Responses to Discrimination: Relationships Between Social Support Seeking, Core Self‐Evaluations, and Withdrawal Behaviors

• Author: María Fernanda Wagstaff,María del Carmen Triana,Sihyun Kim,Said Al‐Riyami
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21634
• Date: 01 July 2015

Human Resource Management, July–August 2015, Vol. 54, No. 4. Pp. 673–687

© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21634

Correspondence to: María Fernanda Wagstaff, Department of Marketing and Management, The University of Texas at

El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968-0539, Phone: (915) 747-5378, Fax: (915) 747-5348, E-mail: fwagstaff@utep.edu.

RESPONSES TO DISCRIMINATION:

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN

SOCIAL SUPPORT SEEKING,

CORE SELF-EVALUATIONS,

AND WITHDRAWAL BEHAVIORS

MARÍA FERNANDA WAGSTAFF, MARÍA DEL CARMEN

TRIANA, SIHYUN KIM, AND SAID AL-RIYAMI

Drawing from the theory of conservation of resources (Hobfoll, 1989), we exam-

ined relationships between social support seeking as a response to perceived

discrimination from supervisors, core self-evaluations, and withdrawal behav-

iors. We further studied how the relationship between social support seeking and

withdrawal behaviors was moderated by core self-evaluations. With two differ-

ent samples, we found, as expected, that social support seeking in response to

discrimination from supervisors is positively related to employee withdrawal

behaviors, and core self-evaluations is negatively related to withdrawal behav-

iors. Across the two samples, we also found evidence that the relationship

between social support seeking and withdrawal behaviors was weaker when

core self-evaluations were high compared to low. We discuss implications of our

results in the context of past research. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: social support seeking as a response to perceived discrimination,

withdrawal behaviors, core self-evaluations

Social support, seeking and/or receiv-

ing support from other individuals to

address a problem, is a strategy used by

people who experience discrimination at

work (Knapp, Faley, Ekeberg, & Dubois,

1997). Scholars have found that social support is

one major response to sexual harassment (Knapp

et al., 1997), racial discrimination (Plummer &

Slane, 1996), disability discrimination (Colella,

1996), and sexual orientation discrimination

(Wilson & Yoshikawa, 2004), among other types

of discrimination. The idea that social support is

one prevalent response to discriminatory treat-

ment is well established in the literature.

However, what is not well established is

whether social support seeking in response to

discrimination from supervisors relates to an

individual’s job outcomes. Generally, in the

social support literature, there has been more

research on understanding social support received

rather than sought as well as on the relationship

between social support received and employee

health outcomes. While scholars have shown that

social support received is associated with both