions that ultimately harm employees and cost U.S. organizations billions of dollars in reduced productivity. To date, researchers have focused only on the short-term consequences of supervisor hostility and have neglected to consider the idea that psychological trauma that often comes along with interpersonal mistreatment can remain with its victims for years into the future. Studying this phenomenon over a longer time horizon also raises the possibility that some employees ultimately grow from this experience, just as some trauma victims experience growth after great devastation. This project explores the cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral differences exhibited by employees who have been the target of supervisor hostility in the past. Project results may provide guidance to practitioners interested in helping abused employees recover from long-term harm. Further, by demonstrating that an organization that bears no direct responsibility for the original abuse nonetheless bears some of the costs, we hope to inspire a collective sense of responsibility for changing the cultures, climates, and structures of work that enable supervisor hostility. Moreover, based on the idea that minorities and those without structural power are often targeted by hostile supervisors, we hope that our research will contribute to its reduction and ultimately help level the playing field in terms of minority employment opportunities. Finally, our research may contribute to public policy regarding the type of work environments desired and tolerated by society. We hope the results will contribute to conversations that change management practice for the benefit of employees’ well-being.Using a multi-method approach, employing surveys (both self- and other-reports), a battery of laboratory tasks (e.g., Taylor Aggression Paradigm, trust games, emotional Stroop), physiological measures, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tasks, we test our ideas and overall conceptual model with matched samples of 100 employees who have been exposed to supervisor hostility in the past and 100 employees who have not. The project aims to contribute to research by: (1) providing a model of the long-term consequences of supervisor hostility, grounded in social psychology, human cognition, and neuroscience theory and research, (2) extending research on supervisor hostility from the short-term to the long-term, providing an important first examination of the phenomenon and fostering multiple avenues for future research on this topic, and (3) illuminating potential positive consequences of supervisor hostility.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.