Why and for whom does the pressure to help hurt others? Affective and cognitive mechanisms linking helping pressure to workplace deviance Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • AbstractScholars are paying increasing attention to the dark side of citizenship behavior. One aspect of this dark side that has received relatively scant attention is helping pressurean employee's perception that s/he is being encouraged to, or otherwise feels that s/he should, enact helping behavior at work. Drawing from theory associated with work stress, we examine affective and cognitive mechanisms that potentially explain why helping pressure, counterintuitively, may lead employees to engage in deviant behavior instead. Beyond examining these possible mechanisms, we also answer calls to identify a potential buffer to these effects. Drawing from selfdetermination theory, we examine how an employee's intrinsic motivation for citizenship may lessen the deleterious consequences of helping pressure at work. In two studies (a withinindividual experiencesampling study and a twowave betweenindividual study), we find consistent evidence that helping pressure has a positive indirect relationship with deviant behavior through increased negative affect. Further, we find evidence that intrinsic motivation for citizenship weakens the positive relationship of helping pressure with negative affect, buffering the indirect effect on subsequent deviant behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the study of helping pressure at work are discussed.

published proceedings

  • PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY

altmetric score

  • 10.03

author list (cited authors)

  • Koopman, J., Rosen, C. C., Gabriel, A. S., Puranik, H., Johnson, R. E., & Ferris, D. L.

citation count

  • 59

complete list of authors

  • Koopman, Joel||Rosen, Christopher C||Gabriel, Allison S||Puranik, Harshad||Johnson, Russell E||Ferris, D Lance

publication date

  • June 2020

publisher