The indirect relations of workplace incivility with emotional exhaustion and supportive behaviors via self‐blame: The moderating roles of observed incivility and trait emotional control

• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Author: Jiajin Tong,Russell E. Johnson,SinHui Chong
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2399
• Date: 01 October 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The indirect relations of workplace incivility with emotional

exhaustion and supportive behaviors via self‐blame: The

moderating roles of observed incivility and trait emotional

control

Jiajin Tong

1

|SinHui Chong

2

|Russell E. Johnson

3

1

School of Psychological and Cognitive

Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior

and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing,

China

2

Division of Leadership, Management &

Organisation, Nanyang Technological

University, Singapore, Singapore

3

Department of Management, Broad College

of Business, Michigan State University, East

Lansing, Michigan

Correspondence

Jiajin Tong, School of Psychological and

Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing

100871, China.

Email: tongttong@163.com

Funding information

National Natural Science Fund of China,

Grant/Award Numbers: 31400905 and

91324201; Foundation of Beijing Key Labora-

tory of Behavior and Mental Health, Grant/

Award Number: Z151100001615053; Beijing

Positive Psychology Foundation, Grant/Award

Number: #0020344

Summary

Drawing from the social cognitive theory of self‐regulation, we develop a model

linking experienced incivility to emotional exhaustion and supportive behaviors via

self‐blame, with observed incivility experienced by coworkers as a first‐stage mod-

erator and trait emotional control as a second‐stage moderator. We contend that

employees will experience self‐blame if they perceive themselves to be distinct tar-

gets of incivility (i.e., observed incivility experienced by others is low). Self‐blame

can potentially trigger prosocial responses for improving the situation, but self‐

blaming targets rarely respond in a prosocial manner because rational attempts to

do so are thwarted by deleterious negative emotions accompanying self‐blame.

We argue that trait emotional control provides resources for managing these nega-

tive emotions to unleash a bright side of self‐blame, such that the relation of self‐

blame with prosocial responses (i.e., being supportive to coworkers) will be more

positive and the relation of self‐blame with emotional exhaustion will be less posi-

tive for individuals with high (vs. low) trait emotional control. Multiwave data col-

lected from a sample of 220 police officers largely support our hypotheses,

indicating that the indirect relation of experienced incivility with supportive behav-

iors via self‐blame is strongest at lower levels of observed incivility and higher levels

of emotional control.

KEYWORDS

emotional control,emotional exhaustion, self‐blame, supportive behaviors, workplace incivility

1|INTRODUCTION

Incivility, which is on the rise in today's workplace, is a form of low‐

intensity interpersonal mistreatment characterized by “rudeness and

disregard for others in the workplace”and an “ambiguous intent to

harm the target”(Andersson & Pearson, 1999). It encompasses a range

of low‐intensity antisocial behaviors such as making impolite and rude

comments, disrespecting the target, and isolating the target from work

or social activities (Lim & Cortina, 2005). Despite its low intensity,

workplace incivility has high incidence in the workplace, with as much

as 71% of employees reporting to have experienced uncivil behaviors

at work within a 5‐year period (Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout,

JiajinTong and SinHui Chong contributed equally.

Received: 5 September 2017 Revised: 24 January 2019 Accepted: 22 May 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2399

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:931–946. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

931

2001). Research commonly associated the experience of workplace

incivility with both psychological and behavioral detriments for the

targets, such as the experience of greater anxiety and depression

(Lim, Cortina, & Magley, 2008), and the exhibition of similar ill‐

mannered behaviors (Foulk, Woolum, & Erez, 2015; Gallus, Bunk, Mat-

thews, Barnes‐Farrell, & Magley, 2014; Rosen, Koopman, Gabriel, &

Johnson, 2016) or withdrawal behaviors (Schilpzand, Leavitt, & Lim,

2016; Sliter, Sliter, & Jex, 2012). These findings reinforced incivility

as a highly unfavorable relational phenomenon in the workplace.

Are there, however, instances when targets may react less destruc-

tively, or even constructively to incivility? Our paper explores this pos-

sibility by drawing from Bandura's (1991) social cognitive theory of

self‐regulation to consider the role of self‐blame in targets' experience

of incivility. According to this theory, individuals monitor their own

experience and compare it to factors in their social environment to

make attributive judgments of personal agency (Bandura, 1991). Inte-

grating this premise into the literature on workplace incivility, we

expect targets of incivility to rely heavily on social cues (i.e., observa-

tion of incivility experienced by others) during their blame attribution

process due to the low intensity and high ambiguity associated with

the experience of incivility (Cortina et al., 2001). This attributional pro-

cess generates self‐related cognitive and affective reactions, such as

blame, that shape individuals' behavioral responses to their experience

(Bandura, 1991). If employees perceive themselves to be distinct tar-

gets of incivility, they will attribute greater blame to the self for the

negative experience (Kelley, 1967; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005).

