Interpersonal influence of three negative emotion coping tactics in organizations

Abstract

This research examines interpersonal implications of employees three likely reactions to negative emotional experience at workplace: suppressing, bursting, and sharing. How the employees react to their negative emotional experiences is expected to influence perception as well as behavior of coworkers who observe and interact with them. In other words, this study predicts that the coworkers social cognition about their colleagues (i.e. perceived warmth and competence) will be shaped upon their observation of their colleagues coping behaviors against negative emotional experiences. Furthermore, social cognition would determine the coworkers behavioral interaction (e.g., helping and harming) with the employees.

Hypotheses were developed and empirically tested with field data of 139 dyads which were collected from Korean organizations. First of all, the validity of the adopted measures as well as the fit-index of the data to the hypothesized model were examined. Structural equation modeling was employed to statistically test the hypotheses. The results showed a contrast between intrapersonal and interpersonal coping responses. While emotion suppression failed to influence social cognition of the coworkers, emotion bursting and sharing were significantly related to how the coworkers evaluate the employees upon the warmth and competence dimensions. Whereas emotion bursting decreased perceived competence, emotion sharing increased both perceived competence and warmth. In turn, perceived competence was significantly and negatively related to harming behavior, whereas perceived warmth was significantly and positively related to helping behavior.