Although self‐blame signals some form of personal agency and may

motivate individuals to take actions to improve their situation, over-

whelming affective reactions in the self‐regulation process “can under-

mine performance motivation and psychological well‐being”(Bandura,

1991; p. 273). In the case of experiencing incivility and self‐blame, del-

eterious emotions that accompany self‐blame are likely to thwart indi-

viduals' attempts to respond rationally and constructively (Garnefski,

Kraaij, & Spinhoven, 2001) and lead to emotional exhaustion in targets

(Schilpzand, Leavitt, et al., 2016). In response, Bandura (1991) posited

that individuals' “belief about their capabilities to exercise control over

their own level of functioning”(p. 257) may further bolster or weaken

the link between attributions and responses. Therefore, we focus on

studying how trait emotional control may shape the relations of self‐

blame with favorable well‐being (i.e., minimizing emotional exhaustion)

and behavioral (i.e., enacting prosocial behavior) outcomes. Emotional

exhaustion and prosocial behavior were specifically selected as out-

comes based on premises of our overarching social cognitive theory.

Specifically, Bandura (1991) posited that self‐regulatory processes

are related to both emotional mechanisms and well‐being outcomes;

thus, we chose emotional exhaustion as an outcome to examine. In

addition, we look at the enactment of prosocial behavior as the behav-

ioral outcome of our model because Bandura (1991) noted that a com-

mon strategy for dealing with negative experience is to respond with

actions directly aligned to the domain of a desired outcome. Thus,

behaving in a prosocial manner in hope of improving one's relational

situation is a potential strategic response of employees who have

experienced incivility, an antisocial phenomenon.

In sum, this proposed dual‐stage moderated‐mediation mechanism

explains when targets of workplace incivility may experience self‐

blame (first‐stage moderation) and when self‐blaming targets may

experience less emotional exhaustion and react in a prosocial manner

(second‐stage moderation). Through the theoretical development and

empirical test of this model, we aim to contribute to theory in at least

two key ways. First, we draw from social cognitive theory of self‐

regulation (Bandura, 1991) as the overarching theory for our research

model, which expands the existing literature by untangling the com-

plexity surrounding targets' appraisals of and reactions to workplace

incivility, and underscores the importance of considering targets'

blame attribution processes and the belief system that aid their coping

with workplace incivility. Most extant research acknowledged the

ambiguous intent of workplace incivility, but only a handful of studies

have examined how targets of incivility make sense of and attribute

blame for their experience (see Schilpzand, Leavitt, et al., 2016). Going

beyond existing literature that focused mostly on the affective or cog-

nitive reactions of incivility targets, we take an integrative approach

through the application of Bandura's (1991) theoretical framework to

examine how the monitoring of one's own experience and the obser-

vation of others' experience jointly shape a self‐evaluative affective

and cognitive reaction (i.e., targets' self‐blame judgments) and how

targets' stable capacity (i.e., trait emotional control) moderates accom-

panying affective and behavioral implications of self‐blame.

Second, our research contributes to the literature on self‐blame by

offering insights into the riddle of when and how self‐blame may lead

to less destructive, or even constructive, responses (Graham &

Juvonen, 1998; Janoff‐Bulman, 1982; Taylor, Lichtman, & Wood,

1984). Janoff‐Bulman (1979) suggested that attributing blame to the

self leads targets to perceive that it is up to them to correct the situ-

ation and can trigger constructive compensatory responses in self‐

blaming targets. Yet existing research asymmetrically supports the

dark side of self‐blame (Felblinger, 2008; Schilpzand, Leavitt, et al.,

2016) and offers little insight into how targets might leverage the con-

structive aspect of self‐blame. In fact, it has been advocated as the

optimal solution to cope with self‐blame that targets should avoid

attributing blame to themselves (Felblinger, 2008; Schilpzand, Leavitt,

et al., 2016). However, our guiding social cognitive framework sug-

gests that self‐blame arises spontaneously from attribution processes

and is not an experience that targets can easily suppress or avoid

(Janoff‐Bulman, 1979). The lack of research examining boundary con-

ditions that can draw out the useful aspect of self‐blame implies a

dearth of knowledge on how to help targets of incivility manage

self‐blame. Thus, we focus on the potential functional side of self‐

blame. Because the experience of self‐blame is accompanied by strong

emotions (Janoff‐Bulman, 1979) and because Bandura (1991) empha-

sized perceived control as an instrumental resource for enhancing

responses to negative experiences, we investigate trait emotional con-

trol as a vital resource that can possibly counteract the negative emo-

tional outcomes associated with self‐blame. In doing so, we take a

step beyond extant findings that describe the detriments associated

with experiencing workplace incivility by uncovering prescriptive

insights into how targets can more effectively cope with self‐blame.

TONG ET AL.

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